Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced this week some major changes to the Google Search Appliance including the ability for customers to index information behind the firewall along with information in Google cloud applications. In practice that means if you use Google Docs or other Google Services, you can generate search results that include this information.

It's actually a bit surprising that the Google Search Appliance hasn't done that to this point. According to Google, it now has more than 3 million businesses using Google Docs today, with more than 3,000 signing up every single day. These customers, who may also be using Google Search Appliance want to access their content wherever it lives.

By including Google Docs in the search results with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) documents, it will reduce the likelihood of duplication of effort (or reinventing the wheel).

The new Google Search Appliance also includes a people search feature to help users find experts or co-workers who might have knowledge about a subject they are researching. Finally, it also includes Dynamic Navigation, which sounds a lot like faceted search, or the ability to drill down through modifiers.

For example you might be looking for documents > HR > Forms > Vacation Request.

One final note, Google Search Appliance supports SharePoint 2010, which came as a bit of a shock to me, but it makes sense from a business perspective that Google would provide support for Microsoft's popular enterprise software product.

For more information:
- see the Google Blog post    

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