Slashdot Mirror

The answer to your question "What motivation do they have to restrict access by some subset of users?" is: restricting access to information posted by those who oppose their political agenda is a fairly strong motive.

And as soon as that happens searchers can point their browsers to other search engines. Though I use mostly Google I still use Alta Vista. I also use About.com, Teoma (now Ask.com), Cuil, DMoz, and Mooter.

Falcon

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.

I know a lot of people who use Google as their primary search engine, I know lots of people who use Yahoo for searching and mail, I even know people who prefer to use Ask.

I use Google as my primary search engine, but it's not the only one. For some searches I go to About.com first now. What's ironic is that that's because of Google, some searches I did Google led me to About.com, an About.com page was one of if not Google's first result. And when Google fails to provide me with what I'm looking for I use either Teoma, now Ask.com, or Mooter, they will return what I look for if Google doesn't.

I however use Yahoo! mail, but if MS acquires it I will switch. I am also a member of some Yahoo! groups I'll leave as well.

Yahoo must have a mountain of email accounts that perhaps MS wants to eat up in order to integrate them with the new MS email/office combination.

And Yahoo! will lose one of them, mine, and I bet others will switch as well if Microsoft acquires Yahoo!.

I must say, google and the rest of the world are slacking on getting onlnie apps out. At this rate MS is going to eat them alive and google is going to have some shitty plain Ajax wordprocessor to pretend to be competative against Word online.

I couldn't care less if Google, MS, or anyone else wins with online apps. To tell the truth this kind of puzzles me. Personal computers became such a big market, taking market share away from mainframes and minis, because people wanted to run software and store data locally. Now they want to go back to timesharing. Me, I still want to run my apps locally and to have my data local as well, unless I'm traveling but then I can use my laptop and vpn into my home server if I need to.

The difference is that Yahoo and MS are sustainable, and Google is reliant on ad revene. Though, you could say Yahoo isn't all that susnstainable in the long run, but google is BY FAR not sustainable.

Shouldn't you let all those financial analysts know what they're doing wrong?

As soon as ad spending goes down, so does Google's revenue with it.

And when ad revenue goes back up so will Google's.

Google is being more and more exploited everyday and in time it's highly unlikely it can keep it's good reputation and without a doubt it's search results aren't as good as they used to be.

Yea, as tyme goes by I use Teoma, now ask.com, and Mooter more for searches. However Google isn't totally dependent on searches, with adwords Google places a lot of ads on blogs as well as other websites.

Can they do this against Google? From a customer stand-point I'm not sure. I'm not just going to use Microsoft Search(tm) over Google so long as Google remains free and provides decent results. So Microsoft can't really win there. But they can steal ad revenue from Google by making their business/web-ads side more appealing to businesses. Get that, control the ad market and you'll be able to embrace and extend Google...

However to beat Google in ads a competitor has to deliver more eyeballs. Many people use Google because it's clean and returns relevant search results. MS may have a viable competitor with Live.com but until Google no longer provides decent results I won't switch and I don't think too many others will either. Even when Google doesn't return good results though I still won't use Live, as it is now when Google doesn't return what I'm looking for I use Teoma (now Ask.com), Mooter, or About.com. Once in a while I use Alta Vista.

I was never saying this. But should we wait until they are? Do the same mistake as with Microsoft? It's a much dirtier and harder job to disrupt a monopoly than trying to stop one from happening. As has been proven with the Microsoft OEM history, for example. It's not because Microsoft is doing a mighty intelligent work at upholding that monopoly. They don't even have to. The customers are doing it for them. Just like the ad market will once Google grows big enough there. Google will be able to give the advertisers the best deals thanks to their economy in the market and that's that.

However there's nothing, not even Google, who can stop a better competitor from taking on Google. Google got big because they indexed more of the web than many other search engines and gave better or more appropriate results when someone searched for something. A competitor can come along and outgoogle Google by indexing more and returning even better results. I switched from Alta Vista and Yahoo! to Google because it worked for me. Now I use 3 SEs other than Google. Though Ask.com bought it I still type Teoma into the address bar. I also use Mooter a lot. And for some specific searches I use About.com. Well, I still use Alta Vista too.

given the undeniable trend towards more-and-more web-based advertising, and given Google's dominance therein, the fact that they are well on their way to becoming a Microsoft-like monopoly is not only possible, it's very likely.

While I use Google more than any other search engine, I am not locked into using Google. Other SEs I use are About.com; Teoma, now Ask.com; and Mooter. It's real easy and quick to change SEs, however this isn't true for MS software. There's no way Google is a monopoly like MS. They may practice some of the same stuff, like looking over a small business under an NDA to possibly invest but come out with their own version of a product instead of investing but Google does not have any lock on either searches or ads.

And with their incredibly detailed databases on each and every one of us (from our gmail, our online office apps, our google search history, our google chats, etc)

All I use Google for is searching. I have no Gmail, no chats, and no apps. And even then I don't use Google's search exclusively, there are 4 SEs I regularly use.

they can make it virtually impossible for their customers (businesses) to switch to another advertiser, since the effectiveness of Google's ads will greatly exceed that of their competitors.

