Google has announced the European launch of upgrades to its Google Mini appliance, which it says will allow medium-sized enterprises to take advantage of its search functionality for the web, intranet and internal documents.

The new versions will have the same features as the standard Mini, but will increase its search capacity from 100,000 documents to either 200,000 or 300,000, according to Google's European enterprise director, Roberto Solieme. The new models are priced at £3995 and £5995 respectively.

"It was an innovation a year ago when [the original Mini] came out, because the traditional enterprise search firms were not interested in the SME market," said Solieme. "But [then] our customers [started] asking for some functionality for a larger base of documents."

The new Minis include the same plug-and-play installation and familiar user interface that made the original popular with administrators and end-users, Solieme added.

In separate news, the search giant has finally taken its Google News product out of beta, over three years after it was first launched.