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Google says its mission as a company is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Increasing the document capacity of its Google Enterprise products while simultaneously cutting prices is certainly one way to accomplish that mission.

Google Enterprise was started by the search experts from Mountain View, Calif., three years ago when corporations came to Google looking to make the search on their Web sites as efficient and productive as Google's well-known Web search.

In sticking with their theme of keeping search simple, Google introduced its first enterprise product in 2002 as a plug-and-play appliance called the Google Search Appliance. In January of this year, Google rolled out a smaller version with a lower document capacity and price tag and called it the Google Mini.

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With more than 1,000 enterprise customers in three years, Google is finding success. "People are looking for very quick time to value," said Matthew Glotzbach, business product manager at Google. "Our plug-and-play approach to this market has been greatly received."

The amount of content within organizations, whether on their intranet, extranet, or an internal file system continues to expand. As storage prices continue to drop, businesses are creating more content, but they aren't losing it.

With that in mind, Google announced changes to its enterprise product lineup this week. Under the old licensing terms for the Google Mini, users paid $4,995, which included on year of support, for an appliance with a capacity of 50,000 documents. A second year of support cost $2,500.

Under the new licensing terms, Google Mini customers pay $2,995 for an appliance with a capacity of 100,000 documents and one year of support. A second year of support costs $995.

The Mini is available only through Google's online store, where it can be found among the baseball caps, T-shirts, and baby clothes bearing the Google logo. The appliance itself and the online sales model have caught on with small businesses, which Glotzbach said Google felt was an under-served market for search when the Mini debuted in January. Many enterprise search applications are too expensive in terms of both licensing and deploying for small- to medium-sized businesses.

"We see the Mini as a great fit for all companies' public-facing Web sites," Glotzbach said. The Mini is also adopted at the department or group level in larger enterprises. "We really think this will directly serve our customers with their requests. Any company can afford it at this price point."

Not to be outdone by its little brother, Google is also lowering pricing on the Google Search Appliance for larger organizations. Now in version 4.2, the Search Appliance can scale up to 15 million documents when clustered.

Under the old license terms, the Google Search Appliance cost $32,000 and included two years of support, with a document capacity of 150,000. The new licensing terms get customers 500,000 documents and two years of support for $30,000.

By offering both the Mini and the Search Appliance, Google offers enterprise search products that can grow with an organization and its content. "We've had, even in the short time it's been out, customers who got a Mini and wanted to move up to a search appliance," Glotzbach said.

The Google Mini (left) and the Google Search Appliance (right).