So how many of you are familiar with Enterprise tools such as Google Search Appliance? Google Mini Search Appliance for example, starts at $2,990 for searching up to 50,000 documents with a 300,000 max document capacity. Google Search Appliance starts at $30,000 for searching up to 500,000 documents with a 30 million max document capacity. (By the way, these are tools used for internal development of infrastructure and intranet and to enable maximum efficiencies between the internal world of information and the internet, among other things, for those of you wondering.)
It would seem that a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft announced the purchase of an Enterprise Search Specialist by the name of FAST Search. Earlier this week, Bill Gates announced the launch of Microsoft Search Server Express 2008 and Microsoft Search Server to rival Google's Search Appliance. Oh yeah...Microsoft Search Server Express 2008 is FREE.
It would appear that for all intents and purposes, Microsoft has been paying attention to Google more than they let on, and have built a model that lives on the web, no hardware, no packaged software, and lots of punch for those who need it, and at no charge.
Now last week, Google announced its website publishing tool called Google Sites for enterprise users (which is similar to Microsoft's Sharepoint) so it would appear that they are running in the same race and trying to outpace each other. I SOOO love a good match, don't you?
It's my belief that Microsoft is going to have a win with this "no expensive equipment required" and "online administration and features" offering among the small to medium sized businesses hands down. Without a doubt, this will also impact their search traffic which will also translate into ad revenue in the paid search arena, and that may just be the beginnings of the next "Clash Of The Titans"!
WOW!
The Doug
aka Doug Gebhardt