The odd-looking yellow box that Google markets as the Google Search Appliance is now better than ever.  Google’s announced several new features, including improved cloud connectivity and a people search option.

Cloud Connect is definitely the main attraction here.  It introduces the ability to search content stored within Google Docs and Google Sites, along with Twitter and other sites.

Google announced today that it has integrated the Google Search Appliance with the OpenSearch protocol, which is a collection of formats for sharing search results. OpenSearch can be used to describe a search engine, so that it can be used by search client applications.

This may be the year of real-time search, but this week alone has captured much of the attention related to the subject. Yahoo is rolling out something close to real-time search today, and of course the big news is that Google has begun incorporating real-time search results right into its regular SERPs.

Google has introduced some new features for the Google Search Appliance (GSA). There are about ten of them, but the one the company is really touting is one that allows the GSA to learn the habits of searchers and use that information to fine-tune its information retrieval process to increase relevancy.

Today Google announced two new tools for Enterprise Search – Side-By-Side search comparison and new connectors for the Google Search Appliance. Both of these features are available in Google Enterprise Labs.

Side-By-Side Search Comparison

Google is giving new Enterprise Search Appliance customers an "ROI JumpStart". What this means is they’re sending people to help you deploy it for two days. These people come from "select Google enterprise partners."

New customers who license a GSA covering one million documents or more by September 30 are eligible.

The Google Search Appliance – AKA those spotted, yellow boxes that act as an enterprise search solution – has gotten better.  Today, Google unveiled version 6.0, and this new offering is able to scale up and deal with billions of documents.

If everything goes according to Google’s plan, Google Enterprise is about to become a lot more popular outside the U.S.  Specialist Computer Holdings has, you see, been picked as its first U.K. distribution partner.

The odd-looking yellow boxes that bear a certain search giant’s name are about to get a lot more useful, with an improved capacity being the biggest selling point of the new Google Search Appliance.

Google and Ingram Micro aren’t strangers; that second company already distributes the Google Mini and Google Search Appliance in North America, Asia, and Latin America.  And starting today, Ingram Micro will be doing the same thing in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

If you want to get the Google Mini or Google Search Appliance, talk to Ingram Micro – even as sales surpass 9,000 units, the company has been selected to distribute Google’s hardware.

With its market capitalization of over $160 billion, Google can probably do just about anything.  The search engine giant has chosen not to focus on manufacturing the Google Search Appliance, however – and instead handed over those duties to Dell.