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I don't see this monopoly (virtual or otherwise) in search that you are talking about. Care to provide examples?

In that case, allow me.
This is just a small sample of how wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong and hella wrong you are.

That list is far from complete, and is mostly USA-centric. In other countries, not only are there more search providers, but Google does not even rank in the top lists. Or just look at China, where Google is made fun of similar to AOL is in the US today.

If that is what you label a monopoly, I really want to know what you call companies like Microsoft regarding desktop operating systems - or the phone company - or patents/copyrights for that matter.

Ah, the original babelfish link, http://babelfish.altavista.com./.

Wasn't it originally at babelfish.altavista.digital.com before that?

Ah, the original babelfish link, http://babelfish.altavista.com./ I used it long after I started using Google for searches. Agreed, the translations were head and shoulders above everybody else.

http://www.altavista.com/ It is only for a day!

I remember Altavista. Horrible results.

Not true. AltaVista is now the only remaining engine to publish link data, after MS pulled the plug on backlink results from yahoo as one of the steps toward the site's dissolution in favor of Bing. Who knows how long it will last, but it's there now.

Observe the backlinks to a recent slashdot story.

Sonny, I remember the days when we had to manually type in http://www.altavista.com/ or http://www.lycos.com/ into our browsers to get to a search engine. We had to use our keyboards and everything! Then the search engine took a long time and returned bad results... and we liked it!

These newfangled search bars, they're the devil's work I tell ya.

Newbie! It used to be http://altavista.digital.com

Sonny, I remember the days when we had to manually type in http://www.altavista.com/ or http://www.lycos.com/ into our browsers to get to a search engine. We had to use our keyboards and everything! Then the search engine took a long time and returned bad results... and we liked it!

These newfangled search bars, they're the devil's work I tell ya.

alta vista? http://ca.altavista.com/

If you want privacy it looks like Yahoo is clearly the winner here. Thankfully you can use their engine and avoid the madness with http://www.altavista.com/
I never moved on to Google from Altavista and haven't seen a good reason to yet. Only reasons not to.

I just wish there was a good web search that I could use to find replacements.

Let me see if I can think of an alternative search engine..............

Bingo! I've got it!!!

Have you heard of AltaVista? I hear its a groovy search engine that works in a far-out happening way. All the cool kids are using it.

I guess there is no conspiracy at all, just different weights in the ordering algorithm... but hey, it is a cool experiment... unless maybe they are also colluding with CocaCola

http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=why+does+pepsi+sucks%3F&kgs=1&kls=0
http://www.bing.com/search?q=why+does+pepsi+sucks%3F&go=&form=QBLH&qs=n

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=why+does+pepsi+sucks%3F&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&fp=CSrKZrhT3_U

Except that the second result from Bing is this result from TechNet

"Re: Why does VS not show build error filenames in ASP.NET 2.0 projects ..."

It is worth trying it for yourself:

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F

http://www.bing.com/search?q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F

http://us.ask.com/web?q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F

http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F&kgs=1&kls=0

I guess there is no conspiracy at all, just different weights in the ordering algorithm... but hey, it is a cool experiment... unless maybe they are also colluding with CocaCola

http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=why+does+pepsi+sucks%3F&kgs=1&kls=0
http://www.bing.com/search?q=why+does+pepsi+sucks%3F&go=&form=QBLH&qs=n

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=why+does+pepsi+sucks%3F&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&fp=CSrKZrhT3_U

It is worth trying it for yourself:

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F

http://www.bing.com/search?q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F

http://us.ask.com/web?q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F

http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=Why+is+Windows+so+expensive%3F&kgs=1&kls=0

I guess there is no conspiracy at all, just different weights in the ordering algorithm... but hey, it is a cool experiment... unless maybe they are also colluding with CocaCola

http://www.altavista.com/web/results?itag=ody&q=why+does+pepsi+sucks%3F&kgs=1&kls=0
http://www.bing.com/search?q=why+does+pepsi+sucks%3F&go=&form=QBLH&qs=n

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=why+does+pepsi+sucks%3F&aq=f&oq=&aqi=&fp=CSrKZrhT3_U

And Google and Bing and Yahoo! have all cooperated with China (and other chronic human rights abusers) by censoring their search results.

