Autonomy searching for a fight
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Unfazed by market consolidation, enterprise search vendor belittles Google's appliance
In 2006, its target was bitter search rival Fast Search and Transfer (FAST). When newspapers in FAST’s native Norway revealed that questions had been raised surrounding its accounting practices, Autonomy was keen to ensure that the world’s IT press had copies of the relevant articles.
That sparring partner has now joined forces with a much stronger adversary: in January, Microsoft announced its intentions to acquire FAST for $1.2 billion (see M&A).
Given Autonomy’s bruiser credentials, it should come as no surprise to find out that the company has been taking swipes at other competitors. This time, the rival in its sights is Internet search titan Google.
One of Google’s official enterprise search blogs details the accusations made against it. Nitin Mangtani, lead product manager for Google’s Search Appliance, catalogued the charges he says Autonomy had spread in a White Paper – namely that the appliance does not index all of a company’s critical content and that its security features are not enterprise class.
Unsurprisingly, Mangtani is quick to dismiss these assertions. “On the contrary, the Google Search Appliance was designed to search all critical content in the enterprise,” he maintains, and it “provides two levels of security”.
But the most remarkable point about this spat is how difficult it is to find the offending document.
Using Google to search Autonomy.com for the terms “Google Search Appliance” produces no results. Autonomy’s IDOL7-branded search tool on its website produces more results – over 300 – but, seemingly, none relevant. Indeed, had Mangtani not drawn attention to the claims, they would have gone unnoticed.
