ScanSoft, Inc. announced the ScanSoft OmniPage Search Indexer for Google Desktop Search. The beta release of the plug-in, which is available free on the Google Web site, automatically creates text-index information from PDF files and faxes, as well as scanned books and documents - making them visible to Google Desktop Search.

The OmniPage Search Indexer uses ScanSoft's highly accurate and fast optical character recognition (OCR) and PDF conversion technology to recognize the text within image-based content, creating the index information needed by the search application. ScanSoft is the OCR behind the world's largest book scanning projects, and has been selected by nearly 100% of commercial vendors delivering imaging solutions, including AnyDocs, Autodesk, Avision, Brother, Canon, Captiva, Corex, Dell, FileNET, HP, Kofax, Konica, Kyocera, Lexmark, NSI, Omtool, Verity, Visioneer and Xerox.

"Through the addition of OmniPage Search Indexer, Google has become the first of the major search competitors to seriously address PDF, fax, and scanned documents with desktop search," said Ralph Gammon, editor, Document Imaging Report. "This is important for users in traditionally paper-intensive professions such as law, insurance, and banking. It is also critical for the rest of us, who now receive faxes through e-mail, as well as scanned documents sent as email attachments from multifunction devices and digital copiers."

The OmniPage Search Indexer is based on technology found in ScanSoft OmniPage Pro Office 14, the world's most accurate and best-selling solution for turning paper and PDF into documents you can edit and archive. Winner of nearly every major industry and trade award for imaging applications, OmniPage Pro Office automatically converts paper and PDF into fully-formatted and editable documents, spreadsheets or presentations - eliminating the cost and time needed to reproduce existing documents. OmniPage is also used to batch convert various formats into searchable PDF archives for content management systems. ScanSoft also provides this capability to developers who wish to add imaging and PDF capabilities to their applications, via the OmniPage Capture SDK.

"Search is clearly expanding into areas where our imaging and speech recognition technologies can play an interesting role," said Robert Weideman, senior vice president of marketing and product strategy for ScanSoft's Productivity Applications Division. "Whether it is for scanning and indexing books, or indexing the spoken words in audio and video content, our solutions deliver the accuracy and performance needed to turn hidden content into useful information."