I guess the U.S. government is just going to have to fall back to using Altavista for a search engine. Don't forget their motto: "Over one million pages indexed!"

What, has someone come up with a search engine that's better than altavista? Sorry, just getting up from a nap.

You also can still use Altavista. I am sure it integrates better with your Vista PC.

Microsoft is the next AOL.

Google is getting in everybody's space

While Google's there when I want it, they aren't in my space.

Google's products are not generally better, (often flakey or worse (consider google docs and gmail - so what? the only advantage they offer is that they are free

Unless your employer, or you for that matter, demand you use Google's apps you don't have to. Even if you want free software, a lot of the software on my computer is open source, I have none of Google's software on it. I don't even use gmail.

They have already destroyed the search market because only crazy people would start up a search company and go up against them.

Google has gained dominance in searches because it offers better searches than most other search engines. However the new SE Cuil looks pretty good too. I haven't really used it yet but I also use About.com, Alta Vista, Teoma, oops Ask.com, and Open Directory Project for searches.

They are busily destroying most other markets too.

And what markets are these?

Falcon

'here are strategic reasons to not want a single source for a critical material. There are no such strategic reasons relating to Google.'

I'd rate data as pretty critical

I can, and do, go to Teoma, oops Ask.com, About.com, Alta Vista, and Dmoz Open Directory Project for searches. And I may start using Cuil as well for searching. Google isn't the only search engine, nor does it have lockin, other than being a good search engine. Actually I use About.com because Google referred me to it, when I first googled for "Monte Verde" archeology the top result was About.com's section of Monte Verde. Now it's number three. Googling for photography returns About.com as number 4.

While data may be, is critical, it can be gotten from search engines other than Google.

Falcon

which is still around

it was 2000, a guy told me about it at work, and i was instantly hooked, simply because the search results were better than anything else i had tried

AltaVista has a 'NEAR' modifier:

A NEAR B

Note that it _must_ be upper cased, or it'll search for the word 'near'.

I recall the early lycos search business model -- you'd get 40 or free searches, then a subscription was 'required' (not really, but it was supposed to be required). I can specifically recall goofing off in my IT hardware support role searching and downloading DOOM *.wad files for late night fraggage. There was no /. then, sadly, there was only DOOM and Efnet.

Altavista seemed to get replaced by google, in rather short order. I can't recall a specific reason I stopped using it, unless it was related to the repeated sale/reorg of DEC -> Compaq -> HP. I remember the news spreading about altavista hacked in '97 and '01 (the pr0n).

Maybe I'll use that webcrawler search thingy to look this stuff up. Maybe I should go back to work instead.

I didn't know that there were only two search engines in the U.S. market...

Clearly you haven't heard of Astalavista (might have been .com, not sure), taking the piss out of Altavista back when people still used it.. Twas a warez and serials site which eventually became overrun by popups, spyware, malware and other general nasties. In it's place became asta-killer against all the nasties, although most of it's sites linked now distribute as many as they can..

Yahoo isn't just stamped on them, it is them. Do a search on yahoo and a search on Alta Vista. The results are carbon copies.

I didn't know this, I don't use Yahoo! for searches and haven't for years. Most of the tyme I use Google however I also use About.com, Altavista, Ask.com, and Mooter.

I'd rather have 2 big players instead of one colossus Search company that if things go wrong, the whole planet suffers.

I don't think this is quite true. Unlike an OS or apps it's easy to switch your search engine. While I mostly use Google I also use About, Alta Vista, Ask.com, and Mooter. On the other hand, if you're using online apps then yes it can be hard to switch. However I'd rather have my apps running and my docs stored locally. At most I'd vpn into my home server while on the road.

http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?acronym=SANS
System Administration, Networking, and Security Institute (SANS)
Institute's Internet Storm Center (ISC)
http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4247

http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?Acronym=SAN&Find=find&string=exact
Storage Area Network (SAN)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SanDisk
SanDisk Corporation

http://japanese.about.com/blqow38.htm
from AnonymousCoward-san

http://babelfish.altavista.com/
sans acronymes le monde serait un meilleur endroit

That's not how http://babelfish.altavista.com/ translates it.

