Gary/Search Engine Watch has posted a review of Ask’s new desktop search tool, and reading it reminded me of a conversation I had with Ask’s Jim Lanzone earlier today. Jim was a bit crabby – after all, Ask bought Tukaroo a long time ago and deserves credit for seeing the importance of the space way back then. However, as he pointed out, desktop search is simply one arrow that has to be in every serious search players’ quiver, so it’s not that big a deal that everyone hustled to get on board. He has a point. The torrent of news has all of us atwitter about desktop search, but in the end, it’s simply another necessary building block toward good search services.
And, by the way, I got pinged by the folks at Lycos, who want to remind us all that they were in this game really early….with a HotBot desktop search tool.