Google Corporate Search Technology

New Google Search Appliance Delivers Greater Search Performance, Fresher Content, and Enhanced Search Results Relevance

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - June 2, 2004 - Google Inc. today announced the availability of its next-generation Google Search Appliance, an integrated hardware/software search product that enables corporations, universities, and government agencies to deliver Google-quality search results on their intranets and public websites.

This latest version of the Google Search Appliance, available in three models, is designed to offer better search performance, including increased capacity for more than 300 queries per minute and expanded collections that scale from 150,000 to 15 million or more documents. In addition, the new Google Search Appliance features a continuous crawl that is designed to automatically maintain the freshness of document collections as they deliver relevant results based on Google's latest search algorithms.

"Before implementing the Google Search Appliance, our search results were mediocre at best," said Nathan Ahlstrom of Medtronic. "Since we installed Google on our network, intranet traffic has grown significantly as employees realize they can now quickly find what they need. We're excited about the capabilities of the new appliance as search becomes more important to our business."

First introduced in 2002, the Google Search Appliance delivers the same relevance and easy to use search experience users are accustomed to when using Google.com. It is available in three models: the GB-1001, which can now index up to approximately 1.5 million documents (ideal for departments and mid-sized companies); the GB-5005, that provides automatic fail-over designed to ensure high uptime; and the GB-8008, designed for centralized deployments supporting global business units. The new features introduced today, available across the entire product line, include:
Greater performance: New hardware and software configurations enable administrators to search more documents at a faster rate.
Continuous crawl: A newly developed, sophisticated crawler designed to scan document collections continuously to ensure fresh intranet and website content is made searchable from the Google Search Appliance index. This new crawler is designed to minimize system demands by detecting and collecting only documents added or modified since the index update. Administrators can also add pages manually to ensure new information quickly appears in search results.
Improved relevance: The Google Search Appliance shares many of the same search technologies developed, tested and refined for Google.com. This latest version features Google's latest algorithms and is designed to deliver the same quality of search results that users receive when using Google.com.
Expanded collections: Now administrators can set up and manage as many collections as necessary, each of which can be customized, managed, and displayed as an entirely separate search engine.
"The Google Search Appliance addresses a fundamental need for better search in the enterprise," said Dave Girouard, general manager of Google's enterprise business. "We deliver relevant Google search results for users while lowering the cost and lessening the amount of time required to manage search on intranets and consumer-facing websites."

Since its debut, the Google Search Appliance has been adopted by hundreds of leading aerospace, technology, broadcasting, retail, government, and educational institutions that include Boeing, National Semiconductor, U.S. Department of Education, Stanford University, and USATODAY.com. Google Search Appliance customers receive a complete package of hardware, software, and two years of customer support, starting at $32,000. For more information, please go to www.google.com/appliance.

http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/gsa_40.html

Interesting, even though is a reasonably old press release i wonder just how many companies will be willing to allow their employees access to all the corporate data? It certainly has some opportunities present for misuse.

Regards,

Lee