Google's Search Appliance

An anonymous reader noted that Google is working on a Search Engine that you can install behind your corporate firewall for indexing your internal documents. It's a bit thin on information, but it looks like for as little (cough) as $20k, you can have your own google box. Not for everyone obviously ;)

Comments

Google enters this market at the right time

[hawaiianshirt]

Everywhere you look, companies are hawking products geared for searching internal documents. Google is making a good move; enter an expanding market as an established leader in searching.

Why Google Can Be So Expensive...

[BTWR]

Google did exactly what us fanboys all whined and complained for - a company that made a good product (awesome search engine) without selling out (no popup ads). Google offered a free service, built up an enoumous following, and now offers its premium service for a premium price, while insuring its loyal customers continued free services. Forget eBay, Google is an Internet-Success-Story worthy of such praise!

$20K Isn't really that much if you consider it.

[jellomizer]

The companies that are useing the apliance are Large Corporation with Hundreds perhaps Thousands of computers and Millions of files and documents to find. The real question is how much money is the company loosing from people who have to redo misplaced documents. or make new ones which are simular to an other document that someone else made a while back. In a large corportation a Thousand of people working at $20 an hour are taking 1 hour to redo a document or spend time finding it. It makes up for the caust. Also if it gives google more money the better change the search eng. Stays free and without a ton of anoying avertising.

The GPL (and Go Google!)

[base3]

Google's product selling for $20,000, and being based on Linux, is a good counterweight to the FUD being spread by Microsoft et al that cries "If we write a product that so much as uses one GPL library, we have to GPL it. Waaaaa."

Unless Google reimplemented their own operating system, or <shudder> ported it to Win2K, they have a very expensive product, that runs on Linux, that is not GPL.

More power to Google--I'm glad to see them finding a way to make money without trashing their search engine, like happened with the previously good search engines that came before (e.g. Altavista, Lycos).

Re:Possibly very good...

[leviramsey]

Google's "sponsored links" seem like a valid business model to me. Search on something generic like computers [google.com] and you'll see pastel links pop up with advertisements. I imagine people pay a nice chunk of change for those.

Google runs on two business models: the Sponsored Links model (and the Google Sponsored Links are much more effective than any other online advertising out there) and the sale of search services (to Yahoo!, Washington Post, et al).

Fact is, Google's already profitable. Why? Because they didn't make the moronic mistakes that the other dot-coms did. Have you seen a Google Super Bowl ad? Have you seen a Google ad anywhere? Exactly. The Google model is, quite simply, you run a lean and mean ship that gets the job done well, and you make money.

Re:Why does google get a slashdot-patent-pass?

[ethereal]

I agree with the "many are silly, but this one is worthwhile". Google's approach was non-obvious, innovative, and really advanced the state of the art. It wasn't just another "do what we did before, but with a computer this time" patent.

I'll admit that it helps that their site is non-painful to use, but that's just gravy. Google's search is so much better that even if their site was a pain, it would still be a worthwhile search tool.