IBM to use Google desktop search deep inside firms

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IBM and Google Inc. are collaborating to make it easier for office workers not only to search for local documents and personal e-mail but to delve deep into corporate databases, the companies said on Friday.

IBM is linking up its OmniFind corporate search system with Google's free desktop search for business to make it easier for users to locate information throughout an organisation that is often locked up in many separate systems.

"Getting these two products together makes sense for both of us," David Girouard, general manager of Google's enterprise business unit. "If you want to have a good corporate search product, you have to have desktop search," he said.

Google wins IBM's endorsement among corporate technical managers for its desktop search product and IBM gives corporate information workers an already popular entry point into back-office databases through Google's search.

Searchable data ranges from e-mail to computer files to blog postings to corporate repositories of data, images, audio or video, Prial said. Much of this is not available using public Web search tools. Typically, it is hard to reach inside a company except by trawling through many different programs.

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