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Google Announces 'Mini' Search Appliance
demetrio writes "In an effort to cater to small business search needs, Google has announced a new search appliance dubbed the 'Mini'. Priced at $5,000, well below the starting price of $32,000 for its other appliances, the 'Mini' should help smaller businesses leverage Google's search expertise at an affordable price."
5 grand is not exactly afforable for most small businesses
how soon before somebody hacks it and reverse engineers Google's Super Secret(tm) Pagerank algorithm?
Did the top guys at google just put their finger against their mouth and say: "I will call it... Mini Google!"
Wait, that joke's been done already, about two days ago.
Never mind!
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
This puts it well within the reach of Slashdot.
Never again will we have to use the crappiest search function ever! God be praised!
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
50k docs is too small for pretty much everyone ...
/* I wish this was a Python comment */
In '98, Apple introduced the iMac and we were deluged by thousands of products with an i (or some other arbitrary letter if the company wants to seem like rebels) dropped in front of some catchy word. We may just be coming out of that now, 7 years later. For the next 7 years, should we expect everything to be 'mini?'
"Eleventy Billion Dollars"
/me opens envelope
"What will Apple's lawyers squeeze out of Google for trademark infringement.
Ed McMahon: Hah hah hah! You are correct sir!
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Search appliance? That's one freaking expensive flashlight.
It now appears that "mini" (Mac mini, iPod mini Cooper mini) is the new "i" (iPod, iLife, iTrip, iHateINames).
Bravo, pop culture.
-- (Score:i , Imaginary)
We will just have to wait and see. If it comes in a sleek package that's 6 1/2 inches by 2 inches then we will know.
Evolution or ID?
I noticed a few days back (can't reproduce it) that the Search button was changed to "Google Search". I was disappointed, however, when I realized that it just searched Google for the term with an added "site: slashdot.org".
Using "site:slashdot.org" with Google doesn't work too well, because for some reason Google seems to "age" older pages in it's index for sites like Slashdot, which are more dynamic, and which it presumably crawls more often (alongwith the other news sites).
This aging mechanism (or whatever it is) means I can't go to Google and type in "GillBates0 site:slashdot.org" to get *all* of my past 739 comments (like subscribers can), even though they're archived and accessible from Slashdot.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Can't you just use a free google site search? Is it really worth 5k just to get a more customized search page? Or am I missing something (very likely)?
For the love of God, lets not start naming everything 'mini'. We have just finally broke the 'e'-naming habit.
Mini-Me unavailable for comment, but reportedly very pissed off.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
I suspect that in most corporate intranets there won't be enough documents, or enough links, for PageRank to be appreciably different from any other search engine.
Lets face it - the biggest advantage this has over other tools is the Google brand.
Is spotlight scalable to a webserver type application? then on ecould just buy a good apple offering and not need a google search applicance at all!! wouldnt that be great?
cheers
ram
What is wrong with dir /s >dir.txt
then grep32 -i blabla dir.txt
???
Gimme 5K$ please!
Given that every time I talk to anyone else in IT the conversation comes round to "Why is google SO bad now?", I can't see it being worth 32K just to be annoyed by it.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
No wireless. Less space than the full search appliance. Lame.
You have to ask yourself why a large corporation would spend $5,000 for a device that could index probably only a fraction at best of its documents. Google should consider instead offering a Mac version of the software that can run on the Mac Mini and index 100-200K documents for $500/license.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Is it just more, or does google never seem to finish anything?
They announce something, get it in ok working order, and then move on leaving the project in beta.
It's nice that they keep the new projects rolling, but maybe they should finish gmail, or google suggest, or froogle, or groups, or news!!!
It seems like the only thing not in beta is their basic and image search functions.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
And I'd search for one on ebay, but they'll all be bid up to $5200. You can bet a paycheck on that.
yeah and the same thing with those damn companies that make minimuffins.
since apple invented that word apparently
Why not hook up with the Samba team to enable crawling on Windows shares? I think Samba-integration would be a killer feature for a product like this.
http://www.mralert.com/ - Free web site monitoring
It's a good idea at a good price, and I think it'll do well.
I see someone has already complained about the price for small biz. Frankly, I'd challenge you to find someone to set up a search website, buy hardware, and administer it for a year for under $5000. And, provide an interface that's friendly, and search results that are useful?
To me, $5000 seems kinda cheap. Especially if it works and I don't have to hire some really expensive consultant to run it on a fulltime basis.
-- No sig for you!
I think it's targeted at those who drive Mini Coopers and have iPods attached to every orifice of their body, so they can afford it.
