Dive Brief:

• Google told its customers late last week that it is sunsetting its Search Appliance, an enterprise solution that premiered in 2002, according to a Fortune report.
• In an email to resellers and consulting partners, Google said it will no longer sell new hardware but will continue offering technical support through 2019 for companies with valid licensing agreements.
• The company is working on a new-cloud based search solution that is currently in beta testing, according to Fortune.  

Dive Insight:

Companies will soon bid farewell to the cheerful yellow appliance housed among their servers. Once the support licenses expire, the box will become a Dell-created hardware shell without any of the search capabilities.

To many the news may not come as a surprise, as Google phased out another model of the hardware three years ago, Fortune reports. But retiring one of the company's original enterprise products marks a shift away from physical appliances to more cloud-based solutions.

Google can potentially offer stronger search capabilities if the software remains housed among its servers, said Adisak Sukul, a computer science lecturer at Iowa State University, in an interview with CIO Dive. With more computing power, Google could eventually integrate machine learning, creating a more powerful internal search solution for companies.

The existing tech allows companies to search their intranet for documents, applications and websites. The Search Appliance works in 20 languages and can use synonyms and an intuitive spellcheck to help complete the search, according to Google.