For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals (Length: 5 pages)

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Google continues to change the search technology game. Google's announcement that it will offer its Mini search appliance in two cool new flavors — searching 200,000 or 300,000 documents for $5,995 or $8,995, respectively — represents more than the simple capacity increase would imply. Google's offering defines the basis of competition in a growing market for site search devices and focuses customer perceptions of search on three key variables: degree of simplicity, number of documents, and prices. This contrasts with the variables on which traditional enterprise search vendors compete: breadth of capabilities and scalability. With a pricing strategy based on searchable documents, Google will define how other vendors compete in site search devices. And we're likely to see other software categories follow suit — pairing software with hardware, and basing price on continuous variables that companies find hard to control — like the ever-increasing volume of searchable documents.