• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 11, 2005

In an effort to garner feedback, Yahoo! yesterday introduced their desktop search engine in beta. The free download, which scans hard drives for content in saved e-mails, pictures, Web pages, PDF files, and word processing documents, will now compete against existing desktop searches offered by Google, Microsoft, and Ask Jeeves.

Pasadena, Calif.-based X1 Technologies, Inc. provided Yahoo! with the licensed technology. The companies have agreed that X1 will continue to offer their paid service to the enterprise market, while Yahoo! will focus on its consumer base.

Yahoo!'s entrée into the fray was unavoidable, said analyst Niki Scevak at JupiterResearch, due to search players' need to retain users. In poker terms, Scevak considers desktop search mere "table stakes in the search game at the moment." Missing, according to Scevak, is the product differentiation needed to set one search player apart from all the others.

In December, Yahoo! announced that it planned to begin testing desktop search, and said that it would be ready by January.

Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo!'s director of Media Search, described Yahoo!'s new service in broad terms as a "search, find, and use" tool for users. He and his team, said Horowitz, are anticipating a lot of feedback, which they will consider before the next launch.

"The right way to do this is to give users a voice, and also the right control knobs," explained Horowitz, "so they can fit the program to their own needs."

Users can obtain Yahoo!'s software from its system tray icon, or search directly from a toolbar it installs on Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail programs. Initially, users are expected to search via domains--e-mail, attachments, contacts, files, pictures, music, or all.

Yahoo! allows users to sort and refine query results quickly, just by typing a letter or two into one of several linear search boxes, including file size, name and date, and time. Also, Yahoo!'s beta will launch a browser to perform a Web search, because it has not incorporated Web search into the desktop search features.

The company is addressing all security and privacy issues associated with desktop search, Horowitz said. "Beta is about learning from users and determining what type of protective measures people want and are comfortable with," Horowitz said.

Glitches have surfaced since Google launched its own desktop search service in beta in October. In November, a Rice University professor and two graduate students noticed a security flaw in Google's desktop search that allowed outside hackers to access users' hard drives; Google has since fixed the hole.

Yahoo! expects to roll out several updates to the new desktop service, eventually allowing users to search content from chat groups, address books, and instant messaging archives.