Yahoo and X1 Join Forces on Desktop Search

InfoWorld has an article today about Yahoo's plans to release a desktop search tool using X1 search technology.  It will allow searching through personal files as well as the web (via Yahoo's own search engine). Future versions will include searching Yahoo's email and instant messaging services.

I think X1 is a good product that looks to get even better with the next version (you can test-drive the current beta to see what's coming at www.x1.com).  How much of those features ends up in Yahoo's desktop search tool will be very interesting to see.  Hopefully, the Yahoo version won't be hopelessly neutered.

Certainly, a free Yahoo-branded version of their product would address one concern: that X1 is priced too high ($74.95) for the current market.  I've been suggesting dropping their price in half would be a good start -- but free would really level the playing field.

As usual, Amit Agarwal immediately had an insightful post on Yahoo and X1. 

One thing that caught my eye in his post was the mention of separating desktop and web results:

"Both Yahoo and X1 contend it makes sense to maintain a dividing line between hard-drive search and Web search because one quest focuses on recovering old information while the other strives to discover new information."

I couldn't agree more.  These tend to be two separate tasks for me -- one retrieval, one research -- and combining them isn't typically useful (any more than if I'm looking through my drawer for blue socks and kept running across advertisements for blue socks or articles about how blue socks and brown pants don't go together...well, actually that last might be helpful <g>).

However, I expect there will always be pressure to blur or eliminate that separation for many desktop search vendors because their revenue model depends on connecting users to commercial information on the web.  I wrote a few days ago about this.

I said that X1 could afford to break this model, because unlike competitors, it had a simpler revenue model: selling software.  We'll see if Yahoo tries to find a way to make money on its search tool through advertising, or if it is used primarily to strengthen brand loyalty for Yahoo's other services (search, email, IM).

There sure has been a lot of activity in the desktop search market recently, including another update to Copernic Desktop Search with performance and UI improvements and new products coming soon from companies like Ask Jeeves and Microsoft. InfoWorld has more details in an article title "Desktop Search Avalance Set to Hit."