The race for Total Search intensifies

(October 23 2004) Microsoft is hurrying to catch up with Google after the launch of Google Desktop Search. A date has now been set for a similar, MSN-branded tool.

At a meeting with financial analysts recently, Microsoft announced that their desktop search tool would be available before the end of 2004. Like Google’s desktop search tool, Microsoft’s will be launched in a beta version.

The race for Total Search

The technology race between Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! is intensifying. This is good news for searchers, who will be offered ever more advanced and user friendly search technology.

Desktop search is an integrated part if what Pandia has called “Total Search”. Total Search is the combination of three different kinds of search tools:

1. Desktop search, i.e. tools for searching the content of files on your local computer or network.
2. Mail search, i.e. tools for searching the content of your emails and their attachments.
3. Web search, i.e. tools for searching the web.

The importance of desktop search

Desktop Search has clearly become one of the most important parts of any search engine company strategy these days. There are several reasons for this:

Most important is the need to attract loyal customers, i.e. users that use your search tools again and again. At the moment pay-per-click text ads are the most important source of revenue for search engine companies, and although they do not want to scare searchers away with too many ads, they do want to open up as many places to present such ads as possible. This is why Google is working so hard on its own online mail service: Gmail. It may choose to present Google Adwords text ads beside any incoming email.

If these companies can get you to use their tools for searching your own hard drive or your own local mailbox, that give the search engines another opportunity to present such ads. Google has already demonstrated the concept through its Google Desktop software, which in essence integrates local search results – that is searches on your own hard drive – with regular web search results. If you start using this desktop tool, chances are that you will not go to any other search service to search the Web.

Domination or ectinxtion

This whole race started when Microsoft indicated that they would integrate web search with desktop search in the next incarnation of the Windows operating system, code named Longhorn.

The idea is to let any search form in any program open up the possibility to search your own computer as well as the Web. Microsoft clearly hoped that this would bring the company closer to total dominance in the search field, thus beating Google and Yahoo!

The other search engine companies have reason to fear this, as they may go the same way as the dodo, Netscape or WordPerfect if Microsoft achieves a virtual monopoly in this field. Hence the counter attack. They are all trying to conquer the desktops of Windows users before Microsoft achieves a lock-in. They do have a chance at succeeding at this.

Microsoft’s problem is that the company stinks when it comes to desktop search. Anyone who has tried to find files and mails on a Windows machine or in the Outlook mail program knows that it is very hard to make a simple search. The search engines in Windows, Outlook and Word constantly ask you to give detailed information about what folder the files are located in, what types of files you are looking for and so on. Moreover, the interfaces are bewildering and the search is sloooooow.

Steps toward Total Search

Google, Copernic and others has proved that it is possible to develop search technology for Windows that is as easy to use as a regular web search engine. Enter your search in a search form, hit enter, and voila: you get a list of all relevant files and emails, locally and worldwide. If these companies can get you to start using their tools before Microsoft manages to develop a desktop search tool that really works, they may have a chance.

Microsoft has definitely understood this. They are now preparing their own web search engine that is to compete with Google and Yahoo!. They have bought Lookout, a great add on for Outlook that is actually capable of searching Outlook mail boxes, fast and efficiently.

Yahoo! may also be joining in the race for Total Search. They recently acquired the e-mail software company Stata Labs which sells an e-mail application called Bloomba that lets people search message text and attachments. Yahoo! bought the technology of Stata Labs and does not intend to continue sales of Bloomba. Stata's engineers will join Yahoo! Yahoo!’s executives have said previously that the company plans to introduce a desktop search tool and this seems to be a big step in that direction.

Preliminary reports indicated that they would not manage to integrate a total search solution into the Longhorn release coming in 2006, i.e. that they would not be able to combine web search, mail search and file search in any efficient way. The announcement that they are now preparing a test version of a desktop search tool this fall, may indicate that they are closer to the goal than expected.

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