According to Google (I’m quoting from a marketing piece)

• “An estimated 40% of the world’s information resides behind a firewall.” Sounds reasonable to me, but so what?
• Research has shown that knowledge workers can spend up to 25% of their work time just looking for information. Well I’m a knowledge worker of a kind and I spend an awful lot of time looking for information, but that’s because I’m a researcher.
• “40% of employees report that they cannot find the information they need to do their jobs.” So either sack them or train them.

Google seems to think it can fix the situation with a single easy-to-use search box that provides access to both internal and external information. To wit:

At Google, we believe in a simple premise: all of the information you need to be productive at work should be available through one search box.

That’s wrong. It’s wrong-headed, it’s misleading and it’s a bad idea. Google is, no-doubt-about-it, a very intelligent company run by very intelligent people. Because it’s done so well out of search it seems to think that search is a solution to many problems for which it is not. It’s said that if the only tool you have is a hammer then you treat everything as if it were a nail. In Google’s case it’s; if you’ve got a really really really good hammer, it’s gotta be possible to use it as a screwdriver, and as a wrench, and as a chisel.

In the supposed white paper I downloaded from Google – it wasn’t a white paper it was a marketing brochure – you know it’s easier to find what you’re looking for if it’s called by the proper name – even a single search box that provides access to everything in the universe at lightning speed is not going to help me if I’m looking for a white paper and all it points me at is marketing brochures – but I digress – in the  supposed white paper I downloaded from Google it explains that its search capability will provide me access, all-from-one-search-box, to:

1. In the Corporate Network: Secure content, Content management data, File shares, CRM, Intranet, Databases, Enterprise applications.
2. On the Desktop: Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Meeting Notes, Emails, IM Chats, Reports.
3. In the “world”: The web, News, Research, Images, Blogs, Products, Print content.

Sounds seriously confusing. But anyway if you want it, all you have to do is buy Google’s Search appliance, install it and provide access to it, to all your employees. Then, hey presto, you have implemented a festering signal/noise problem with the potential to really sap the productivity of your employees and screw up whatever information organization structure your company has adopted.

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