Why not impliment a babelfish translation across domains?

*Ducks*

Here is a Babelfish link for the page. My favorite quote from the page is from the "The world which it sees with statistics" sidebar - " ' The white mustache most ' 16% of the whole furnitures". I agree that the white mustache is important in home decor but 16% of the whole furnitures? Outrageous!

From over 2 years ago on slashdot.jp: http://slashdot.jp/article.pl?sid=05/02/02/0340256 (pseudo-english translation)

The automatic Google translation (from French to English) is relatively of really good quality. Try plugging the original article into Babelfish and see how lousy it does by comparison.

One point that particularly amazed me is that Google not only tanslates the acronym right (GRC => RCMP), but even the acronym's meaning (Gendarmerie royale du Canada => Royal Canadian Mounted Police), even though that's not anywhere close to a literal translation!

Does anyone know more about how they do this? Do they use user suggestions for this?

Wild. I only knew about http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Something I was unaware of, I thought it was a botched translation of something in English. But someone on the original site made an important point in a comment. The reporters were writing in Hebrew, and the output was supposed to be in Dutch. Only Babelfish doesn't do Hebrew, if it's the one accessible through Altavista. It does English and French to Dutch, and it also does Japanese, Russian and Chinese to English. But it doesn't do Hebrew either way. So I'm curious how this article originally got mangled. Either it wasn't the Babelfish I'm thinking of, it was a different site and wasn't Babelfish at all but some other web site, or it was a commercial program that botched this.

Also, as was also pointed out, someone at some newspaper writes an embassy about something and causes a diplomatic incident, gee, sounds like someone's awfully touchy. Reminds me of how those Mohammed cartoons caused a large part of the Muslim community to want to go Jihad over some newspaper from Sweden or one of the countries around there.

I love Babelfish, I think it's a great system for giving a rough idea of what the words in another language (in my case, of course, anything other than English) mean, or giving you a somewhat passable translation of your language into another. But anyone who's looked at the output of Babelfish should know, or should have reason to know, that it is not perfect and is basically good for getting the 'gist' of the item, the ideas. Which is about all you can do with automated translation. We do have an advantage, I think it's been said that, in English, anyway, that you can lose about 1/3 of the words in a sentence and still get the idea across. So there is some redundancy and that does help, but, it is an automated system and lacks judgment. And apparently, so did the people who used it and didn't warn the recipient.

Maybe it's me, but when I've posted a message where someone wrote something in a foreign (to me) language, and I replied to them, I included a note - in that language - indicating I am using a computer translation and it may have errors. And I do a cross-check by translating it back that the note that it may have errors won't. :)

So let me get this straight, some people used an automated translation system, without bothering to tell the person whom they were sending a somewhat important message, that the message had to be translated using software? I guess they never thought that translation software commonly has errors. It will do a reasonable job but it guesses, and sometimes it guesses wrong. I suppose they have never looked at a web page written in some other language and seen it translated to English. Anyone having used any computer system should know there is a possibility of error - in fact, strong probability if not guaranteed certainty - in automated processing of tasks which require human judgment. To be a little erudite here, I will throw in the gratuitous foreign language comment that judgment, is, primus inter pares, the hardest part of any task, because it cannot be automated, (or maybe I'll weasel out a bit by claiming it is extremely hard to automate). (For those that don't know latin, the phrase means 'first among equals', e.g. I mean all the tasks are hard, but some are harder, and on the difficulty scale, judgment is top of the list.)

