Microsoft's Information Worker unit is looking how to grow its Office franchise via a number of potential new products taking root in its "Greenhouse" incubator.

The Greenhouse team builds prototypes of potential applications and technologies and then seeks wider, corporate backing and financing for these initiatives. Those that aren't seen as viable are dropped.

The Greenhouse isn't new. Since at least 2003, Microsoft has been investigating one or more search-related projects under its auspices.

In 2003, what was then known as the Knowledge Interchange incubation team was part of the Information Worker division's new markets initiative. The general manager of that team was Bobby Kishore. Kishore's current title is general manager of the information worker Greenhouse, Microsoft officials confirmed this week.

(Kishore previously was part of Microsoft's digital distribution and software licensing team and was credited as "one of the pioneers of software based anti-piracy/product activation for Microsoft." Kishore also served as general manager of the enterprise e-commerce group.)

More recently, Microsoft executives publicly acknowledged the company's Knowledge Interchange unit and the work that it did on Microsoft's desktop search product.

During a December 2004 Webcast, MSN senior vice president Yusuf Mehdii made a brief, passing reference to Knowledge Interchange.

When asked by a Web cast participant about the extent to which the MSN team has collaborated with other internal Microsoft teams on search, Medhi responded: "The way we've built the desktop search offering today has been in collaboration with a number of groups around the company. So the Microsoft Office team and the Knowledge Interchange team have actually directly worked with us to put together this desktop search service, and that has also had review and input from the Windows team."

The Knowledge Interchange team, now known as the Greenhouse team, is continuing to work on search technology, according to sources claiming familiarity with Microsoft's plans. Sources say the team is investigating ways to make search more targeted, personalized and P2P-savvy.

It's not clear the extent to which the Greenhouse team is looking to SharePoint as its search base. The SharePoint team has been at the forefront of developing search for a number of Microsoft products.

Other sources said the Greenhouse team also is exploring various Office and/or Internet Explorer extensions. One source, who asked not to be named, said there also is ongoing work within the Greenhouse around "Magellan," the forthcoming version of Office targeted at small-business users.

It's also not clear the extent to which the Greenhouse team is working with Microsoft Research, MSN and/or the Windows team, moving forward. The research division has been working on "intelligent tools" that could aid "information workers coping with a flood of documents."

And the WinFS team continues its work on making information storage and retrieval more intuitive. WinFS is set to go to beta around the time that Longhorn ships in 2006.

Microsoft officials have wavered on whether or not Microsoft will back-port WinFS to Windows XP, or whether it will run on Longhorn and future versions of Windows only.

(This is an updated version of an article which appeared in the April 4, 2005, issue of the Microsoft Watch newsletter. Want to see what other Microsoft news nuggets you might have missed? Sign up today for a free two-week trial subscription to Microsoft Watch.)