| Google Expands Search Facility to Business |
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Google's new "Desktop Search for the Enterprise"
announced Wednesday is aimed at business users - it'll
be available as a free download. Google's Matt
Glotzbach, Enterprise Product Manager says there are
no plans to charge for the product - that would be
competing with themselves. For a business user there
would be no point in paying for the Enterprise version
when the consumer version is free - the incentive for
Google is loyalty to the brand and use of Google.com
becoming the norm for standard usages.
Desktop Search for the Enterprise can search files on
hard drives but not, as yet, on networked drives but
that will be available on a near-future release. It is
particularly designed to search e-mail messages from
Lotus Notes 6.5 and later, and transcripts from Lotus
Instant Messaging chat sessions - it is, as usual,
limited to systems running Windows 2000 or later. As
well as Lotus, it can search messages in Microsoft
Outlook and IMAP e-mail client. The Enterprise version of the Desktop Search goes beyond the consumer version too in having built-in administrator controls - allowing the blocking of indexing or access to files and auto downloading of updates. End users need local admin rights to install. Ken Bisconti for Lotus said that the attraction for them was that a user could search content in the inbox, chat transcripts, hard drives and content across the Internet,"What we`ve witnessed in our customer base is that e-mail has evolved beyond messaging into a tool where you can manage your activities, store critical business communications, and help find, share and collaborate on the information you need to make critical business decisions". There are other possibilities for integration between Google and IBM technologies, including with IBM`s OmniFind search engine. OmniFind is nothing like the usual end user-focused tool, but the two are complementary - Â-OmniFind focuses across the enterprise, and Google focuses on personal information. IBM isn't ready to announce any plans yet for integration and it's too early to talk about integration of Google Desktop Search with Lotus Workplace files, but there are no taboos for the future. Reuben Dunn |
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