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.

A post Google saw fit to publish on both the Official Google Enterprise Blog and the Official Google Blog explained that this "brings ‘universal search’ to another level, with more accessible business systems and content now spanning from cloud to ground."

As for People Search, the post claimed that it "makes it easy to find experts and contact coworkers who are related to a search query, right from the search results page."

Finally, there’s a Dynamic Navigation feature for the sake of making powerful searches easier to conduct, improved support for Microsoft Sharepoint 2010, and a reliability tweak.

These changes should help Google convince more than a few additional companies to invest in its little yellow box.  Also, if anyone’s on the fence, it’s possible some other upgrades are on the way, considering the new version of the Google Search Appliance is labeled 6.8 and 7.0 should be in the pipeline.