Posted on: Friday, December 10, 2004

Yahoo gets into offline searching

By Michael Liedtke
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Internet giant Yahoo Inc. is setting out to search computer hard drives with the help of a pioneering startup as it scrambles to catch up with Google Inc. and stay a step ahead of Microsoft Corp.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo announced the expansion yesterday, but is holding off until early January its new tool for searching e-mails and a wide variety of other files stored on Windows-operated computers.

The product, licensed from Pasadena-based X1 Technologies, seeks to make it as quick and easy to find digital information offline as it has become online. "This is the next logical step in search evolution," said Jeff Weiner, who oversees Yahoo's search division. "The ultimate vision is to create a dashboard to help people manage their digital lives."

Yahoo has been widely expected to take this step since Google introduced a hard-drive search tool nearly two months ago. Microsoft's MSN service hopes to introduce a similar product before year's end and Ask Jeeves Inc., which runs several online search engines, plans to unveil its desktop offering next Wednesday.

Better technology for scouring hard drives is seen as an increasingly important complement to online search engines, where advertising has become a major moneymaker. Neither Yahoo nor X1 disclosed financial details of their partnership.

The competitive pressure helped push Yahoo to license an existing product, said Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li. "Some people may pooh-pooh this because Yahoo didn't build it on their own, but this is going to give consumers some really good choices," Li said.