redzone - 4:35 pm on Nov 14, 2002 (gmt 0)

[vcall.com...]

Above is the link to the Audio WebCast Announcement by Verity, that occured yesterday.

Summation:

Inktomi will remain responsible for the UltraSeek development for Verity.

Approx. 40 Inktomi employees will move across to Verity. The majority will be from Ink's "inside" sales force, and CS group for Enterprise Search.

Verity will assume financial/resource obligations for CS of the Enterprise Search Services, of which 1600 of the 2500+ have active quarterly subscriptions.

In addition to the UltraSeek Search product, Verity also get's the Quiver Classification technology, and Ink's XML ToolKit technology.

Verity has plans to merge the UltraSeek product into their "higher" end K1/K2 search technology products, but is going to move slowly, as to not disrupt current sales efforts.

I think it's a "win/win" for both entities. Ink gets the cash, reduces manpower expenses, and eliminates future financial obligations in the CS area, where they have already received support revenues. Verity get's a proven search product. Though lower end, compared to their K1/K2 platforms, which focus on high end specialty file integration, such as PDF/Notes/etc., Verity can cross sell to both existing customer bases. I think I heard them mention Verity has approx. 1600 installations of their product base.

I for one, am happy to see Inktomi focus on Web Search. Inktomi has proven before they can be a strong player in the market, as they don't market a "stand alone" portal, similar to FAST. Google needs competition, for the entire market to remain healthy, and I think portals are going to realize, that possibly, it doesn't make sense to serve up the same results that the majority of the market is serving.
We're a funny breed here in the US.. If everybody drove a Lexus, we would lose sight of what a great car it is. Inktomi's job in the near future is to re-solidify themselves as a major presence in the US market place for Web Search. Major portal deals drive "pay for inclusion" income up. And that is the major hurdle.

Inktomi should possibly look to their strongest relationship, MSN. If they could convice MSN to eliminate the LS directory results, or signifigantly reduce the # of LS results that are displayed, the search numbers would increase dramatically. Secondly, they may be able to convince Yahoo, to follow through on Yahoo's statement about possibly integrating results from multiple search providers. This would make Yahoo's index completely unique, from any other portal. Similar to Metacrawler.com, but quality search results intertwined, rather than segregated results from PPC engines... Thoughts?