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Microsoft COO Warns Google Away From Corp Search
Forbes is reporting on comments made by Microsoft COO Kevin Turner, concerning the corporate search business. At a company conference in Boston, Turner referred to the enterprise search business as 'our house', and warned Google to stay out. From the article: "Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off our plate, because that is what they are intending to do ... Enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business"
Google's corporate search appliance has been around for how many years? And since when did Microsoft have a corporate search program anyway?
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I normally try to avoid the Slashdot groupthink ("Apple good! M$ bad! blah blah blah") but this is one instance where ridicule is warranted.
Microsoft has NEVER owned the enterprise search space. They don't have a single corporate appliance to help search large volumes. Their search in Exchange is downright disgraceful. Personally, I won't touch their indexing service (about a month after it came out in Windows 2000, they found security holes with it. Thanks but no thanks).
If they're talking about local search, things are just as bad. Their puppy mascot takes forever to find files, and if a file is removed or deleted from the search window, explorer.exe gets freaked out and sometimes puts up an error message.
It says volumes that 3rd-party companies have an easier time finding files on Microsoft volumes than MS's own tools. I personally use Google desktop. While it can take forever to load, it finds files and emails lightning quick. If you download it, be sure to try searching in email (both using Outlook's search and Google's toolbar) -- you'll be amazed at the difference.
MS has to produce something, anything, that says their serious about search. Windows Vista is their one shot, and it's looking pretty bad. It does something from a UI standpoint I find kind of ludicrous: you open the Start Menu, type a few letters to find a program and, if it can't find it, it looks for files and then searches the web through MSN. Huh? MS put it in the Programs menu -- it should search for programs. For reference, if you use the Spotlight search feature on Mac within System Preferences, it searches just that -- System Preferences. It doesn't look for files or search the web.
The comment wasn't out of line, but it provides insight into the microsoft mentality. Instead of stating that they have a superior product, with valid points as to why it is superior, they just tell google to get out of their way. The fact is that microsoft is egotistical and doesn't like competition what-so-ever, and this statement proves it.
I got nothin'
At the big company I work for, Google search powers the intranet seach engine. On the other hand, almost all of the new websites being set up are done in Sharepoint. Due to export laws, just about everything has to be password protected on a per-user basis, to be sure that no unreviewed technical information (=pretty much everything) gets inadvertantly passed on to foreign national employees (everyone with an H1B visa or even US citizen workers who work for subsidiaries based in foreign countries).
So, pretty much, our internal Google search is useless for finding any useful information, because all of the most active stuff is closed away in Sharepoint. So the google search appliance is at a disadvantage until it can support user / group ACLs and stuff.
Google could handily beat MS at enterprise search once they beat them at groupware... which shouldn't be too hard, save for MS's tight sharepoint integration with Exchange/Outlook. Fortunately, Google appears to be advancing on all these fronts, so they have their work cut out for them. But in the mean time, it looks like the MS exec has a point.