Lots O' Shaking In Search

That's a turnkey hardware-software bundle that normally starts at just under $3,000 per 100,000 documents and a year of support. Of course to get the mini, you gotta buy the Google Search Appliance, That starts at $30,000 for a half a million documents plus two years of support.

Meanwhile, at least one of Google's early partners says the company's $10k fee to join its partner program isn't as out of line as some say. While $10K may be steep for some vendor programs, in search it's about par, since Verity charges the same, he noted. But with Verity the partner gets only software and some training. Google provides that plus the search appliance--capable of indexing up to 1.5 million documents--with which to work their wonders.

Speaking of Verity, search consolidation continued last week as Autonomy bought Verity, a corporate search pioneer for a cool half billion. For those keeping score, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Verity already bought Inktomi's enterprise search capability in 2002. Yahoo snapped up the rest of Inktomi's web-based search capability the following year, right about the time it acquired Overture a search company under contract with Microsoft. That purchase lit more fire under Microsoft to build a reputable search engine of its very own.