August 12, 2003

Google, the No. 1 Web search engine in the United States, on Tuesday announced eight customers for its enterprise search appliance that was launched early last year and has since been somewhat shrouded in mystery.

The company, seen by many in financial circles as an ideal candidate for an initial public offering, said pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., the U.S. Army and the city of San Diego are among the new paying users of its enterprise search appliance. Google's search appliance is a hardware and software product that helps companies and organizations search for products and information within corporate intranets and Web sites.

The company's other publicly announced customers are Xerox Corp., Hitachi Data Systems, Nextel Communications Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and Discovery Communications. Privately held Google, based in Mountain View, California, did not release revenues or exact customer counts for its search appliance. It previously has said that hundreds of paying customers use the product.

While Google is best known for its Web search technology, industry sources said the company reaps the lion's share of revenues from search-related advertising services. The company's long-awaited announcement of several high-profile search appliance users "is public confirmation that they are in fact committed to the (enterprise) space," said Jupiter Research analyst Matthew Berk.

Analysts called Google's move contrarian, given that the search sector has undergone a major decoupling over the last 12 months. Inktomi Corp. a formerly high-flying search technology company, sold its consumer Web-search business to Yahoo Inc. and its enterprise search business to Verity Inc. Ask Jeeves Inc., a key Google Internet search rival, sold its enterprise search business to Kanisa Inc.

Future Yahoo merger partner Overture Services Inc. bought search provider AltaVista. Overture kept AltaVista's consumer search business but sold its enterprise business to Norway's Fast Search & Transfer. "Google is the only (company) left playing in both markets. Long-term, we believe if you're going to be successful in enterprise search you have to know how consumers search," said Berk, who noted that Google is also marketing its product as easier and cheaper to use than those offered by competitors.

On other fronts, the company said it would roll out a new calculator function on Google.com on Tuesday. Marissa Mayer, director of consumer Web products, said the calculator can solve math problems, convert miles to kilometers or answer such questions as "What is the speed of light?" Google also will release the tested version of its new toolbar, which hangs under the one provided by Microsoft's Internet Explorer and allows users to do such things as search Web sites, block pop-up ads or automatically fill in online forms.

Source: Boston Business.com

        

We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. The keywords you think are the best may be totally different than the ones recommended by WordTracker. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.