Is MOSS Search better than Google?

 

With SPS 2003, Microsoft has came with nice search feature. Because of its limitations, this functionality is not adapted by many people in the industry. Google, Yahoo and other web sites provides search on internet but so far there is no application exist which provides enterprise search and Microsoft wants to compete Google in enterprise search. With their existing MOSS application Microsoft has incorporated many new search features than Google cannot provide. Here are some off the examples.

 

Customer Business Requirement		Microsoft	Google
1	Customer information presently in other applications like Siebel is not readily available to other end users in a firm	Business data catalog will help users to fetch information from Non-MS applications.	Not supported
2	User is taking more time in searching the relevant information by using Siebel system.	MOSS search which works based on user profile, will provide relevant information very easily.	Search is robust but user relevance is missing.
3	Usage of verity of search tools across organization.	Windows desktop search will help to search user desktop very fast with better user experience (one UI concept).	Google desktop search is a robust application used to search user desktop with HTML UI.
4	Need more collaboration between company management, staff and attorneys.	With MOSS, users can create team sites, blogs, and wikis for collaboration.	Not supported
5	The data the end user needs must be satisfied quickly and within the first ten entries to maximize employee time and user acceptance of the solution	User relevance feature helps to search faster and will satisfy the user search quickly	User relevance search is not supported.
6	Common interface for all users.	With single UI interface, it can be achieved.	Multiple interfaces
7	Utilize existing technologies with little to no custom development	MOSS was developed on ASP.NET 2.0 and it supports API for better extensibility	Not supported
8	Minimum cost to deploy, train, and later to support.	One time cost and better ROI	Most cost and will need to pay once in every two years.

 

Even though Google also started creating plug-ins for SAP, Siebel and other applications to provide enterprise search functionality. It is very difficult to implement data security, search results with user context, better user experience and there is also huge cost associated. As of now, MOSS is much better than Google in enterprise search.