Language translation is an art, because there can often be more than one way to phrase the sentence, and in some cases, there may not be an exact equivalence between the two languages for the term used. Even in English there are still problems; the term 'free software' has a problem because the word 'free' can be used in two completely different meanings depending on whether one means free of restrictions (what is sometimes called 'software libre') and 'free of cost'. But sometimes the term has no ambiguity even if one of the words does. When we speak of free speech, we mean the right to say what one pleases (within very narrow restrictions) without fear of government reprisal; it does not necessarily mean that you get to hear the person's opinions without someone paying for them, as in the case of TV and newspaper columnists. Knowing when an ambiguity is present and when it isn't is a judgement call. And that's something computers have a very hard time doing.

The other poster (caffeinemessiah) was right, the headline should have read Morons trusting the legendary untrustworthiness of Babelfish for official work spark minor diplomatic row.

There was an easy way that they could have avoided this problem: have the translator check its own translation by feeding in the translation and having it translated back into the original language. It would have become immediately obvious that the automatic translator doesn't work and that they should hire a real person to do it. Incidentally, a radio show used to run a music contest where they translated English lyrics to some other language and then back into English. The goal was to figure out what the original song was. And it could be quite hard unless you know the song by heart.

There was an easy manner that they this problem could have avoided: the translator control has to its own feeding translation in the translation and has translated it in the original language. It immediately clear become would be that the automatic translator does not work and that they a real person would have engage to do it. Moreover, a radio show which is used to state where a music game in functioning they English lyric poems to one or other other language and then in English translated. The aim was proposal from what the original song was. And it rather hard is able be unless you know the song by heart.

Has anyone else noticed that the Babelfish site doesn't actually list Hebrew as a choice? This makes the whole thing a little fishy-sounding (pun intended) to me.

I can't find any Hebrew translation option on the babelfish website.

Furthermore, in the Jerusalem Post article, they point to a site babelfish.com, which appears to be a SEO site and doesn't do translations at all.

Compound that with the question of "Why would the Dutch Foreign Ministry care about an email from some random Israeli reporter?", and I'm guessing that this entire story is a hoax.

Yes, I realize that the Jerusalem Post is supposedly a high-quality paper, but the fact that they linked to a site (babelfish.com) that doesn't even do online translations makes me think that this wasn't their most well-researched and well-substantiated work. If this is really causing such a fuss in Holland, how come there is nothing in the Dutch press about this?

Which babelfish are we talking about here?

I use Wikipedia to answer this simple question: who/what the fuck is x? If people start deleting articles just because they think x isn't important enough, how am I supposed to find out what x is, even if nobody really cares about x?

OH NO... what will happen to Babel Fish? http://world.altavista.com/

Sé que usted sabe abrir esta caja fuerte, así que consígale...

babel fish: http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr

Wonder if the translation will be as strange as Babelfish's attempt to translate the Japanese edition of our favourite website?

Common exercise: take the article, drop its text into Babelfish, translate it from English to and back again. When doing so from English to Japanese and back, the results are:

The translator of the specialist may face when being the technology which in the job placement place which crosses the world Fuji Xerox developed because of the most recent prototype photocopy machine it makes well, directly. The Japanese show [ the device of subscription link ] only presently, while maintaining the layout of the origin, scans the seat to which the Japanese from the newspaper or the magazine text is printed, Chinese, can stir English or Korean from that translation. Repel the switch of opposite direction and the work of language analysis. As for the secret of Fuji Xerox the text for designing the maintenance, in algorithm and the enthusiastic translation server and connects this being able to distinguish during sketch and the line there is a nameless copier in the networking. Concept 1 while touching, as for the translation machine in order for Babelfish and Google to translate, systematic with the many language which is crime (...) In case of the sentence which becomes ruinous because of the thing splendid thought and place were seen with someone who works machine-translation which is (MT) transferring/changing of technology from present formation of the software probably will be desired, is

Something has been lost, I think. Let's try a quick trip through Europe, though. English to Spanish, Spanish to French, French to German, and German back to English:

The translators of the specialist could steer early in relation to centers work in the world, if Fuji Xerox returns well in the technology, which he developed for his machine plus the latter only the photostat of the prototype. The device momentarily in the demonstration connection of the subscription ] only in Japan knows a printed sheet of the Japanese text of a magazine or a department and a butter outside of a translation of in English or Korean Chinese, investigates, during canned goods t - the original regulation. Shift from a traction a switch and the linguistic work of the analysis in the also opposite management. The secret of Fuji Xerox lies in creation of a net of the copiers innomada at a dedicated employee, and of the translation this with the algorithms to combine, those between the text, which designs and the lines for the cross-checks can differentiate between, it maintain. While the concept of one - the hood is the machine of the translation a admirable idea for everyone, which works regularly the repeated languages (guilty...), to wait the technology left us shifts ignition since the present generation of the software of the machine translation (TA), which can be the opinion that the speeches mangling in places, as the fish and Google of Babel translate.

