Lookout

The Microsoft Outlook users have been wishing for an extended and fast search function since the first version was launched. Public folders as well as exchange mailboxes have to be browsed. It is not effective enough to only browse the current folder – instead it also has to be possible to select the simultaneous browsing of all folders. The search results have to be available immediately, also in case of a great data volume. Lookout was therefore the solution for thousands of customers who have recognized the surplus value of such an index search.

Hereby Lookout uses the well-known open source project Lucene. Lucene is considered to be one of the best and fastest search libraries in the world and is provided by the Apache Software Foundation. With the help of its existing version at that time, Lucene 1.4, Lookout was able to stabilize and optimize the compare functions.

It was a profitable and successful business for Lookout to enrich Microsoft Outlook by extended search functions. This fact makes Microsoft’s strategic decision to buy Lookout up and to integrate it into Microsoft’s own company in 2003 even more understandable. However, it seemed that this resulted in a development stop and the end of the support for Lookout. Lookout was developed for Mircosoft Outlook 2003 in .NET Framework 1.0. The consequence was that Lookout was left out for a multitude of Outlook users when they switched to Outlook 2007.

At the time Outlook 2007 was launched, the Axonic Informationssyteme GmbH was developing the social networking tool Chilibase. It was Chilibase’s aim to identify connections between contact persons, emails and email contents and to edit them in order to increase the workflow in the email environment.
Chilibase was launched on the market at the same time when Outlook 2007 was starting to push the previous version more and more away. Chilibase made it possible for the former users of Lookout to compensate the omission of Lookout. However, during conversations with customers it became more and more apparent that the users simply missed Lookout’s search function and did not found an adequate alternative. Without any doubt the end of Lookout left a gap for a lot of companies and private users.

Inspired by the customers, the Axonic GmbH started a corresponding market analyses at the end of the summer 2007. The Axonic GmbH quickly came to the doubtless conclusion that there has to be an alternative to Lookout. The advantages of a quick, smart and easy to handle index search established themselves too well to forgo it.

This was Lookeen’s hour of birth. Up to now, Lookeen has established itself as THE alternative to Lookout throughout several versions. We have tried to continuously adapt Lookeen to the wishes of the customers and to improve it. At this Lookeen is also supported by the newest versions of Lucene, which are also used by a lot of internet search engines and Wikipedia.