Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that it will offer around $1.2 billion for Norwegian software company Fast Search & Transfer in an attempt to expand its search software business.
WOW, congrats to Mr. Lervik and the crew. I remember moderating the Fast/AllTheWeb Forum [webmasterworld.com] here at WebmasterWorld years ago and boy does things change. I bet if you asked the guys in Norway back then if they would ever be bought up by Microsoft, they would have shaken their heads and chased you out of their office.
However I guess in todays fast changing search world, $1.2 billion is a bit interesting :)
mikedee
1:44 pm on Jan 8, 2008 (gmt 0)
1.6% of Facebook - $260 Million All of Fast - 1.2 Billion
F**king killing Google - Priceless
drall
1:51 pm on Jan 8, 2008 (gmt 0)
Big G is now fully in the crosshairs of MS, you can see it in everything MS is doing lately.
I wonder if there soon to be released adsense offering will have 100% payout just to take large publishers away from Google?
np2003
2:03 pm on Jan 8, 2008 (gmt 0)
I think this is great.
FAST is a good engine, its fast and indexes alot.
I use them for backlink research and I've found them much more comprehensive than all the other engines...
Lets hope things get shaken up abit
starec
2:27 pm on Jan 8, 2008 (gmt 0)
That's indeed a great news for fast search.
1.2b is an awful lot of money; especially since Fast has never fulfilled once frequent hope (speaking for those of us that were around when it started) that it would evolve into a really relevant global search player.
goodroi
2:45 pm on Jan 8, 2008 (gmt 0)
i thought fast did realize their hope of being a global search player that is as a global enterprise search player. it seemed fast was more interested in developing the technology and not in becoming a destination itself. mighty impressive client list [fastsearch.com...]
centime
3:50 pm on Jan 8, 2008 (gmt 0)
interesting,
The URL above indicates that part off the fast platform is built on
asp.net, a microsoft technology
aleksl
4:45 pm on Jan 8, 2008 (gmt 0)
starec: 1.2b is an awful lot of money
Not for Microsoft it isn't. It's a 1 month profit (no, not "revenue", profit).
Everything's relative.
This is getting more interesting by the day. But I doubt it'll shake Google's position as consumer's SE of choice. I think M$ is going for corporate clients, which it always does.
jmccormac
6:17 pm on Jan 8, 2008 (gmt 0)
Fast was always better than the junk that Microsoft cobbled together. While Microsoft researchers wibbled about the Semantic Web and other such guff, Fast was doing good things. Now Microsoft has serious search engine capability rather than the mickey mouse effort it has had up until now. This really changes the dynamics of the search business (if MSFT does not screw up this by trying to apply MSFT moronicism to Fast search.)
Regards...jmcc
Reno
7:17 pm on Jan 8, 2008 (gmt 0)
Now Microsoft has serious search engine capability rather than the mickey mouse effort it has had up until now.
Amen to that ... oh how I hope your prediction holds true.
..........................
BillyS
9:26 pm on Jan 8, 2008 (gmt 0)
As martinibuster correctly points out this purchase was for Enterprise search, not web. So don't be looking for web improvement with this one. This is all about SharePoint.
MrSparkle
5:24 am on Jan 25, 2008 (gmt 0)
I used fast for a while at work, its holding it pretty well and amazing amount of options to explore, really glad to see MS is really digging in for the search engine war they are lagging years behind.
bill
8:30 am on Jan 25, 2008 (gmt 0)
As BillyS and martinibuster pointed out, the article indicates that this is for Enterprise search, not MSN or Live search. This technology that MS bought will be helping on the back-end of the big corporate networks.
