Issues with commercial software
Commercial products such as Inktomi/Ultraseek and Altavista (product):
- works 'out of the box' so ongoing work is reduced
- may be tailored to produce exactly what you need (depending on what that is), and will generally offer more features but some of these may be opaque
- limited (or possibly no) scope for development of features, since application is a 'black box'
- (usually) ongoing product development and support
- cost can be very high and recurring (annual maintenance)
In the US and Canada, Google sell the Google Search Appliance (http://www.google.com/appliance/), which you lease as an internal service and control yourself, and a customised service is also available, but both are very expensive. In July 2004 Google started pilots of search appliance in Europe, but it isn't generally available yet.
