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.
“they were in this game really early”
This is usually stated as a boast but I look at it negatively: if it had any value, why couldn’t you market it?
If desktop software is such a big, important deal and its such an accomplishment for the big players to rush products out the door, how did the two guys at LookoutSoft create the best product which was released first?
Here is a link to a desktop search matrix:
http://www.goebelgroup.com/desktopmatrix.com
It can be used to compare the desktop search tools that are on the market.