This little factoid from a Delphi Research study was published in a May issue of Infoworld – it is worth repeating. The Delphi Research survey found that 30% 0f employees spend more than 8 hours per week in search activities – more than a full day per week. 60 percent said they were dissatisfied with the search experience. No wonder File Search Engines is one of the more popular categories at Tucows. And of course as Google has become more popular it has Yahoo, Microsoft and others working double overtime to crack into the Web search market.
As always, the owner of the desktop OS market, Microsoft, is in best position to capitalize on this dissatisfaction with searching. And a new search engine due out in Longhorn will allow for searching of local, on-disk files (the new WinFS filesystem in Longhorn considerably enhances text and file search capabilities on the desktop) as well as on the Web. But Longhorn is still at least 2 years away.
In the meantime, organizations may want to check Googles corporate machine and end users may want to check Nonags freeware, Tucows shareware, and the New Directory for more immediate searching power.