(FORTUNE Magazine) – OF ALL THE APPLICATIONS NOW RESIDING on the screens of the world's PCs, one can argue that the search engine is second in importance only to the web browser. And we all saw what happened when Microsoft woke up to discover that an upstart named Netscape had just about cornered the browser market.

Microsoft evidently had a similar epiphany when it realized that "google" had entered the lexicon as a verb for finding information. Google is adding so many services so quickly--going beyond web searching to include free e-mail, comparison shopping, hard-disk searching, and so on--that it could evolve into a portal not unlike MSN, or at least steal time that consumers spend online using other Microsoft products.

So Microsoft, which up to now has outsourced its search functions on MSN to Yahoo, recently unveiled a test version of its homegrown MSN search engine (http://beta.search.msn.com, for Windows-based computers only).

Although it lacks many of Google's advanced features and searches roughly half as many pages, the beta version of MSN Search is at least an interesting auxiliary search tool for PC users. It adds intriguing options that aren't found on Google or the other leading engines, like the ability to reshuffle the search results using a trio of sliding bars, adjusting relative weight based on whether the search terms are exact or approximate, whether the search should focus on the pages that are the most popular (and thus presumably the most useful) or on the pages that have been more frequently or more recently updated.

There's also a "near me" button, next to the "search" button, that examines the Internet address of the computer sending the query and tailors responses to the user's geographic region.

MSN Search sometimes bypasses the web for searches: Ask about the singer Steve Earle ("Condi, Condi"), and you'll be directed to the MSN Music store, where a download can be bought. Ask a question that sounds like homework, and you may be guided to Microsoft's online encyclopedia, Encarta. "Safe search" controls let parents restrict searching on potentially offensive subjects, like sex or evolution.

Microsoft says MSN Search is a work in progress. But it took a mere 0.08 seconds to scan five billion indexed web pages for the answer to the question, "Who is the richest man in the world?" (Bill Gates.) The same question put to Google, however, caused it to ruminate for a full 0.17 seconds before returning a top response for ... oops, Andrew Carnegie. -- Peter Lewis