Ah but as TFA says Google's ads are loosing effectiveness. It's also easy for someone else to step in with advertising.

Mooter is (I think) older than Clusty and also does what you describe. It's not bad either (from the little I have used it in the past). It's just really hard to get any market share with so much competition.

It was disappointing when Ask bought out Teoma, that was a good search engine.

Yea, I used to use Teoma a lot, when I didn't get a result or not what I was looking for from Google. Another I use a lot also is Mooter. Alta Vista still returns good text search results, though I don't use it much. Another I use, for specific searchs, is About. Actually it was Google that led me to using About. I googled for some archeology and anthropology searchs and Google returned About's Archeology and anthropology section in the top results. Later I googled for something in photogaphy and once again Google returned an About section Photography, in the top spot.

Google has very serious challengers. Microsoft and Yahoo are throwing billions at that problem right now. As is Google itself. Ask is also in the game.

I don't think Ask presents much of a game. It used to be that when I googled for something but didn't get any results I'd go over to Teoma and I'd get results there. However since Ask bought Teoma it has gone downhill. I've found another SE that returns results when Google doesn't, Mooter.

google

It really depends on what you're searching for. Most of the tyme I start a search with Google myself however sometimes I find Alta Vista is better. I've done searchs with Google that didn't return any results but I would get some at Teoma, before Ask.com bought it out, or Mooter. And for a couple of areas of searchs I start right away with About.com. Actually it was Google that led me to using About.com. Googling for archeology/anthopology led me to About's section on it. A later Google led me to About's photography section.

Today, ANY idiot with enough cash or access to a computer at work can jump online and post anything he or she wants to. They can be as "authoritative" as they want. Why did this happen? Because the true point of the internet (free exchange of information, ideas, collaboration on culturally and globally beneficial non-profit projects) was lost.

If you have gatekeepers you don't have free exchange. There is far more free exchange in the web today than on the old internet from just ten years ago. Just because a person has to take measures to make sure any info they get is true, which has always been true, does not mean free exchange has been lost. Simply the more free exchange there is the more people have to take measures to be sure about the reliability of they see or hear on the net, and tools for Google make it easier to do research.

There was even an early time on the web where a search in Altavista would give you decent results on various topics without providing many links to companies that sell related products. But today, no matter which search engine you use, various searches inevitably turn up a lot of dreck that is meant to convince you to BUY a solution to a problem instead of BUILD one. It's no wonder that I've resorted to using Wikipedia when I have questions about things as well as AUGMENTING the information with the subscription databases that my public library provides to it's members for free. At least following those routes, one can avoid the McNet for the most part.

More ten years ago I started using Altavista and I still use it. I have no problem distiguishing ads from real results in my searchs. However if you have this problem maybe you should give Mooter a try. And if it weren't for the internet and web your Wikipedia wouldn't even exist. Me, I have found the web emminently helpful and valiable. After having survived a TBI, Traumatic Brain injury, more than ten years ago (after I started using Altavista) I was able to find websites like the one above by using search engines. These websites I have found have been helpful. I have even found chatrooms I can chat with other TBI survivors and/or their caregivers as well as medical, neurological professionals. If I had to go through gatekeepers I doubt I'd ever have been able to find any of these sites. No, the internet would only be a gated community only the elite would have access to.

There's so much talk on Slashdot of Microsoft abusing their stolen monopoly. Yet we've handed Google one. People blindly swear allegiance to them, defending their more questionable actions that if another company perpretrated, they'd certainly condemn. Honestly, when did last use another search engine? When Google's broken, are you even able to find one?

We don't all use Google all the tyme, as the stats from wiki you posted show. Sure I may use Google most of the tyme but I also use other SEs as well, like About, Alta Vista, Open Directory, and Mooter. About has good sections on Anthropology and Archeology as well as Photography, all of which I am interested in. Actually it was when I searched Google in these that I found them, Google returned them. I've found Alta Vista is good for science and technology, better than Google in some areas. And when Google doesn't give me what I'm looking for Mooter and the Open Directory sometimes will. I don't use Gmail either, instead I use Yahoo! Mail.

There are alternatives out there to most of what they offer. Personally I am a Google fan, but I have tried most search engines at one time or another.

I like and mostly use Google myself. Occasionally Google won't return what I'm looking for and when this happens I'll try DMOZ, Teoma, or Mooter. Usually when Google doesn't give me what I'm looking for DMOZ doesn't either however both Teoma and Mooter do. Other tymes when searching I'll immediately start with About. Actually it was Google that led me to use About. I sometimes search for something dealing with photography or archeology and Google led me to About for both of them, it returned results for both from About. About has pretty good sections for both so I'll use it with these searchs.

Although that does give me an idea -- it would be nice if the search engine could suggest ways to refine a search in order to find pages for the meaning you want. For instance, in the example of "model," it might give a list of choices that you might be interested in: "Did you want to search for modeling agencies? modeling tutorials? modeling clay? model rockets? UML?" etc. That would help in cases where it can be a little difficult to figure out the magic words you need to get the right set of results.

Anyone know if there are any search engines that do that already?

Try it, "model", on Mooter.

