It's yellow, requires no admin effort as such, comes with a t-shirt and sits there inside the firewall, incessantly searching and indexing company documents and websites without complaints, breaks and salary. This jaundiced tool is the Google Search Appliance and appears to be what managers of web-enabled businesses have been asking for.

Google's got the basic concept right -- plug it in, and it works -- but importantly, the GSA is also the thin end of the wedge. It allows the Google Computing Cloud to penetrate corporate firewalls so to speak, and opens up a breach for Google Apps and other services.

Microsoft must have conniptions at the thought, but where's their Bing Box that does the same?

--

--