CHICAGO — Ask Jeeves entered the desktop
search competition with a beta version of its own service that scours users’ computers.
Ask Jeeves Desktop Search lets users find Microsoft Word, Excel and
PowerPoint documents, as well as Outlook e-mail messages; simple text files;
and image, music and video files on their computers.
With Ask Jeeves’ iteration, users can narrow
searches by document types and sort results by a variety of parameters.
They can define how much of the computer the tool should index, as well
as the speed at which they want it indexed.
Search results are returned in a two-panel interface that displays
previews. The tool also adds a search box to Windows dialog boxes, such
as Insert Attachment or File/Open.
The company intends on its desktop search tool to complement its MyJeeves personal search service, which it released in September.
Jim Lanzone, senior vice president of search properties at Ask Jeeves,
said the desktop product is another step in the Emeryville, Calif.-based
company’s personalization strategy.
The release comes amid a flurry of other desktop search news.
MSN announced its own desktop tool, and Yahoo
promised to deliver one in 2005. Google kicked off the
race with its release of a beta desktop search tool in October. Terra Lycos
released a free browser toolbar that includes desktop
search in March 2004.
The ability to find multiple file formats is a point of differentiation
for the desktop search products.
Microsoft’s desktop can find Outlook contacts or calendar files, Microsoft
Office, Windows Media audio and MP3 files; users can add PDF search with an Adobe plug-in.
Yahoo claimed its tool, which is still under
development, would find photos, music files and PDFs, as well as Office and
e-mail files.
Google can find Microsoft Office files, Web sites that have been
accessed via Internet Explorer and AOL Instant Messenger chats. It does not
yet find PDF or media files, although Google has promised to enable PDF searches.
Google desktop search is the only free tool that works independently of Microsoft’s IE
browser. Google is considered an open source friendly technology company,
and there’s speculation that it may
build its own browser
using Mozilla technology.
“They’re all going for different feature sets,” said Chris Sherman,
associate editor of Search Engine Watch, at the Search Engine Strategies trade show here. “They’re watching to see which ones people use and like. We’re seeing true innovation, which is nice.”
Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Strategies and this Web site are owned by Jupitermedia Corp.