Patent ID: 8219544

Claim:
A method for indexing files, the method comprising: coupling a remote indexing system to communicate over a network with a plurality of user machines, which are associated with respective users and contain user files; generating on the remote indexing system multiple user-consolidated file indices for the users, each user- consolidated file index containing indexing information with respect to the user files belonging to a respective user; forming multiple sub-groups of the users responsively to sharing of the files among the users; merging at least portions of the user-consolidated file indices of the users in the multiple sub-groups to generate multiple, respective merged indices for use by the users in the multiple sub-groups; accepting queries sent over the network to the remote indexing system from multiple, different users in the multiple sub-groups to search the indexing information on the remote indexing system, wherein the queries are accepted from the user machines and the responses are transmitted to the user machines without using user machine resources to index or search files; and transmitting responses from the remote indexing system to each of the different users with respect to the user files belonging to the respective user.