Autonomy's late-2005 acquisition of prime competitor Verity was interesting because potentially both enterprise search products could ultimately be combined into one, with the best features of both. Contrast that with mergers in the content management space, where acquired products typically keep chugging along separately under new ownership. Still, technology consolidation can be enervating for customers. According to Autonomy, the company has completed the first phase of merging the two products, by retrofitting some Autonomy code into Verity's longstanding K2 product such that developers can access certain Autonomy APIs to broaden K2's capabilities. It sounds promising, though I'd wonder about performance implications, especially since both products -- like nearly all enterprise search tools -- tend to be resource hogs in the first place.