Microsoft buying search provider

With the technology world's attention focused on Las Vegas this week, Microsoft looked to Norway for making big news with the announcement Tuesday that the company is acquiring Fast Search & Transfer, a business-search provider.

The $1.2 billion offer has been approved by the Fast Search board, as well as two major institutional shareholders that control more than a third of the Oslo company. Microsoft expects the deal to close in the second quarter.

"Enterprise search is becoming an indispensable tool to businesses of all sizes, helping people find, use and share critical business information quickly," Microsoft Business Division President Jeff Raikes said in a statement. " ... The combination of Microsoft and Fast gives customers a new choice: a single vendor with solutions that span the full range of customer needs."

Fast Chief Executive John Lervik said becoming part of Microsoft "gives Fast an exciting way to spread our cutting-edge search technologies and innovations to more and more organizations across the world."

As opposed to the broad Internet searching that people do dozens of times a day, enterprise search generally consists of employees looking for information within their company and its network of partners, be it on internal Web sites, databases or other sources.

It can also be a way for a company's customers to interact with the business.

"This is an area of search where there's no clear winner, so this is a way for Microsoft to hit competitors where they ain't," said Charles Di Bona, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, who advises buying Microsoft shares.

"You're seeing Microsoft push into this area hard, and it's very complementary to what they do in server software and search," he said.

In a research note Tuesday, Technology Business Review analyst Allan Krans contended Fast Search won't add a lot of luster to Microsoft's balance sheet. The deal appears to be more about acquiring the technology and fending off competition.

Other enterprise-search providers include Autonomy and Endeca. But Krans and other analysts think Microsoft sees the specter of search giant Google heading toward the enterprise.

Benjamin J. Romano: 206-464-2149 or bromano@seattletimes.com.

Material from The Associated Press and Bloomberg News is included in this report.