Apparently Microsoft can't wait to get the new Live Search up and running before next week's Searchification event, as the new look (and better results) search is beginning to show up in the wild.
Akram Hussein, Program Manager - Windows Live Platform, who was at the company meeting and saw the Live Search demo, apparently has the new search in his location and has kindly posted some screenshots:
Update: the post has been taken down, for now.
Here's what I still get from the "old" live search:
As you can see, the search box, and "see also" (images, news, msn, etc) have moved down into the page. The "most popular products" showing images and ratings, coming from MSN Shopping, is new. Also checking the search results, Live Search leaps from some 4 million results in the old page to over 64 million in the new version (of course it's how relevant the first few results are, nobody ventures much beyond the second page anyway).
Drilling down from one of the products pictured gives what Akram calls a "holistic view" of the search results:
Akram also tried out a people search, for Brad Pitt:
Again, a quick view of popular pictures and news on the main page, more search results, and quick links to Images, videos, etc:
Akram couldn't show us the video search, so he described it:
Finally, the last feature i can talk about is video search which really Rocks!, and i can't show you that here you gotta go and see it yourself. First searching video presents you with decent amount of results like google but what's better is that you can preview videos online by moving your mouse over any video and it will play a preview of the video right away no delays! Isn't this amazing, at least now you can preview the video before really going and trying to view it, and make sure this is the one you want.
We've had at least one tip that a reader already has the new search capabilities, so it does appear to be rolling out. So far I'm not seeing it here but check it out at http://search.live.com and let us know if you're seeing the new search!
UPDATE: The Live Search update has now been launched. Check out the new vertical search engines.