SharePoint and FAST

In the next 12 months you could see the search market significantly change. You may say it is already changing and you’ll be right. I see Yahoo usage reducing further. They may even stop developing search. Microsoft will get more than a foot in the door with regards of Enterprise Search. With their acquisition of FAST I thought it would take 2 years before we saw anything useful from them. However they have just announced (http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/02/10/microsoft-unveils-new-enterprise-search-road-map.aspx) that SharePoint vNext will have “high-end search capabilities of FAST ESP”. WOW

What I want now is Microsoft to acknowledge those of us who have a real interest in metadata, search, taxonomies, etc and release an exam. They hinted here https://www.quickstartmicrosoftsearch.com/login/signin.aspx there would be one but so far no sign of it.

Oh and I shouldn’t talk about search without mentioning Google. Yes they are the leaders of search but they don’t have the whole package.