Is it just me, or has "mini" taken over as the new "e" in marketing. The Mini Cooper. The iPod Mini. The Apple Mini. Google Mini. Even Disney has jumped on the bandwagon with Mini Mouse! Where will it stop? Duke Nukem Mini?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I want one.. but only because it would look really, really cool in my server rack.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
I think Wikipedia needs one of these.
Perhaps Google could donate one?
Karma: bad (mostly unaffected by funny mods)
Google is recognized as the global leader in innovative search technology.
Too bad it still can't handle mailing list archives worth a damn. Search for Linux and Blender, and you'll get an email about Blender with the word "Linux" in one of the "Next by [thread] [author] [date]" links. Useless.
Too bad they're regularly taken to task by "optimization" companies (have been for years). Thanks- I'll pick Teoma as my "most innovative" search engine.
I flat-out laughed when Page said this during their ABC News People of the Year interview:
"We have kind of a mantra of 'don't be evil,' which is to do the best things that we know how for our users, for our customers and for everyone. So, if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing."
Hmm, Mr. Page- is bowing to (oops, I mean, fully cooperating with) Chinese censorship, in the names of market share, "evil"? Is it "best for everyone"?
Please help metamoderate.
The MSN toolbar allows you to cache/search networked drives.
This essentially provides all the services the google appliance provides.
$5000 or Free? Which will your CFO want you to use?
Which google can't see.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
...laser beams attached to its head?
Apple will need it when Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft's lawyers squeeze it out of them for trademark infringement.
They just painted it blue.
a nce.jpg) and this new one (http://www.google.com/enterprise/images/googlemin i.jpg). Same size, shape, performance. Different color.
Look at the original search appliance (http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/images/appli
It's been out for a few years now...
Just 5,000 bucks to manager your porn collection thats cheap.
Mini 8-ball says, "Signs point to yes".
It's no more than you'd pay for filing clerk to work 2 months.
Play Command HQ online
Is mini the new "2000"? You know, how everyone a few years ago were saying "SuperUltra Cleaner 2000" etc... Now everything is "mini this" and "mini that"
A keyboard and enough memory to run OSX, please add $133!
I've been testing Google Desktop Search for a while now, and I'm wondering whether Google's need to expand (like so many companies before them) could be the beginning of a slippery slide downward. The cynical answer in general terms is certainly yes, but I'm thinking of one specific point here...
I'll guess that most people fell in love with Google the search engine, and then Google the brand, for its Internet search performance - its results felt more intuitive, more in line with what I was really looking for, like it knew my intent.
Those search results were based in its then new and unique Pagerank algorithm -- ranking pages based on the weight of other pages linking to them, essentially finding an efficient way of turning the inter-connectedness of web pages into a defacto recommendation system.
But my experience with Desktop Search has be much different. Since no one is reading and then linking to files on my hard drive (although I run Windows XP, so who knows...) there is no oppotunity for a PageRank-type algorithm to do its work, and my feeling is that Desktop Search search results really suffer for it.
It's like the worst of both worlds, without PageRank it's just a Google-branded keyword search, and worse, a keyword search tool that doesn't really have a sophisticated query language in order to construct more complex searches.
My concern is that Google-the-functionality is getting slowly replaced with Google-the-brand, and that Google will simply become synonymous with "search" rather than "eerily great search."
I'd be interested in other's people's experiences with their off-Internet search tools. I'm sure they are efficient and such, but do you get that same "I know what you're thinking" vibe as you do from Google Internet search?
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
Has anyone taken one of these of these apart to see what the hardware and software is that makes it tick?
Could the drive image be cloned to faster hardware?
Nope, just a blue 1U rackmount with the google logo on it. For $31,000 more you can get it in yellow.
What's next? Will it at least cost ONE MILLION DOLLARS?
We use it on our Intranet at a small goverment agency and it's made a huge difference for us - so I'm a big fan. It's easy to manage too.
I'm not sure however, what niche this product is filling - the box we have allows us to have unlimited subcollections so all of our smaller units can setup their own searches very easily - we just pass which collection we want to hit, and then get some xml back from the box.
So all of our little sub-offices and depts won't ever need their own box.
For well under $5000, you can hire a college student to write a customized crawler and search engine based on the Lucene Search API. You'll have enough left over for the hardware, too.
why would i want a search engine in my cooper?
i don't know about anyone else, but i don't accept any news about mini products on slashdot until they hit the front page again in a few days. wake me up on sunday.
go get it
Jesus F Christ, just because Apple comes out with a product with the word "mini" in it doesn't mean they invented it! Or are you going to be giving credit to Apple for the Mini Cooper and the years old concept of the "MiniPC". You goddamned Apple fanboys need to get a grip.
If you can't afford this, there are many other, cheaper search appliances that you can buy instead.
