Microsoft has been quietly adding to its Windows Live portfolio of services to compete with products that Google and Yahoo have already established in the marketplace. Through its Waggener Edstrom public relations firm, Microsoft today confirmed that it’s readying two new searches: Windows Live Product Search and Windows Live Academic Search. Microsoft-dedicated beta testers and Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) write in the LiveSide blog about the new search offerings.

Windows Live Product Search will be similar to Google’s Froogle service, in that it performs price comparisons on products and allows the user to refine the search results by category, brand, seller or specific keywords, according to a LiveSide posting by Chris Overd, one of the blog’s authors.

“It is also rumored that as well as including expert or user-provided buying guides, Product Search will also provide access to discussions on products from articles and blog posts, something Froogle does not yet do,” he wrote.

Yahoo also allows users to search for products through its Shopping search service, which can be accessed on its home page.

Academic Search, aimed at Google Scholar, will allow users to search articles in academic journals or find out if books or articles are available in a library located near the user, according to another LiveSide posting.

LiveSide states that Academic Search will allow users to do these four things:

• View an abstract for an academic article in the search preview pane.
• View the complete article as long it’s not being hosted on a website that requires a subscription or has restricted access.
• View the complete article as long as they have a valid subscription for it.
• Purchase an article electronically using the British Library.

In an e-mail Friday, LiveSide’s Overd wrote that it seems Microsoft is “stacking up the services against Google.”

Microsoft also recently made available an image search for Windows Live that is similar to Google’s image search service.

The service, called Windows Live Image Search, allows users to search for images on the Web. It is available in both the United States and the United Kingdom by typing in a search term and clicking on “Image” to find images.

Yahoo also offers image searching as an option on its search homepage.

via cio