The Google Search Appliance Gets a Newsletter
November 24, 2008
Update, November 24, 2008, 9 am A reader called my attention to this link to request a subscription: http://services.google.com/appliance/request_info/site
Original Post
After years of marketing by accident, the Googlers have created the “Google GSA Newsletter”. I received my first copy on Sunday, November 23, 2008. This may be old news to most readers, but this item was sent to me by one of my two or three readers. A happy quack, therefore, wings its way to San Francisco. The newsletter provides a great plug for the AIIM study that reports most users think search in an organization is lousy. Too bad for Jane McConnell in Paris, whose study is more comprehensive than the AIIM me-too report or the data reported in the Gilbane Group’s report Beyond Search. I’m not grousing, but I think the US centric nature of the newsletter is interesting.
If you want to know more about Google’s approach to its customers, the newsletter features links to success stories. Some vendors use these customer success stories as opportunities to make a sales call and demonstrate alternative approaches. But the most significant story in the newsletter is “GSA Virtual Edition”. Google has offered a nifty custom search engine which makes it easy to give Google a list of Web sites. The Google then creates an index of the content from those sites. Unfortunately, the Google CSE can go only three levels deep, but the service is free. To read more about “virtual” GSA, click here. The idea is that you can deliver appliance functions without having to have a physical appliance from Google. You get your own server and load the software and pay the fees, which are not mentioned in the write up. You can see some of the costs if you navigate to the General Services Administration Web site and search for one of Google provided devices. Some of these devices have prices in the $400,000 range, so be aware that Google values its technology.
The reason this story is important is that it, in my opinion, marks an important step in Google’s enterprise trajectory. In my Google studies, I walk through a couple of Google patent documents which reveals methods for “hooking” servers in an organization into the broader functions of the Google data centers. The idea is that an organization can tap Google’s capabilities from servers controlled and managed by an enterprise. The reason this is attractive is that some organizations have data requiring Google scale crunching. In a lousy economy, most organizations will want to get the crunching without the capital costs associated with on premises hardware, software, and systems. With the “virtual edition” of the GSA, Google seems to be taking another step toward making life tough for such companies as IBM and Oracle. These firms are Google partners, and executives at IBM and Oracle have told me that Google is their pal and that Google is not in the data management business. Frankly I think the “virtual edition” suggests that the Google is going to be hungry for some of those enterprise fees. That appetite will grow if the rumors I hear about a slow down in online advertising are indeed accurate. Google needs cash and it will do what needs to be done to get it.
In order to get your own copy of the newsletter, you will have to sign up for other Google email publications. Start here. I could not find a “subscribe” link in the email forwarded to me. Google included an unsubscribe link, but that didn’t help me. When I locate the “subscribe now” link, I will add it to this post.
Stephen Arnold, November 24, 2008
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