Google And Its OneBox Roil Search World

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April 21, 2006 (11:30 AM EDT)

By W. David Gardner , TechWeb Technology News

As the movers, shakers, and thinkers of the search industry convene in Boston this Sunday for the start of the 11th annual Search Engine Meeting, the thunder at what has traditionally been a quasi-academic think-in is threatened to be stolen by -- what else? -- Google.

The OneBox announcement this week by the search colossus coupled with reports that eBay is talking with Microsoft and Yahoo about teaming up to combat Google's momentum dominated pre-conference chatter.

"They better do something and they better be quick," said Steve Arnold, managing director of Arnold IT.com, in an interview Friday. He referred to a report in Friday's Wall Street Journal that eBay has contacted Microsoft and Yahoo about their mutual Google problem. Arnold, a professional Google watcher who has written a book on the search giant has had hands-on use of the OneBox and he says it could rock segments of the IT industry when it catches on.

"It may look like a digital vegamatic but it brings it all together," Arnold said, adding that the OneBox can eliminate the ubiquitous IT analyst who has to provide code for use with applications from firms including Cognos, Cisco, SAS, Oracle, NetSuite, Employease and Salesforce. Traditionally many enterprise IT functions have required analysts to "code up applications," he observed.

With the IT analyst bottleneck removed, as is likely in many OneBox applications, Arnold noted that results and answers to important business questions can be retrieved in seconds rather than in days or weeks

"The OneBox bandwagon will begin moving slowly," said Arnold. "Then eventually Microsoft will have to respond. About $18 billion of Microsoft revenue is at risk." Arnold will give a seminar on Google Sunday at the Search Engine Meeting.

The keynote speaker Monday is Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google' enterprise business. Harry Collier, managing director of the conference, said he expects Girouard to reveal additional details about the OneBox, but he said the rank and file attendees at the conference tend to remain interested in the cutting edge developments in search.

Topics will range from the latest in speech and image searching to mobile searching and deep data mining.