Yahoo Joins Desktop Search Market Battle

Yahoo has officially entered the desktop search market with a beta release tool available for free download from the company's site.

The application indexes information and content that users have on their computers. It can search e-mails, attachments, documents, music, images and videos. Yahoo notes that it comes with support for over 200 file types.

The search tool is being promoted to the general public and, most heavily, to Yahoo's membership of more than 160 million registered users.

The company announced in December that it was developing the tool with technology licensed from X1 Technologies. EarthLink also partnered with X1 in the past for its e-mail search capability.