There has been plenty written about the Google Enterprise Search products and their possible competition with Microsoft SharePoint Search technologies and I recently had the need to advise someone on which would suit them best.

Obviously, given this is a SharePoint Blog and I'm pro SharePoint this post is not going to be particularly un-biased, but here goes...

I think there are two questions that need answers up front:

Do you already have licenses for MOSS?

If the organisation in question already has licenses for MOSS via Software Assurance, Open License etc then it's a bit of a no-brainer because they get MOSS Search functionality for free!

Is it really only about Search?

Especially relevant if they already have some version of SharePoint, because they are already getting value out of the collaboration and content management features so going MOSS is probably a natural progression anyway. If they don't have SharePoint, then consider this - it's great to be able to search for stuff, but if the users don't attach relevant meta-data to the 'stuff' then the search becomes a full-text kind of thing (although SharePoint does a pretty good job of this anyway, see below). So getting people to put their documents into SharePoint and enforcing meta-data capture at the same time is only going to improve the relevency of results! All that on top of the fact that you get the collaboration, workflow, content management OOB too!

Now, if they really only want Search and you can't let the price speak for itself and lets be honest, there are going to be situations where it's a tough sell because the pricing models/number of documents/hardware costs/support can make it complex, what can you say? Here's a bit of a start on that conversation, with the usual caveat - these points were compiled by me after some research and discussions with 'they shall not be named, but know their stuff, and know who they are'!

Relevance

SharePoint relevance has had a big overhaul since Portal Server 2003. There have been all kinds of work done on making sure that the most relevant results appear at the top of your search results and there are also things you can do to tune this relevance - a whole posts worth really ;-)

Although Google other offerings might be excellent at indexing and searching web content how well does this translate in the organisation? Bear in mind that things like linked documents, page rankings and referrals don't really translate to your latest PowerPoint presentation or HR's policy and procedures manual in Word. The fact of the matter is that most of the things you are interested in finding in your organisation are files that Microsoft knows pretty well. So if you're looking for someone who knows how to find the most relevant documents in the Enterprise you can be pretty sure it is Microsoft - and you can be sure they will be making this a priority.

The SharePoint indexer does a lot of cool stuff when it crawls files like looking at the document properties and headings in document to improve their ranking. For example, a document on Policies will have a higher ranking if the Subject, Keywords and Category properties are filled in and the content of the document contains Headings with relevant words or phrases in them. I belive the short answer is that the SharePoint algorithms for relevance are just better suited to the types of content you find in the average organisation.

Document Types

While Google and others do support a huge range of document types, it's not clear to me that they have such a vibrant third party network providing indexer plugins to support custom file formats. There are plenty of file formats supported out of the box for SharePoint and any number available from places such as the iFilterShop. And, if you can't find one and you like writing C code, you can write your own - or get someone to do it somewhere very cheaply!

People Search

This may not be relevant for small organisation, but for large or geographically diverse organisations, could be the tipping point. Imagine searching for somethig like, hmmm, SharePoint Search and getting not only whitepapers and blog entries but also the details of people in your organisation who are experts in the subject. And, assuming you have presence enabled (and ideally of course Live Communication Server) clicking on their name and initiating an IM chat! This functionality is built into MOSS and will only be getting better and richer in the coming years.

Structured Data

There is a lot of information hidden away in back end systems that is relevant when searching too. While it is useful to be able to search documentation about your products, it's also useful to be able to return details about pricing and other structured data without having to re-publish it into 'searchable content', such as web pages. Using MOSS and the BDC you can search directly into any backend data source that can be accessed via a connection string or web service and return data as part of search results.

Security

This one is a bit unclear to me at present, because there was a time when certain non SharePoint searches did not have a good story to tell here. It was necessary if you had complex (meaning pretty much any) security you needed to configure multiple search frontends and content sources to cope. I'm not so sure this is the case any more as I have recently seen advertising suggesting that document level security is now supported in these products although the FAQ on this subject is a little unclear...

Customization

I'm certainly not an expert on customization on any platform other then SharePoint, so I can only speak from experience there, but the customization story is VERY good. Custom UI using Web Parts (which I do know quite a lot about!), custom results using XSL, custom query using additional properties, custom tabs for different types of search or scoping. The major benefit is that because Search is an integrated part of SharePoint as a whole, it can be leveraged for specific applications or requirements, for example, a custom search web part for a specific type of content or user process. And if you don't like the Advanced Search in SharePoint, you can simple write your own and remove the standard OOB web part. You can create custom advanced searching in Google, but it requires a new search web page, rather than modification/removal of the OOB page.

Depth

SharePoint Search is not a shallow one product story, it is based on the same technologies that Desktop Search, SQL Search and Live Search are based on. Its one that spans multiple levels of content and can be accessed from multiple points, ie. Internet Explorer search, Desktop Search, Office etc... 

Future

It's pretty clear that neither of the big players in the Enterprise Search space are going to be slacking off any time soon, which can only be good for everyone - competition and all that! However, given that there are some very nice things in the pipeline around SharePoint Search and Microsoft is committed to this space (and we all know how determined they are when they want to be!), SharePoint is the place to be.

The biggest things that I believe Google does have is a very strong brand in the Search space. On top of that they have done a great job of marketing their offerings as a very simple 'drop in and go' solution to Enterprise Search.

However, when you look closely at the the fact that SharePoint provides the Search functionality (and superior relevancy for Enterprise content) plus all the other OOB functionality and what is actually required to make the Google products perform well in an organisation such as configuring security, UI and integration with an organisations environment, it's not so simple. Its sort of like making a cake from pre-packaged cake mix because it seemed easier and then finding that the one your friend made from scratch took the same amount of time, cost the same, but is in a cool shape and has icing!  

According to IDC (Content Technologies Study 2004-2005), workers spend 9.5 hours per week searching. That's a lot of time and money right there and really relegates the question of cost firmly into the 'How can you afford not to?' arena!

I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there who have strong (and probably differing opinions) about all this and I'd be happy to hear any comments people have to make - especially any Google experts who are willing to admit they subscribe to SharePoint Blogs!  

Note - My opinions do not reflect those of my blog host, SharePoint Experts.