Company president Martin Bouchard told ComputerWire the Quebec-based firm sees the recent acquisition of Inktomi Corp’s enterprise search business by Verity Inc as a validation of the market for search tools aimed at small firms and departments.
Copernic sells three levels of desktop meta-search application aimed at individual users. The software can be used to search over 1,000 web search engines, as well as manage, filter, sort and track the results of those searches.
The company introduced its enterprise-level software February this year and is currently on version 1.1. Copernic Empower added the ability to search behind-the-firewall corporate data found on file servers, email servers and internal web servers.
Bouchard said the company currently has about 12 corporate customers in Europe and North America. The enterprise software sells for about $12,000, while the downloadable desktop versions starts as freeware and go up to $80 for the Professional edition.
Bouchard said about 24 million people have downloaded Copernic in its free version, which eschews many of the more advanced features. Much of the company’s revenue comes from the paid-placement links that its meta-search pulls from the various web search engines the company has made deals with.
Source: Computerwire
