THE WEB

Excite and Yahoo! May sound like the happiest places on the Web, but their party is about to get crashed. For more than six months, a team at Microsoft has been working on its own search engine/-directory, code-named Yukon. The company should have a beta version up by October, with a launch date of January. Yukon will most probably be released directly on the Web, not on MSN, the company's members-only Net service meant to compete with AOL. Rumors of BILL GATES' foray into the Web's most popular genre have been floating around Silicon Valley for months, but until now no one knew whether he planned to buy an existing engine or create his own.