IBM and Yahoo try to challenge Google
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IBM Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are teaming up to offer a free data-search tool for businesses, a quirky move challenging Google Inc. and other corporate-search specialists in a blossoming market.
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-- IBM Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are teaming up to offer a free data-search tool for businesses, a quirky move challenging Google Inc. and other corporate-search specialists in a blossoming market.
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If the massive deal does go through, Google will at last face a major threat to fend off. Technical integration between Microsoft and Yahoo could be a nightmare, according to some analysts. Yet customers might stand to gain.
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By BRIAN BERGSTEIN  IBM Corp. and Yahoo Inc. are teaming up to offer a free data-search tool for businesses, a quirky move challenging Google Inc. and other corporate-search specialists in a blossoming market.
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Google Inc. is seeking user feedback as it experiments with new views of its search results.
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Unable to topple Google Inc. on its own, Microsoft Corp. is trying to force crippled rival Yahoo Inc. into a shotgun marriage, with a wager worth nearly $42 billion that the two companies together will have a better chance of tackling the Internet search leader.
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The problem? Both Microsoft and Yahoo are weak where Google is strong: search.
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The turf battle for desktop search is heating up, with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and now Ask Jeeves all fielding entries. Their strategies vary, but all hope to win the dominant position on personal computer users&#39; desktops.
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(InfoWorld) - IBMÂ and Yahoo have developed a free, entry-level, enterprise search application that at least one analyst believes will seriously disrupt the low-end segment of this market where Google has been selling many of itsÂ Mini search devices. IBM and Yahoo plan to release the server-side application on Wednesday as a free download aimed at companies that haven't tried out enterprise search due to cost and complexity concerns. The software, called IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition, has been designed to be simple to install and use, and can index up to 500,000 documents from over 200 file types, like Adobe Systems' PDF and Microsoft's Word and Excel. With that indexing capacity, IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition poses a significant threat the Google Mini, an analyst said. The Mini is a hardware device loaded with Google search software that starts at $1,995 for 50,000 documents and tops out at 300,000 documents in its $8,995 edition. "Google will have to react in some way to this product, to differentiate the Mini from a free competitor with more indexing capacity," said Matt Brown, a Forrester Research Inc. analyst. IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition isn't comparable to more powerful mid-tier products like the Google Search Appliance, nor to high-end systems from companies like Fast Search & Transfer and Autonomy, Brown said. These mid-tier and high-end products have significantly more features, like the ability to index data from many more sources, like business applications. However, this IBM/Yahoo product is precisely what Eric Brierley had been looking for. Brierley, chief technology officer of Decision Critical, had researched tools like the Google Mini because he wanted to do a full-text indexing of the education and training materials the company stores in its databases and serves up to its health care clients. However, he hadn't found an option that fit his budget, was simple to use and could handle the task until he beta-tested the IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition earlier this month. "We're very pleased with it not only because it's free, but also because the integration process [with our Web application] was painless and the performance was exceptional," said Brierley. Decision Critical has the tool on a staging server while it runs final tests and finishes customization work, but plans to deploy it soon to its 400 clients and their 300,000 end users. It will be installed on an existing server box. IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition also features an integrated Internet search tab that lets users query Yahoo's Web search engine. End users interact with the IBM/Yahoo product via a browser-based interface that has the look and feel of the Yahoo search engine, which is familiar to many people. Two other user interface options exist. The product's search box can be embedded in an existing Web page, and the IT department can build its own custom interface via an application programming interface (API). The product now becomes the entry-level option in IBM's enterprise search line, which features the more sophisticated and fee-based OmniFind Enterprise Edition, whose functionality can be extended with OmniFind Discovery Edition. The upgrade path to the Enterprise Edition is far from seamless right now, requiring a re-crawling of the documents to rebuild the index, but IBM plans to make the process smoother in the future, said Marc Andrews, IBM's program director of information management strategies. IBM also offers customers the option of purchasing guaranteed phone technical support for $2,000 per server per year, he said.
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A new battle in the multibillion-dollar online search war begins today as software giant Microsoft unveils a test version of its new search engine, looking remarkably like one of its chief rivals, Google.
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It joins the battle for mobile users with Google.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft and IBM executives Wednesday admitted feeling heat from Google now that the Web search giant is trying to make inroads into the enterprise market with its hosted suite of communication and collaboration tools. Google Apps, a hosted service, is gaining traction primarily in universities but is a welcome addition to enterprise software because of its simplicity and ease of use, said Rob Curry, director of Microsoft's Office business platform group, during a panel discussion today at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. "We actually see [Google] as a great competitor in this space," Curry said. "And they bring a good spirit in terms of simplicity, ease of use and things we're trying to leverage as we go forward in our development cycle." Google Apps was described as a "direct shot at Microsoft Office" by Forrester Analyst Erica Driver when Google released an enterprise version of the tool in February. For US$50 per user per year, customers get e-mail, instant messaging, a calendar tool, a Web page creator, support for e-mail on BlackBerry mobile devices and integration with Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Analysts say Google Apps offers less functionality than Office but is less expensive. IBM, which offers the Lotus Notes set of e-mail, calendaring and collaborative applications, and Lotus Sametime, an IM and Web conferencing tool, has partnered with Google but still sees the company as a potential competitor. Lotus Sametime allows IM customers to communicate with users of Google Talk. "We're a key partner of Google's," said Ken Bisconti, vice president of messaging and collaboration software for IBM, during the panel discussion. "We partner with them, and continue to partner with them, hopefully for the good of our customers. I also fully expect them to become a competitor to us in the business space." Google executives are busy trying to understand the requirements of enterprises, a learning process that will be crucial if the search company hopes to gain market traction for Google Apps outside of academia, Bisconti said. "Most of our customers tell us they're talking to the Google enterprise team," he said. "Google is doing a good job of collecting information to understand enterprise requirements. ... I don't see them as a near-term competitor but as a long-term potential substitution." No Google officials participated in the panel. The session, titled "Vendor Spotlight: Assessing IBM & Microsoft Platforms for Collaboration & Unified Communications," also gave the vendors a chance to discuss the broad trend in which employees expect the types of instant communication available to them in their personal lives. This is placing increased important on IM, Web conferencing, video and audio conferencing, and mobile communications. "The role of instant messaging has completely transformed and it has become a business expectation," said Akiba Saeedi, IBM's program director for unified communications and collaboration products. Years ago, people questioned whether e-mail would become a necessary business function. No one would question e-mail's importance today, and IM seems to be heading in a similar direction, Saeedi said. Bisconti cautioned against getting caught up in industry buzzwords such asÂ "enterprise 2.0," but said the desire for collaborative technology in general is real and has created a huge business opportunity for software vendors. "I have never seen so much senior-level interest in companies in improving the way they communicate, collaborate and improve the speed and agility of their business," he said.
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Yahooâs rebuff of the $44.6 billion takeover bid raises the stakes in a battle involving two of the worldâs most prominent technology companies.
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Announcements by Yahoo and Google show that Microsoft faces challenges to its business software franchises.
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Charles Arthur: Why Google might benefit from Microsoft's attempt to shoehorn Yahoo into itself
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The competition between two leading Internet search engines is heating up anew as Yahoo Inc. plans to announce today that it soon will offer a free, high-speed way to search for information on personal computers, challenging rival Google Inc., which released a similar product earlier this fall.
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Internet powerhouses Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc. are joining forces in an alliance that further defines the battle lines in an online showdown with rivals Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and AOL.