Friday, January 14, 2005 12:03 PM
Google introduced its new search appliance,
Google Mini, this morning. What made me immediately take a second look was its pricing. It is clearly priced squarely for the mid-range business (including law firms), at around $5,000. If this appliance can bring the full power of Google Search at such a competitive price, I think Google will find law firms more than receptive.
Google Mini is not the answer for a firm that wishes to index its document repository due to the sheer size of most mid- to large-firm repositories. The typical Am Law 200 firm likely has millions of documents in its repository, slightly smaller firms something slightly less. Google Mini will only index 50,000 documents. But, ignoring the document repository for a moment, 50,000 documents would cover a lion's share of the "other" data residing on firm web servers and in firm databases. Indeed, I noticed that Google has a law firm, Brown Rudnick, as one of its case studies.
I, for one, am going to find out more. Years of seeing new products with strong hype and weak delivery, has caused me approach technology solutions with a dose of skepticism. But this skepticism is not pessimism, and if a solution can potentially itch a long-standing scratch, I am not inclined to pass up the chance to explore it.