Friday, September 2, 2011

X1 Loses Competitor: Google

Pasadena-based X1 Technologies, the developer of desktop search software, has one less competitor: Google, as Google said Friday that it is shutting down its Google Desktop search software project. X1 had been considered a head-to-head competitor with Google's Desktop although X1 had in recent years focused on the enterprise market rather than the consumer. Google said, in shutting down Google Desktop, that there had been a "huge shift" from local to cloud-based storage and computing, as well as integration of search and gadgets into most modern operating systems. Google's service shuts down on September 14th. X1, which is backed by Idealab, has gone squarely into the enterprise, offering up its tools integrated with products such as Symantec Enterprise Vault and Microsoft SharePoint, and providing electronic discovery and other enterprise features within it software. Google shut down a long list of projects late Friday.

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