TechCrunch has posted an article on the recent milestone of Google enterprise who just went out with their 5th generation of search appliance. The search appliance is a yellow box based on a Dell server. The latest release has the following features:

1. Indexes 10 million documents
2. Twice, even three times faster than its predecessor
3. Indexes data from Oracle, SAP, Documentum, SharePoint, Salesforce.com, HR, etc.
4. Personalized views depending on role

Search appliance accounts for more than half of Google’s 20,000 enterprise customers, a very small number compared to SharePoint deployments whose revenue has topped the $ 1 Billion dollar mark.

I have no experience on Google appliance on SharePoint and that is because I rarely see clients using it. Actually, I have only talked to 1 client who used Google appliance and was only deployed on a very small part of their operation.

In my three years of SharePoint experience; Google appliance has never been an option when proposing to clients for their Enterprise search requirements. From discussions I have read around my peers; architects and clients have a lot of issues on document management permissions and is best handled by SharePoint enterprise search capability instead. Architects have so much control in customizing Enterprise search and adding Google search in the mix would add unnecessary complexities to the engagement.

Configure of SharePoint search and use of SharePoint enterprise search is a win-win situation to the client and the vendor, most likely a Microsoft SharePoint partner.

You can read the full post at TechCrunch here.

Image from Flickr user Face.it found here.