Verity makes UltraSeek free, sort of

Wow, this is unexpected. Verity, which makes both the UltraSeek and K2 Enterprise search tools, announced today that they’re making one-year licenses for UltraSeek free for collections of less than 25,000 documents. If you have more than 25,000 documents, you can buy a four-year license for US$75,000; while this sounds expensive as all get-out, it’s considerably cheaper than their original pricing. UltraSeek’s strength is that it’s designed to be an install-and-forget search product that delivers a user experience not dissimilar from Google’s Internet search; Verity is throwing in access to their classification engine and their extension API, both of which used to be extra-cost options. This is an interesting move, and one which I think will help solidify their presence in this space by getting them into some doors they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to cross. The missing piece is still desktop search, where Google and Microsoft have significant leads that Verity will be hard-pressed to match– we’ll have to wait and see what happens.