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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
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?'
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
For the love of God, lets not start naming everything 'mini'. We have just finally broke the 'e'-naming habit.
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!
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.
It's no more than you'd pay for filing clerk to work 2 months.
Play Command HQ online
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.
Maybe then they'd start asking questions. Instead, they're given a nice whitewash where nothing is out of place.
Please help metamoderate.