December 10, 2004
Desktop search war begins next week
You may remember the First Browser War in the mid-1990s (Microsoft won that one), the Search Engine War has subsided (Google came out ahead) despite the periodic sabre rattling from the various factions, and the Second Browser War is underway with Mozilla beginning to take some of Microsoft's territory.
Now the latest Tech-War (not TekWar, for you William Shatner fans) is upon us: the battle Desktop Search supremacy. Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Ask Jeeves are all expected to make a play for computer users to use their product to search for files on their computers. Google fired the first shot in this one with the release earlier this year of it's desktop search engine and while it addressed a need (it is far too easy to loose files in Windows and the built in search is cumbersome and poorly designed) it was also a poke-in-the-eye to Microsoft which, of course built the Windows operating system and its useless search capability.
Obviously, Bill Gates and company weren't going to take that insult lying down, especially after people like me wrote about how Google's desktop search is so much better than the built-in Windows search.
So Microsoft has announced plans to deploy a desktop search based on its MSN search engine next week. Not to be outdone the team behind Ask Jeeves will unveil its desktop search on December 15th and Yahoo! will be joining the fray in the coming weeks.
The Yahoo! offering promises to allow users to search their Yahoo! mail as well as their desktops and Ask's will eventually integrate with "MyJeeves" as an online repository for a user's files.
All of this work may be for not, though. If Microsoft develops a strong desktop search and then integrate's it into Windows (the same formula that worked for Internet Explorer) the others could find themselves marginalized. This also presents another opportunity for the Gates empire. If the company can embed a desktop search in their operating system, why not include easy, direct access to their search engine? It would, again, put the others at a serious disadvantage. Sure, Microsoft got hauled into court over this anti-competitive practice, but they stole the browser market in the process.
Hmmm, my whiskers sense impending law suits.
Posted by maxthecat at December 10, 2004 10:08 AM
http://www.maxsmewsings.com/mt/archives/2004/12/desktop_search_war_begins_next_week.php