The Googlets; Followers: Google, the high-tech phenom of 2004, is inspiring a host of me-too competition from giants like Microsoft, as well as a raft of start-ups.

Byline: Brad Stone

Standing guard over the 101 freeway into San Francisco these days is a 30-foot-tall anachronism: a billboard for a dot-com. In huge, multicolored letters, the sign says blinkx, and underneath it, linking your world: web, news and your desktop. Translation: Blinkx, a San Francisco start-up, is fighting over the Web's hottest turf right now, something the geeks are calling "desktop search." It is one of a number of companies that want to help computer users scour the files on their PCs with the same ease they search the Internet on Google or Yahoo. As for the pricey billboard, Blinkx founder Suranga Chandratillake shrugs. "We got a good deal on it."

In 2004 we witnessed a new gold rush over a decade-old concept, searching the Internet. Inspired by Google's popularity and IPO bonanza, the deep thinkers of high tech concluded that sorting through the Web's billions of pages was not only a killer application but the next financial bonanza. But that, it turns out, was only half the story. Just as the number of pages on the Web has boomed exponentially, so has the amount of e-mail, documents, songs and videos that sit in an impenetrable mess on most personal computers. Desktop search software perches right on the screen and helps the user sort through all that locally stored info, often combining it with a search of the Web. For instance, if you searched for "car insurance," a desktop search toolbar would pull up all the e-mails you got from your broker, plus the most relevant Web sites. Sensing a new opportunity to deliver ads to computer users, the Internet giants are piling on. In October, Google made its desktop search toolbar available free on its Web site, and Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and Apple are all planning to release offerings soon.

Following behind is a flock of start-ups, led by Blinkx but including companies like X1 and Copernic, that think they can grab a piece of this action from the giants. Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, is skeptical. "If they had gotten online before Google had a chance to get there, maybe they would have a chance," he says. "But I think they will get squeezed."

Executives at Blinkx say that small players ...