X1 based desktop search tool from Yahoo!
Desktop Search, News December 12th, 2004
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Tags: Microsoft
X1 based desktop search tool from Yahoo!
The market existed since a long time with players like dtSearch and Filehand. Microsoft promised big with their WinFS technology on Longhorn. However, it was Google, which brought it to mainstream. Google Desktop Search has managed to get the competition take notice and work on desktop searching for PCs. Microsoft has promised to release their version pretty soon, and Yahoo! have now announced their roadmap.
Yahoo! would be releasing their version of the desktop search tool in January. Unlike Google, they have preferred to stay away from the browser to show the results. The interesting bit is that they are not doing it by reinventing the wheel. They are licensing the technology from a startup known as X1 Technologies.
The company has pioneered searching content on the computers and currently sells their software for USD 74.95. They plan to continue charging businesses for their products while Yahoo! would be giving away their version to be called Yahoo! Desktop Search free.
X1 Technologies claims their application can search through 225 types of file formats. This is a huge advantage Yahoo! could have over Google considering Google Desktop Search currently has limited capabilities with it comes to file formats.
In another interesting piece of news, Ask Jeeves Inc. is also ready with their offering and would be releasing their desktop searching utility next week!
Off the three desktop searching utilities I have personally tried in the last couple of months, I have found Copernic Desktop Search to be quiet good. I cannot wait to test X1 based Yahoo! Desktop Search considering critics rate it quite high.
This news certainly shows what competition could do to a market. Google gave away Picasa free and now Yahoo! would be giving away X1 based search engine free! In the end consumer wins.
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About
Compared to google’s desktop search, X1 is incredibly good.
If Yahoo implements this well and it is free it will be a killer.
X1 is too good a tool. In fact, it is a must-have for the PC. Google’s Desktop Search was a let-down (and was potentially dangerous for multi-user PCs). Can’t wait to test Yahoo’s X1-based search tool.
We follow the desktop search market pretty closely because we offer a desktop content organizer that puts structure around content. We are quite excited to see the search market mature and become mainstream products from the big media sites.
Our strategy is to value add the search tools available to allow saving of searches and to build context around desktop content like grouping information into company, contact, task, home, work based virtual folders. I think that Google’s brand for search may outweigh the value from the Yahoo! licensing. Everyone seems to have heard of the Google search.