This is a few days old, but it’s worth the note whilst channeling some vintage Battelle circa 2004 (without consent in his hiatus, of course) …Microsoft is marking the ground in enterprise search.
“Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off our plate, because that is what they are intending to do.” Microsoft’s Kevin Turner at a company conference.
The “people” that Turner was referring to was Google, and the “food” was corporate search customers…Turner, who joined Microsoft from Wal-Mart Stores 11 months ago, was adamant that corporate search is “our house.” “Enterprise search is our business, it’s our house and Google is not going to take that business,” he told 7,000 delegates in Boston. (From Forbes)
In 2004 Battelle wrote of Enterprise, after some yawning:
When Google goes public, and it seems that this is most certainly a when, rather than an if, it will have to grow. And once it’s hit the plateau of consumer facing businesses, it will turn to the corporate IT market (it’s already focused on the problem and is cranking up that focus). That market is still nascent, and there are buckets of money there (just ask Microsoft or FAST.) Mark my words, boring as it might seem, corporate search will be a big deal.
Whereas MSFT seeks MSN to miraculously overtake googlebot, GOOG aims to release a free beta for every office app. in Microsoft’s toolkit—plus Enterprise. (Isn’t this ripe for parody of ‘I’m a Mac and I’m a PC’ ads?)
Meanwhile, Microsoft announces Vista will allow users to use Google. Why, thank you for the permission and likely avoiding stacking the headlines with another grueling trust lawsuit. …All right then, maybe not.
re microsoft “allowing” google: as I understand it, the news is that MS will allow distributors to make whatever search engine they want the default one in internet explorer… which I thought was their position previously anyhow
regardless, users can still add google/msn/whatever to the search box, this was just about the default one