Despite attracting several high-profile retailers, it seems Google is quietly shuttering Commerce Search. TechCrunch reported that the company is moving away from its hosted enterprise search product in favor of lighter (and less expensive) solutions. "We are making a strategy shift towards offering more flexible, easier to adopt modules for retailers, such as the Search As You Type widget," said a Google spokesperson in a statement issued to TechCrunch. Google Commerce Search (GCS) launched in 2009 to offer merchants features designed specifically for e-commerce sites. Features included [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Enterprise Search | Site & Enterprise Search

The US General Services Administration announced that it was moving to Google Apps and The Cloud for email, etc. It becomes the first federal agency to do so. The GSA said it will save more than $15 million over five years. The contract is worth just under $7 million and being implemented by Google partner Unisys Corp. The government said the following in its press release about the rationale: The contract provides for an easily accessible suite of services, including e-mail and collaboration tools, to facilitate a more mobile work force.  While agencies have moved sub-entities’ e-mai [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Business Issues | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Gmail | Google: Legal

Google is introducing what it calls "Cloud Connect" for its enterprise Google Search Appliance. The new functionality "lets workers search across both on-premise and cloud-based content from a single search box, delivering more comprehensive results and improving productivity." Accordingly the new "Cloud Connect" brings together Google Docs/Apps with web content and other internal company documents. Google said that it now has 3 million businesses using Google Apps. Google also says that it has improved navigation with the latest release: Our new Dynamic Navigation feature allows u [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Web Search

Last May Google Wave was unveiled as a new communication platform and positioned as a successor to both email and instant messaging. It was also a powerful, real-time collaboration tool. It did other things too. Perhaps that was the problem; it offered too many possibilities. Beyond that people didn't necessarily see the need for Wave, even if it was more productive and efficient than more conventional tools. Here's what Google said when Wave launched: After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office, our five-person "startup" team emerged with a prototype. And now, aft [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Gmail | Google: Other | Top News

Google has upgraded its "commerce search" offering for retailers, e-commerce sites and manufacturers. Commerce search is a product of the enterprise search team and version 1.0 launched roughly six months ago. Commerce Search 2.0 has more features and the price has been cut in half from $50,000 per year to $25,000 to drive more adoption. Here are the feature upgrades from the Google blog post: More merchant customization: Today we’re introducing a full merchandising dashboard, which gives merchants more control over promotions, ranking rules and filtering. Marketers and product me [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Partnerships

Taking a page from Salesforce.com, last night Google formally launched the anticipated Google Apps Marketplace at its "Campfire One" developer event. In short it allows companies and developers to gain access and sell into Google's "2 million businesses and 25 million Google Apps users." The marketplace launches with 50 partners including Intuit and competitor Zoho. Google controls billing for paid apps and gets a 20 percent cut of the revenue. All of the apps will potentially integrate with existing Google tools and services. According to the Google Blog: Once installed to a company's dom [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Docs & Spreadsheets | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Mobile | Top News

Google has just announced a new enterprise search service called Commerce Search. The name might remind you of Froogle, but this is not that kind of commerce/product search. With Commerce Search, Google has created what is essentially a shopping cart solution for online retailers. Commerce Search, as Google describes it, promises to improve an e-commerce web site's search and usability. It's hosted on Google's servers, and -- like any good shopping cart software -- offers a variety of customization options, including look and feel, product promotions, and more. Commerce Search also incl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Enterprise Search | Top News

Google has announced a beefed-up version of Google Custom Search, a site search product aimed at small and medium sized businesses. The new service is hosted by Google and offers all of the same functionality of the free Google Custom Search product, with a few key differences: Customized search results. You can change the look and feel of search results to match the underlying design of a website, using a relatively straightforward XML API provided by Google. Optional ads. With the free version of Google Custom Search, Google displays ads alongside search results. With the Business Edition [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content | Google: Custom Search Engine | Google: Enterprise Search | Site & Enterprise Search

The Google Enterprise Blog announced that they are getting out of the hardware business by partnering with Dell to manufacture their Google Search Appliance boxes. Google said they made this move so that they can "focus more on the software side." Google is also excited about Dell's capabilities of marketing the search appliance globally. The Google Enterprise Blog posted this commercial on their blog, showcasing some of the marketing Dell has already begun for the Google Search Appliance. It is also important to note that Google and Dell have a search partnership already, installing Go [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Enterprise Search

As earlier reported this year, Google launched a premier edition of Google Apps which included email service, calendars, SSO services, instant messaging, spreadsheets, and more. One interesting detail of their recent promotions of Apps is how they're pushing this out to schools, in both free and paid "premier" service options. This is particularly interesting in the context of all the commentary about how Google is really going head-to-head against Microsoft for marketshare in office applications. Universities and colleges are typically always looking for ways to cut costs, and the Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Enterprise Search

News.com reports that Google is expected to release a new upgraded version of their Google Enterprise Search Appliances today. The new Google Mini will "enable companies to perform searches on intranets as well as internal business applications." The search boxes are expected to be available for purchase as soon as they are announced. I will update this post when I hear about the product launch. Update: Official press release just released. Updates to the Google Mini include: (1) Secure Search (2) Google OneBox for Enterprise (3) Site Search Improvements More details at mini.google.com. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Enterprise Search | Site & Enterprise Search

A Google press release from yesterday announced that Google has added a few features to the Google Search Appliance. The new features clearly labeled include: Clustering of the results Source Biasing Options - define which sources are more authoritative than others Add languages such as French, Italian, German and Spanish and Portuguese for query stemming and synonyms dictionaries Auto-generate a sitemap for Google.com's crawler Added security for NTLM version 2.0 authentication/authorization Open Source Connectors for Microsoft SharePoint More details here. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Google: Enterprise Search | Site & Enterprise Search