Google: Stepping on the Enterprise Search Gas Pedal
July 18, 2008
Richard Martin’s “Pressed by Rivals, Google Accelerates Enterprise Search Efforts” is a revelation. The story appeared on July 17, 2008, and you can read the full text here. (You may see an annoying fly over ad and then be redirected. The wacky url worked for me.)
In my opinion, The most interesting point in the scoop was:
Unifying a single search interface across those varied systems, which often use different protocols and programming languages, has become something of a holy grail.
The religious metaphor is lost on me, but I think Mr. Martin’s point is that search is supposed to make it possible to access data, regardless of its location or format, from one interface.
I agree.
My view is that this is not a search problem and, therefore, the GOOG, Microsoft, and the companies mentioned in the article will not solve this problem with search technology.
The challenge is transformation of data in such a way that new operations are possible. Who wants to search? I want to know where a particular item comes from and how certain I can be that the item is accurate or good enough to use in a decision.
In my opinion, talking about enterprise search is a waste of time. Google is definitely going to deliver, but the solution will not be a search technology. The problem is better resolved in terms of data management. Google has some interesting technology in this practice area, and I discuss it in my new study Beyond Search, published by the Gilbane Group.
Stephen Arnold
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