Copernic Offers New Desktop Search Tool

September 1, 2004

Copernic Technologies Inc. today announced Copernic Desktop Search™ (CDS™), “The Search Engine For Your PC ™.” Copernic™ has used the experience gained from over 30 million downloads of its Windows-based Web search software to develop CDS, a desktop search product that users are saying is far superior to anything on the market today. With this announcement, Copernic is poised to face Microsoft® and Google™ in the battle for desktop search supremacy.

CDS brings the power of a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use search engine right to your PC and allows you to instantly search files, e-mails, and e-mail attachments stored anywhere on your PC hard drive. Using a streamlined, intuitive user interface, CDS executes sub-second searching of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, Acrobat PDF's, all popular music, picture and video formats, contacts, browser history, and favorites. CDS features a seamlessly integrated pre-viewer that instantly provides you with a view of the file or email you’re looking for. The pre-viewer highlights all search terms and automatically scrolls to the first use of these terms in a document, eliminating the frustration of having to sort through endless text to pinpoint the words you are searching for.

“Google understands search. Microsoft understands software. Copernic understands both, and has eight years of experience in building extremely powerful yet incredibly easy-to-use search software,” said David M. Burns, CEO of Copernic. “Desktop search can be complex, but we took the time to analyze the trade-offs and get it right. We’ve created a clean, friendly, well- tested product that won't intimidate or confuse new users, and that doesn't contain extraneous bells and whistles. By focusing on the core search experience, Copernic has produced a product, CDS, that will quickly become the desktop search standard against which all others are judged.”

In July 2004, Microsoft Microsoft vice president Yusuf Mehdie demonstrated a new search engine that seeks out information beyond the Web and onto the hard drive. Mehdie showed off a prototype of the technology that was integrated into the MSN Toolbar add-on for Internet Explorer.

Google is also preparing to introduce a powerful file and text software tool for locating information stored on personal computers, a move which would enable it to compete with software giant Microsoft.

Desktop Search the Way it Should Be
With six separate technology patents pending, CDS represents the state of the art in desktop search design. Although it has plenty of engineering horsepower hiding quietly under its hood, CDS has been designed primarily for desktop search beginners, who will appreciate the care, thought, and hundreds of hours that have gone into the simplified user interface design. Advanced users will want to check out the wide array of customizable search features.

Fast – Users can easily search their entire hard drives in less than a second to pinpoint the right file, e-mail, music or pictures.
Fresh – New and updated files, and newly-arriving e-mails, are indexed the instant they arrive on the user's hard drive.
Ultra Light – At half the size of competing products, CDS downloads quickly. Once installed, CDS utilizes CPU, memory, and disk space efficiently to ensure continued high levels of computer performance.
Rock Solid – Users do not need to worry about spyware, bugs, or computer crashes. In addition, fault-tolerant CDS technology ensures that the user's PC is searchable at all times.
Brain-dead Easy – With one click, CDS automatically downloads, installs and begins its work. Users simply type words into the search bar, and CDS finds all relevant documentsfiles in an instant. It's that simple.

“Our flagship product, Copernic Agent, set the standard for high quality Web meta-searching for sophisticated users,” said Martin Bouchard, chairman and co-founder of Copernic. “With CDS, we realized early on that in order to achieve mass distribution, we had to target users who were new to desktop searching, but at the same time, not forget our loyal base of more sophisticated users.”

"Demand for desktop search is rising as users discover that they can't find their own files," said Susan Feldman, IDC's VP for Content Technologies. "With CDS, Copernic has created a product that can make an impact on this nascent space. CDS solves the problem of remembering where you have stored files in your file hierarchy. It finds e-mail messages as well as Office files. And it allows you to sort results by date, name, or file type. By integrating desktop, e-mail and Web search, Copernic integrates the user's access to all kinds of information. That's useful."

"I've been using CDS for the past few weeks and I'm very impressed with its ease of use and overall effectiveness finding material on my computer quickly and easily, “ said Gary Price, analyst at SearchEngineWatch.com. “Copernic has done a good job of developing a product that PC users new to desktop search can benefit from, while not forgetting the 'power searcher'."

CDS works with Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP and Internet Explorer 5.0 or later. It is available as a free download at http://www.copernic.com .