"Finding information quickly in business is more than a convenience - it's a necessity," said Dave Girouard, general manager of Google's enterprise business as Google today announced Google Desktop Search for Enterprise, a free downloadable application enabling companies to provide employees with the ability to search for information on their computers "with the same quality experience they've come to expect from Google.com."

"With the addition of Google Desktop Search for Enterprise, businesses of all sizes can offer their employees one-stop Google search for the desktop, intranet, or web," Girouard continued.

Through a collaborative effort between Google and IBM, the new Google Desktop Search for Enterprise provides simple, fast search across Lotus Notes messages.

"E-mail has evolved beyond messaging into a tool where people manage their activities and store critical business information," said Ken Bisconti, vice president of Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software, IBM. "With Google Desktop Search for the Enterprise, we are giving more than 118 million Lotus Notes users greater flexibility in searching for critical business information stored on their desktop."

Based on Google's popular desktop search application for consumers, Google Desktop Search for Enterprise adds new enterprise-level security, configuration and deployment controls, as well as the ability to search the full text of IBM Lotus Notes messages.

In addition to Lotus Notes, Google Desktop Search is the first desktop search tool to access the full text of a user's web page history and the only one to search AOL instant messages. Google works with most popular email clients, most popular file types (including text, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, MP3, image, audio, and video files) and web pages viewed using popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape).

Integration with Google Search Appliance Google Desktop Search for Enterprise also offers full integration with the Google Search Appliance and Google Mini to deliver search results and convenient one-stop-searching from the desktop, intranet and Google.com.

Google Desktop Search for Enterprise is free and available at http://desktop.google.com/enterprise. An optional premium support package is available, which includes access to information and assistance from Google experts, guaranteed response time on requests, and escalation for critical issues.