IBM, Yahoo! do enterprise search

Take that, Google

By Andrew Orlowski • Get more from this author

Posted in IT Director, 13th December 2006 17:50 GMT

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While Google seeks to encroach on enterprise rivals with its SaS (Software as a Service) offerings such as Google Office, it needs to watch its rear.

IBM and Yahoo! teamed up today for an attack on Google's home turf of search. The pair will give IBM's existing OmniFind corporate search engine away for free, targeting SMEs and workgroups.

The paid-for OmiFind isn't cheap: with a list price of $18,750 for a site license and support contract. It's tuned to Lotus Notes and Domino, and IBM says it offers a higher degree of control over search results: distinguishing between drafts and final versions of documents, for example.

It's almost five years since Google launched its "search appliance", the product receiving a refresh in 2005. The company understandably found itself with higher priority products: the following year it followed Overture into the contextual ad business, one that today provides Google with 99 per cent of its revenue.

Yahoo! said its role in the partnerships shouldn't be seen as an enterprise move - merely that it wanted raise its profile, so cubicle-dwellers used its search engine more often.

Google has increased its lead over Yahoo! in terms of web searches in 2006. ®

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