The price point is in the right place, but the 50,000 document limitation gives it limited appeal. A business that has $5k to spend on a device will have more than 50,000 documents. I would like to see at least 1 million documents.
I am looking at one for a ASP that i am developing, i wanted the larger one, but i can't drop that much cash.
something like this will allow you to scale a bit as your needs grow up into the larger one.
good move by google.
The car, a Mini, actually started production in 1959: http://www.mini35.co.uk/history.php/ the Mini skirt was named after the car, and the rest is history. Including adding the model (not brand) Cooper, after John Cooper in the 60's.
2) Do not eat Google Mini.
Use The Cache, Luke !
When wikipedia is overloaded, the google cache without images is really faster than the real server !
They were far too pricy for us, plus they could never seem to decide if we need just 1 or 2 devices at $32K each. We ended up using ht://dig on our current hardware.
I think you'd find it very hard to get the free google site search to search your companies Intranet site, seeing as it would be closed off from the net and only accessible inside your company.
Maybe then they'd start asking questions. Instead, they're given a nice whitewash where nothing is out of place.
Please help metamoderate.
PageRank's power is in it being able to judge the popularity of a site based on the number of links to it. For individual installations, it seems like the inter-linking of pages would be less organic and therefore less useful for judging the best results.
Also, since it's on an internal network it would probably be just as (if not more) effective to apply PageRank based on the number of hits a page actually receives instead of the number of "votes" it gets.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
In other news, BMW sues both Google and Apple for trademark infringement.
Chip H.
Actually we BOUGHT two to start with, mostly becuase we were serving stuff from two major sites and the subcollections on the older version of the software wasn't that great.
The newer version (4.0.7 i think) is way better and we were able to swap out two boxes for one.
She's always disappointed.
Shouldn't the price for the mini be 4096? Or 5120?
WWJD? JWRTFA!
AFAIK, Google doesn't search OOo documents. Whats up with that?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Count me in.!!
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Search results for Remote will include:
between sofa cushion
next to telephone
bathroom
refridgerator
freezer
I'm still waiting for a similar product that gives businesses their own "Internal GMail" server. My employer uses Lotus Notes for e-mail, and forbids us from using POP to access our accounts. Lotus notes is horrendous, and a real pain to access using Linux. GMail is much more useful, and would be an awesome replacement.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
They should make one for home use, and call it the Google Personal Pornography Search Device.
... I'd buy one.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
$2,500/year gets you a world-class search engine capable of searching up to 150,000 documents (more, if you go with a different license). Runs on a Linux box. Crawls not only web-crawable content, but ftp-accessible stuff and databases, too. I can and have customized it using perl. I love it.
Dave Baker
Using it at http://benefitslink.com/search/
Looks like the use of the word "mini" is the equivenlent of "e" or "i" word form the late 90s. We have an iPod mini, a mini Mac , and now a Google Mini? What's next, a car named Mini?
Does anyone know what operating system is running on these things? I assume the Google search appliances use Linux, but I can't find any information to confirm this. If it does run Linux, do they publish their modified source code for these (minus the searching functionality obviously) like Linksys ended up doing?
-chris
This may be exactly what we need.
Our business currently pays out close to 15,000 a year for search engine capabilities from Atomz for a few of our websites.
It looks like this can do everything that Atomz can do...sign me up!
It's inna box. At least FAST Search & Transfer (the ones that used to have 'All the web', remember?), sell their intranet search as software. That means that you must get the servers and install a very complex piece of software on them.
:-)
Selling this as a box (and $5K is not really that expensive), you get the whole monty.
Oh, and it's Google.
This signature available under the Creative Commons
Fifteen minutes later, Apple announced the new Lawsuit Mini (tm).
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
"Where will it stop?"
The "mini"-post.
"why would i want a search engine in my cooper?"
Google Search: Mini-driver.
Does anyone know anything about what's inside?
OS, hardware (RAM, CPU, disk, etc), software (java/native executables), and so on?
I find it hard to believe that any company with greater than 10 employess will find the appliance useful given the 50,000 document limit. For reference, I have Google desktop search installed, and it has already indexed > 11,000 items! Granted, half of those are emails, but I do have > 5,000 files indexed. So 10 of me would reach the limit of the appliance. A little lame.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/13/1 613235
http://216.239.63.104/groups?hl=en&lr=&q=%22mini+r eply+form
I'm sure that's by design. You don't want an indexing bot crawling around random file systems. The impact on network performance can be huge, and you risk publicizing senstive data. With web content, it makes sense to assume that the server's content is for public consumption unless somebody makes a specific decision to lock it down. For a file server, the opposite assumption makes sense.