Google Inc. has announced updates to its corporate search technology that are intended to enable IT administrators to deploy search services in secure computing environments, with fresher results and increased index capacity. Google introduced the GB-5005, a new Google Search Appliance hardware model designed for organizations that require an available search service of up to 3 million documents. The Google Search Appliance is a corporate search solution that extends Google's search technology to intranets and Web sites. New enhancements to the Google Search Appliance products include: Searching Secure Content: the Google Search Appliance now enables users to search secure information protected by basic authentication or Microsoft NTLM and users only see documents to which they have access authorization; Fresh Results: Google's GB-5005 and GB-8008 now enable the administrator to create two layers of searchable information, a top layer for important documents, updated hourly and a larger, base layer that can be updated daily; Increased Capacity: the GB-8008 can now search up to 7 million documents from one query; and New Hardware (GB-5005): the GB-5005 contains five clustered servers and is designed for search services such as customer-facing Web sites and company-wide intranet applications. The GB-5005 is the latest addition to Google's family of corporate search products that includes the GB-1001 for departments and mid-sized companies, and the GB-8008 for centralized deployments supporting global business units. Purchasers of the Google Search Appliance receive two years of software updates plus hardware and software support.

Google has launched an enhanced beta version of Google News, now accessible as a tab on the Google homepage and from news.google.com. Google News is a news search service that is designed to enable users to view up-to-the-minute news headlines and related photos from around the world. Some of the enhancements to Google News include: more than 4,000 English-language news sources including The Financial Times, The New York Times, Reuters, and Fox Sports; real-time news updates; clustering technology that groups headlines from different publications together, enabling users to read multiple viewpoints on any given news event; and an interface that enables users to view headlines and photos grouped in categories such as US, business, entertainment, technology, and sports.

(http://www.google.com)