• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 30, 2005

Yahoo! Desktop Search launched out of beta this week, gaining a contextual search feature, "LiveWords," in the process. The new feature enables users who use the desktop search to retrieve documents from their hard drives to then highlight terms within those documents--and with one click, search the Web for pages related to those highlighted words.

The results page, returned from Yahoo!'s search engine, includes sponsored links.

Yahoo!'s desktop software, used for searching hard drives, can index content from over 300 different file types, including Microsoft Office applications, Adobe PDF, and assorted music and video formats. The beta version of Yahoo! Desktop first launched in January--after rivals Google and Microsoft debuted their own beta versions.

Google was first to come out with a desktop search, releasing a product in beta in October of last year, and then launching it officially in March. Last month, Google unveiled an updated version of the tool; this latest edition, available only on Microsoft Windows, allows users to search and preview files on their hard drive or the Web, and view their Gmail and Google News selections directly from the desktop.

Microsoft's MSN released a toolbar and desktop beta in December, and then launched officially in mid-May. New features include a preview window that allows users to drag and drop searched items into other applications; the ability to customize both the files indexed by the search algorithm and where the index file is stored; and the ability to download additional third-party plug-ins that allow different file types to be searched.