Inktomi Unveils Third Generation Search Architecture

Inktomi Increases Search Index Size to 500 Million Documents

FOSTER CITY, Calif. April 11, 2000 - Inktomi Corp. (NASDAQ: INKT), developer of scalable Internet infrastructure software, today announced its third generation search architecture, GEN3™, a scalable search index of the most comprehensive, highly relevant documents on the Internet. The GEN3 architecture underpins the Inktomi Search Engine, which now includes 500 million of the best documents on the Web, and provides additional scalability to index over one billion documents. This new architecture combined with Inktomi's leading relevance technologies and WebMap™ database will provide portals and destination sites with the largest, most relevant search index, offering users highly accurate search results and new search services. Inktomi customers include America Online, Freeserve.net, Goto.com, iWon.com, LookSmart, HotBot, MSN, NTT and Yahoo!.

"Each time you use MSN to search the web, the MSN Search engine seamlessly integrates the most relevant listings from our own high-quality, human-edited directory of websites and categories with results from Inktomi's index. We rely on Inktomi to scour the furthest reaches of the Web for the most relevant and highest quality results," said Bill Bliss, General Manager of MSN Search in Microsoft's Consumer Group. "With the new GEN3 architecture, the index will be broader and smarter, allowing MSN Search to always deliver exceptionally relevant results while harnessing the vast scope of the Web."

The GEN3 architecture is built upon Inktomi's Coupled Cluster™ and Concept Induction™ core technologies. Designed to scale while maintaining performance as new workstations are added, GEN3 will provide portals and destination sites with a customized and highly relevant search index that leverages Inktomi's leading relevance and WebMap technologies. Inktomi's Coupled Cluster software architecture is the foundation for the Inktomi Search Engine and enables multiple workstations collaborating in parallel through high-speed connections to function as one extremely powerful computer. Inktomi's Concept Induction technology uses advanced supercomputing techniques to model human conceptual classification of content, and projects this intelligence across millions of documents. Concept Induction also leverages the link structure of the Web to discover conceptual linkages among documents and select the highest quality and most relevant content.

"With over 40 percent market share in the search marketplace, Inktomi is the undisputed leader," said Matthew Hall, vice president of engineering, Inktomi Search and Directory Division. "We continue to innovate to enable our customers to offer users the most comprehensive and relevant search results from the vast diversity of information on the Web. The GEN3 architecture extends Inktomi's proven technology strength and expertise to create a search index that can scale the Internet while delivering highly accurate results."

In addition, GEN3 indexes the best documents from Inktomi's WebMap database into an index that now contains over 500 million documents. In January, Inktomi and the NEC Research Institute completed a new study that verifies the Web has grown to more than one billion unique pages. By examining the entire Web and analyzing the billions of links between all of its documents, Inktomi can distill an index of the highest quality documents to provide users with more relevant and intuitive results. GEN3 will be available starting May 2000.

"We are thrilled to be working with Inktomi to provide iWon users a truly integrated and robust search, directory and shopping experience," said iWon co-CEO Jonas Steinman. "Leveraging cutting-edge technology from Inktomi's award winning search engine offers iWon users highly relevant results based on the Web's best index of sites. We look forward to integrating Inktomi's GEN3 architecture in order to expand the breath, depth and quality of our service."

About Inktomi
Based in Foster City, Calif., Inktomi develops and markets scalable infrastructure software designed for ISPs, content delivery and hosting providers, Web portal and commerce sites, wireless operators and global enterprises. Inktomi's portal services include the search, directory, and commerce engine applications; network products include the Traffic Server network cache platform, Content Delivery Suite and associated value-added service applications. Inktomi's customer and strategic partner base today includes such leading companies as America Online, British Telecommunications, CNET, Excite@Home, Intel, iWon.com, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, RealNetworks, Sun Microsystems and Yahoo! The company has offices in North America, Asia and Europe. For more information, visit http://www.inktomi.com/.