Google today cut the price of their mini search appliance to SMEs from $4,995 to $2,995 and at the same time doubled the capacity and will allow users to search up to 100,000 documents, as opposed to 50,000 documents previously. The price includes one year of support.

Their main search appliance has also been cut by the same amount (not same percentage), down from $32,000 to $30,000. Oh well. Nevertheless, users are now allowed up to 500,000 documents, as opposed to 150,000 limit on documents previously.

IDC's Sue Feldman says

"As a result of this announcement, we can expect that small and mid-sized businesses that were hesitant about adding search because of its cost will now actively seek it. This may stasrt a price war among Google-like plug-and-play products in the search market."