The Google Search Appliance is a piece of hardware that offers the same algorithms and technology as the Google search engine (that we all know and love). It's a very expensive piece of hardware.

However, it's an interesting business proposition to throw out there whether there's a market for Web sites who would love to have better search engine indexing technology outsourced. The Google search appliance reseller could then sell collections on the appliance to these companies, and the companies in turn would benefit from (a) Google technology on their website (increased relevance in their customers' searches, Google name brand); (b) not having to purchase such an expensive piece of hardware themselves (which is likely overkill for their needs anyway); and (c) they don't have to worry about search on their website (most site's own search engines are really pretty horrible).

Yet I don't see any resellers doing this and I wonder why.... Is it because of the large upfront cost of the appliance?

Any thoughts?

i don't see what you mean, what would resellers do with it ?

Originally posted by Eoin
i don't see what you mean, what would resellers do with it ?

Slice out the appliance to sites that had an interest, more than likely, it would be commerce sites with lots of products, and a shoddy search utility.

But wouldn't commerce sites have an adapted system, pages wouldn't need to be indexed etc.... as sites like amazon have their own custom search

but i could see WHT using it, making the search more reliable :D

Yes, exactly. You can slice up a single appliance with hundreds of sites, or even thousands if their document requirements are low (licensing is based upon total site documents... most sites are under 200 pages).

Seems like a potential market, but it's not clear to me that it is an easy market! :)

Keep in mind though that for free you can add a "search this site" form on a site that utilizes google -> http://www.google.com/searchcode.html

Obviously by reselling the search appliance the customer would have much more control over the indexing process more in line with the google custom site search feature, but do many people need this?

You do have a good idea, now you just need to find a market for it.

All popular services start out free. If its not free in the beginning you have to be able to pump a lot of money into it to make it popular.

bostongio - Are you thinking of making your version of "Goole appliance"? :-)

I'm not entirely sure on this one but... I thought that the google appliance (by that I assume you mean that nice yellow servery thing with google written on it that google sell for thousands of $$$) was intended for in-house search. i.e. so that large companies could index their files and enable their employees to find them. With this, you would possibly want the power of google (large companys have lots of data) but have it all in house on a local server so that no-one outside your company can see / search it.