Honestly, I'm impressed, "as the fish and Google of Babel translate."

Google is "finally succumbing to the power of the almighty dollar"

The dollar is quite the temptress and very deceitful. Following the money has led many to the path of destruction. The record companies have tried to collude and through artificial scarcity kept CD prices way above reasonable. Sales have fallen as a result of completion even though i Pod sales skyrocket.

Google has command of the advertising market. If they follow the temptress and try to follow the money, then Google will become just another search engine.

It would be sad to see Google become another ad-laden site with no special attraction to the users. Is Google stupid enough to ditch tons of eyeballs to get a slightly higher price per ad?

Others are ditching the overburdening pages and imitating Google's success. Most of these pages now don't load their page with banner advertisements anymore and for good reason. They lost major market share to Google because of it. They have modeled Google.

http://www.altavista.com/
http://www.dogpile.com/
http://www.live.com/?searchonly=true&mkt=en-US
http://search.yahoo.com/
http://www.hotbot.com/

If Google gets tempted by the money, they may find themselves quickly in the company of almost dead search engines that they stomped. They know how the other search engines dropped to obscurity. Why are they even interested in putting on that well known way to the bottom of the search engines.

Well. So may it be.

But it all seems insignificant compared to what the evil bastards did next. (The holocaust)

True enough, what the NAZIs did was evil. They didn't just do it to European Jews though, they also targeted crippled people though they honored those wounded in combat. They also tried to exterminate the Romani or Roma and the Sinti both otherwise known as Gypies. Actually the Sinti are a subgroup of Romani. NAZIs also considered Arabs and Africans inferior. However bad, evil, the NAZIs were at first they tried to get Jews to immigrate. They negotiated deals with Jewish leaders under two agreements. One was the Haavara Agreement. It was an agreement for European Jews to move to Palestine. NAZIs would buy property owned by Jews then the money would be deposited in a bank with a branch in Palestine. Once there Jews could then withdraw money. The other agreement was the Rublee-Wohlthat-Abkommen Agreement, where European Jews could move out of Europe to anywhere else.

Well. So may it be.

But it all seems insignificant compared to what the evil bastards did next. (The holocaust)

True enough, what the NAZIs did was evil. They didn't just do it to European Jews though, they also targeted crippled people though they honored those wounded in combat. They also tried to exterminate the Romani or Roma and the Sinti both otherwise known as Gypies. Actually the Sinti are a subgroup of Romani. NAZIs also considered Arabs and Africans inferior. However bad, evil, the NAZIs were at first they tried to get Jews to immigrate. They negotiated deals with Jewish leaders under two agreements. One was the Haavara Agreement. It was an agreement for European Jews to move to Palestine. NAZIs would buy property owned by Jews then the money would be deposited in a bank with a branch in Palestine. Once there Jews could then withdraw money. The other agreement was the Rublee-Wohlthat-Abkommen Agreement, where European Jews could move out of Europe to anywhere else.

I do, how becoming the complete third party, it does not care, that being to think, but, really above being the Japanese citizen mutually, as for shutting off relationship without being possible, the shank. If their productivity goes down, as for quality of the social service which I enjoy if the decrease stripe sushi, they harm health, my medical burden increases.

When the policeman of the tie, rule you violate, hello punishment of the kitty?

...then here's a word perfect translation of that article (courtesy of Babelfish).

Erm... then again, maybe not.

(If you liked that translation, you might enjoy Babelfish's attempt at Slashdot.jp.)