Byrne Tony Byrne

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Google and the future of information management

18-May-2006

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Enterprise Search, Building Business Case, Marketplace at Large, Google Search Appliance

Dave Girouard, General Manager of Google Enterprise, opened AIIM Expo day with an attempt to peer into the future of information management. The keynote started out well enough. Girouard pointed out that experience with consumer applications heavily influences the expectations of business software users. True enough. He also confirmed an important truth that, "application utilization is always the the true measure of its value." Many centrally-imposed enterprise content management installations forget this maxim, become underutilized, and fail to accomplish their objectives. But from there, Girouard launched into an apotheosis for the Google Appliance, declaring: "Search is the human interface into all corporate information." Uh, actually, no. Search is just how you find stuff; after that, knowledge workers have to actually do something with that content. I love the spare Google interface for public web search, but as Enteprise Search Report readers know, getting actionable search results in an enterprise setting is more complicated, and Google doesn't (yet) have compelling solutions for the kinds of highly-contextual, intra-application search that employees require to be effective in their jobs.

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