IBM Yahoo Team Up On Enterprise Search

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IBM, Yahoo Team Up On Enterprise Search

By: Nathan Weinberg
2006-12-14

IBM and Yahoo have announced an enterprise search product designed to compete with Googles Mini Search Appliance.

The product has one huge distinction: IBM/Yahoo's solution is completely free. IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition, powered by IBM's enterprise search with a Yahoo interface and Yahoo web search, can index up to 500,000 documents and more than 200 file types. The UI output can be customized and outputted in multiple formats for embedding withing corporate websites.

It looks like a very powerful product, and the price ($0) is far too tempting for many to ignore. I could see a lot of midrange internet companies powering their internal and external search with this, and it exposes a hole in Google's product line. While the Google Mini does sell, a lot of companies would probably prefer to just handle the whole thing in software, controlling the hardware used by their servers.

How can Google compete with free? With free, of course! Hopefully, Google's prepared for this eventuality, and has a Google Search Appliance Software Suite in development. Release a free Google enterprise software search product, and have it promote the Google Mini and Google Search Appliance. Let companies get tied to the Google software product, while letting them know that an even better experience awaits them if they upgrade to the hardware product.

I'm tempted to install the IBM/Yahoo product on my server. It sounds great. With no comparable Google product, Yahoo's blown things wide open.

(via InfoWorld)

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Tags: IBM, Yahoo

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View All Articles by Nathan Weinberg

About the Author:
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

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