Many of us assumed after the acquisition of FAST Search and Transfer that there would be additional integration with the SharePoint platform. Well it appears that the next version of SharePoint will utilize the FAST search engine as the core component for indexing and retrieval. This is a big change in capabilities over the previous search engine. I've worked with the SharePoint search engine since v1 and have seen it evolve from its index server roots into what it has become today. After utilizing several search platforms in conjunction with SharePoint I'm eagerly awaiting a tightly integrated high end enterprise search platform. It's a new world for search especially within SharePoint and I can tell you it's about to get really interesting.