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Google In A Box

Posted by timothy on from the besides-everybox dept.

26199 writes "The BBC is reporting on an interesting product from Google -- a shiny yellow box to add to your server rack. The box is a Linux computer, and it provides Google search facilities for your company's intranet. Just remember to think about the security implications before you install one... the article does a good job of discussing the risks." As the article points out, in-house google boxes are not a brand-new product, but now they're pushing them harder.

3 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. That seems cool... by SoCalChris · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But $34,000 for a two year license on their most basic plan seems pretty steep.

    They keep talking about how they are expecting the corporate search market to take off, but it probably won't at that price.

    These have been out for a few years now, has anyone ever heard of any company shelling out for one? (Besides the companies listed in the article)

    1. Re:That seems cool... by ghostlibrary · · Score: 4, Informative

      I wrote in another thread long ago about these. Actually, the price point is excellent.

      Choice A: Write an in-house app and keep it up to date and useful. Assume a half-timer to write this in 4 months plus another half-timer to do the UI, then a half-timer to debug/test it in 4 months because it didn't quite work right, plus a quarter time sysadmin for it since it's going to be high load.

      Already we're 8 months into developing this and don't actually _have_ a working search engine, and we've blown 2/3rds of a yearly FTE. And that's being generously low in my staffing estimates.

      Choice B: Toss google half a yearly FTE in pay to do it for you, and it's ready in a week, up, working stable, and you don't have to _do_ anything. And you get free maintenance and updates.

      Easy choice, if you're a real company. And yes, I've worked at a place that finally got one of these-- they're great. Incredibly useful, and a big cost savings.

      --
      A.
  2. Re:Appliance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, the Google Appliance has been on their site for well over a year now, though I don't know how long they've been actually selling.

    It seems pretty pricey overall, but if you're a large corporation with the money, you can't beat it for searching. I can see this being quite a nice thing to have if you have enough documents to require a gargantuan SAN.