ORACLE, the world's third- biggest software maker, has begun selling software that allows users to search only personal data on their work computers such as email, word documents and calendar appointments. Chief executive Larry Ellison says the California company's new search program "is one of the biggest products in years," and may help draw users away from Google, which also offers software for searching content on computers and operates the world's most-used internet search site.

"Google has always had a good search, but it was the security side that it's not good at," Ellison told reporters at the annual Oracle OpenWorld Tokyo 2006 conference in Japan. "We have the security problem solved. That's what we're good at, and that's the hard part of the problem."

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