Fast selected to power Goo.ne.jp multimedia search

One more interesting deal for the Fast team

[Tor]

Press release [fastsearch.com]

[heini]

So the multimedia search at Goo will be powered by Fast, the webpages search however seems to remain Goo's own index.
Interesting however is Goo also has a partnership with Overture. So the question is who has made the deal here, Fast and Goo, or OV as Fast websearch's new owner and Goo.

[heini]

Update: Fast Multimedia Search has been sold as part of the Internet search divison to OV, but, as a Fast rep told us, until the deal is officially closed with Overture (expected sometime in April), FAST is still conducting business as usual with that division,
So it is a Fast deal, which will be taken over with the new ownership.
Thanks, Fast.

[Rumbas]

Goo is pretty big in terms of reach, right?

Another nice scalp for FAST I suppose.

[bill]

Goo search is still powered by Inktomi, and they crawl the web with their own spiders. FAST will just be powering the multimedia search it seems. Broadband is extremely widespread and affordable in Japan now, and Goo is hoping to promote access to more content now. The Goo portal is quite extensive and has many specialty areas.

I've said it before, FAST has great Japanese search results, but still doesn't have a Japanese interface on ATW, and doesn't provide primary results to any of the big Japanese SEs. That's unfortunate. Maybe this foot into Goo will provide some more clout for the FAST search results here.

One thing new I did pick up from this PR was that FAST has a sales rep in Japan. I wonder who they're selling to ;) They're probably targeting the corporate market.

[heini]

Thanks Bill, wasn't aware Goo is a INK customer.
As to Fast people in Japan, they have a partnership with IBM Japan [fastsearch.com] and hold offices in Japan from which they operate Asia. That's all enterprise search though.