FAST INCORPORATES BASIS TECHNOLOGY’S ANALYZERS TO SUPPORT ASIAN LANGUAGES

— Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Language Analyzers enable accurate Asian-language search —

Cambridge, MA, October 22, 2002—Basis Technology, a leading provider of products and services for software globalization and multilingual information processing, today announced that Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a leading developer of search and real-time alert technologies, has incorporated Basis Technology’s Rosette® Language Analyzers for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean into its enterprise search products.

“Demand for high-quality search and retrieval software is growing significantly in Asia,” said John M. Lervik, CEO of FAST. “In fact, IDC predicts that the market for search and retrieval software in the Asia/Pacific region will more than triple by 2006. Incorporating Basis Technology’s language analyzers enables us to take full advantage of this market opportunity by offering the most advanced linguistic capabilities to our growing list of customers across Asia.”

Basis Technology’s Rosette Language Analyzers are portable, high-performance text analysis engines that ensure the most accurate Asian language text handling available.

“We’re very pleased to welcome FAST as our newest partner in the search and retrieval market,” said Carl Hoffman, CEO, Basis Technology. “It’s gratifying to know that consumers and corporate users across Asia are benefiting from the high-quality results achieved by the combination of our language analyzers and leading search and retrieval technologies.”

About Basis Technology

Basis Technology (www.basistech.com) provides software solutions for extracting meaningful intelligence from multilingual text. The company’s Rosette® Platform is a suite of high-performance, highly reliable, interoperable software components designed for applications that analyze and process all the world’s languages.

Top-tier software vendors, content providers, multinational enterprises, and government agencies rely on Basis Technology’s solutions for Unicode compliance, language identification, multilingual search, normalization, transliteration, and entity extraction. Clients include America Online, Convera, Endeca, Google, Hewlett-Packard, InQuira, Inktomi, L.L Bean, Northrop Grumman, PeopleSoft, Siebel Systems, Verity and Yahoo!.

Company headquarters are located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with branch offices in San Francisco, California; Herndon, Virginia; and Tokyo, Japan. For more information, visit www.basistech.com or call 800-697-2062.

About FAST

Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) creates the real-time search and filter technology solutions that are behind the scenes at some of the world’s best known companies with the most demanding search problems. FAST’s flexible and scalable integrated technology platform spans both Internet and enterprise customers, and elevates search to unprecedented levels. FAST closes the gap between information and action, connecting people to the relevant information they seek regardless of medium, in turn driving revenue and reducing total cost of ownership by effectively leveraging IT infrastructure for our clients and world-class partners. FAST search technology is currently deployed by a wide range of global customers and partners including AT&T, BroadVision, CareerBuilder, Chordiant, Freeserve, IBM, InfoSpace, Reed Elsevier (Scirus.com), Reuters, T-Online, Terra Lycos, and Tiscali.

FAST has operations in the United States, Europe (Norway, Germany, UK), and Japan, and is publicly traded under the ticker symbol ‘FAST’ on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Please visit www.fastsearch.com for more information or see FAST in action at our technology showcase www.alltheweb.com.

Fast Search & Transfer, FAST, and the FAST four-colored logo are trademarks of Fast Search & Transfer ASA. All rights reserved. FAST disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.