Miscrosoft is going to start it's own shopping search engine, MSN Shopping, which will be in direct competition to Google's Froogle, Yahoo! Shopping and America Online's inStore.

Though MSN already has a Shopping area, the new site features shopping search, price comparison, and customer ratings.

"Now that the MSN Search engine has launched we can very quickly innovate on top of it and offer more unique features and services, all in an effort to help consumers find precisely what they're looking for," said Justin Osmer, an MSN spokesperson, in a statement. "Shopping, as well as a number of other verticals, is certainly an area...we are looking to expand search into."

However, MSN wouldn't discuss the advertising options would be available on MSN Shopping. Currently, the company is serving 120 x 30 pixel graphic ads on the front page of the site and on results pages.

Site: http://beta.shopping.msn.com