A couple of follow-up observations, to better respond:

As mentioned during the presentation, one point of the slide was to draw attention to The Noisy Channel, a very search geeky, characteristically Google-contrary, but always interesting, worthwhile blog helmed by Daniel Tunkelang, chief scientist at Endeca, a high-end direct competitor with Google in the enterprise market. Agree or not, there is a lot to learn about search from The Noisy Channel. It is one of my must-reads.

The title of Daniel Tunkelang’s highlighted post derives directly from Chris Sherman’s pithy, two-page online article with the same name, Why Enterprise Search Will Never Be Google-y (from the Enterprise Search Sourcebook 2008.) The gist of Daniel’s post and Chris’ article that prompted it is this: The “simple search” or “known item” search we all commonly associate with Google (the noun and the verb) short changes what enterprise search can or should be for those who use it. The tension between these two enterprise search models is why I highlighted these two paragraphs from Daniel’s post:

The upshot? There is no question that Google is raising the bar for simple search in the enterprise. I wouldn’t recommend that anyone try to compete with the GSA on its turf.

But information needs in the enterprise go far beyond known-item search, What enterprises want when they ask for “enterprise search” is not just a search box, but an interactive tool that helps them (or their customers) work through the process of articulating and fulfilling their information needs, for tasks as diverse as customer segmentation, knowledge management, and e-discovery.

The irony here is that, contrary to the entertainingly provocative “never will be Google-y” in the title, for some market segments enterprise search is already Google-y. In some respects, Daniel’s post and Chris’ article both actually make the case for, not against, the Google enterprise model, which is to say that for some segments of the enterprise market Google and its search appliance may very well be the way to go. Our experience is that it is a particularly viable way for a non-profit legal services program.

Why do I say that? Even assuming arguendo that Google Search Appliance (GSA) improvements “should be seen in the context of state of the art,” for many organizations this state-of-the-art is a rarified and unobtainable reality. One has to wonder, after costing out a solution with one of the three major market leaders in enterprise search (Autonomy, Endeca and FAST), whether a Google box doesn’t look pretty damn good and pretty damn doable, given what it does. As Daniel himself observes, “I wouldn’t recommend that anyone try to compete with the GSA on its turf.” Is that turf a real solution for some market segments? While Chris invokes a clever if overstated “oil and water” metaphor about the differences between web and enterprise search, he follows it by suggesting the exact opposite: Some enterprise search segments are well served by the Google paradigm, notably including “intranet search” –

Many organizations are encouraging employees to communicate internally via blogs, or to participate in community-based knowledge repositories such as internal wikis. This is one area where there is a genuine parallel between enterprise information systems and web content, and Google excels at understanding and surfacing this type of content.

Tell me about it.

Other posts of possible interest...

• Findability and the Google search paradigm
• Findability slides and video from 2010 TIG conference
• Revised: What the LSNC Shared Portal now looks like
• Demo of search results at the project test portal