Fast launches new enterprise search engine

Fast has launched a new search engine for large companies. Why should that interest you? Well, it adds a new interesting twist to information retrieval.

(January 27 2004) Since Fast sold its web search unit to Overture (now a part of Yahoo!), Fast has become less interesting to Internet searchers and search engine marketers.

The company is still going strong, however. Yes, one could argue that one of the factors that have made the company so profitable is the fact that it did sell the AlltheWeb search engine. It did not bring in much revenue.

Another reason is its ability to innovate. The Norwegian company has now launched a new "enterprise search solution" -- i.e. a search engine that let companies search their own databases more efficiently -- that should be of interest to all search oriented people.

The reason is that Fast is on the way to solving one of the main problems of information retrieval of this kind: the fact that the data is stored in a large number of databases and data sources, very often incompatible, using different standards.

In press release lingo "the precision-engineered FAST Enterprise Search Platform (FAST ESP) enables organizations to efficiently gain a 360-degree view of relevant structured data stored in databases, as well as the unstructured data of documents, emails, presentations, Web pages, and more."

This means that users will be able to search a large number of regular databases, i.e. databases where the information is ordered in structured categories or fields, at the same time as they are searching the kind of mixed info we all have on our computers, including long forgotten Word documents and "lost" emails.

This technology can, of course, be used to search company servers and intranets. It can also be used in ecommerce search engines and for web site search engines.

More important, however, is that you can use the technology to search a large number of data sources at once, regardless of whether the information needed is found on local servers, in global databases or on the World Wide Web.

We wouldn't be surprised if there is quite a few law enforcement organizations that would like to take a look at Fast's solutions. There should be a potential for more efficient intelligence gathering here.

That will also be of interest to investors, journalists and other analysts, that need up to date data - fast.

The main reason Fast's technology should be of interest to Web searchers, however, is the fact that it might ultimately find its way into online search engines.

The regular search engines we all know and use, all struggle to include larger parts of the Internet. This is why Google, AlltheWeb and others now include for instance PDF and Word files found on the Web.

We know, however, that Microsoft -- a company that is building its own regular web search engine -- would like to go beyond the Internet and include search capabilities that merges Web search with the art of searching your own computer.

This could mean that Windows would include one search field that can be used for retrieving data from your own PC, from the company's network and from the Internet.

If (and this is a big if) Microsoft is able to develop a Web search engine that is just as good as Google and AlltheWeb, Microsoft should be able to use the near monopoly of the Windows operating system to grab the search engine market from Google and Yahoo!

We are sure the competitors of Microsoft will try to stop them in the court room, arguing that Microsoft's tactics would be bad for competition. Ultimately, however, the only way of beating Microsoft will be to develop a technology that is better than Microsoft's own.

Google has already developed no less than two software solutions that let searchers search the Web without visiting their Web site (the toolbar and the deskbar). This software could easily be expanded to include local information retrieval. Maybe Fast could help them?

However, a more likely scenario is that Yahoo!/Overture teams up with their old colleagues in Norway in order to develop a "360 degree" search solution, not only for companies, but for you and me.

Fast press release

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