When I still used Google regularly, I found that their ads, depending on my search, were as valuable as the search results. I mean, when doing a search for something like "custom pencils" or "cloisinne pins"; the ads that came up were at least as valuable sa the results.

I still use Google regularly, as usual when here I have Google open in one tab. It's not always the first SE I use depending on what I'm searching for. For instance when I do a search for something in or about anthropology or archaeology I use About's Archaeology section. When I search for something in photography I use About's Photography section. Actually Google originally gave the two About sections above when I used Google to research both topics, that's how I found them. Occasionally Google won't give me helpful results, if any, for some searchs so then I'll use Mooter which hasn't failed me yet.

According to Fortune, Ask.com has many features not available with rivals -- topic clusters, quick facts from Wikipedia on the search page, and, (what counts most) fewer ads than any of the rivals.

Topic clusters aren't available on other search engines? I guess they've never seen or heard of Mooter. I've been using it for several months and I've never seen an ad though they do have a Sponsored Link in the top right corner. And while it doesn't have quick facts from Wikipedia on the first page, when I just did a search for slashdot, the second page of results included a link for the Slashdot effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. When I add wikipedia as a search term I get more than 10 pages of results.

Just shut up with teoma raving, it sucks! Check out for yourself:

http://s.teoma.com/search?q=teoma+index+old&qcat=1 &qsrc=0&Search.x=0&Search.y=0&Search=submit
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&hs=IOo&client=fi refox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=teoma+ind ex+old&spell=1

Eh...
http://mooter.com/

the logo is missing!?

Google currently has the edge on web searches and several other handy apps

I switched to Google a few years ago because when I used another SE like Yahoo! they wouldn't have it but Google would. But now when I google I don't always get a result but when I use Teoma or Mooter I do. So I may switch again, though I'm not sure if it will be to Mooter or to Teoma. As for any apps Google has, I have yet to use any.

I got zip googling for "World Trade Center firetrap". Changing it to "'World Trade Center' firetrap" I got one from IMDB, their page about Dean Cain. Ah, I got a bunch when I mootered "'World Trade Center' firetrap". Looking at the first 10 results, only one said it was one without any data supporting the claim. Most results were about other buildings being firetraps and one was about a floating boat that was one.

What melted the steel was the burning of the office furniture, paper, etc., and this didn't require jet fuel.

Office furniture doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel, also the smoke from such a fire would be black and not the white that was seen. Steel often melts at around 1370 degrees C (2500F). Yet in the WTC there were temperature in a few hot spots greater than 800F in these hot spots (some over 1300F). Even using the 1300F temperature, that's still below 2500F. That's a big difference between what the temperature in the WTC was and the melting point of steel.

Falcon

I did google "Lew Giles" and nothing came up. AltaVista however came up with 55, Mooter came up with 13, and Teoma came up with 72.

the "ink" may be solid in a dye-sub printer, (a description I have only seen on slashdot)

With a quick Moot I found this:

Dye Sublimation Printers

At the high end where quality is very important, you'll find dye-sublimation printers (called dye-subs, but more accurately dye-diffusion). The "dye" in the name comes from the fact that the process uses solid dyes instead of inks or toner. "Sublimation" is the scientific term for a process where solids (in this case dyes) dyes are converted into a gas without going through an intervening liquid phase.

I tried searching google and wikipedia and could not find any similar information. Phrases like "DRM capable sound card" and "DRM capable digital speakers" produce 0 hits on google.

You're right, when I just googled "DRM capable sound card" I got zero results but using Teoma I got almost 9000 results.

Falcon

In a similar vein, I like Mooter and grokker a lot. Both use a visual approach to cluster results. Very intuitive design.

Also try these:
Mooter
Ixquick

Mooter is worth an extra look, to check out their "clustering" search methods. Both sites are very useful.

Google: "the who" or the-who
they are equivalent methods of causing it to grok the phrase, see.

A More Interesting Question, however, is which search-engine is for most-searches MORE EFFECTIVE. . .

http://www.mooter.com/

1. It looks cool, clearly has the potential, but the algorithms for grouping the results is bad, which results in excessive exploring and browsing. Also, the program emphasises grouping of categories instead of grouping the links. So you open categories, which contain categories, which contain categories, when you would really like a clearly market relevant link.
2. Many results, all visible (to some extent) at once - rather impressive. Created two categories for the explorer and the city immediately. Zooming to more categories didn't show anything, zooming again shows bikes and zooming again showed "International", which had the links to charity. In the first step there were categories for Guide, Hotels, Local, Weather, News, Area, which might have been helpful if we were looking for the North Carolina city. The category for Sir Walter Raleigh appears to be very well structured. Interestingly, the bikes category had information about biking IN Raleigh (links to TriangleMTB mountain biking association).
3. Quite slow. It collects a lot of information during grokking, with results being gradually added to the concept map.
4. After expanding the map twice (clicking on the More Categories), there was one named "Average". It immediately caught my eye and after mousing over it I found a familiar title (the page, which had the IQ=60 answer). It's not as visible as it was in Google, but still better than nothing and a dedicated searcher would have probably found it.
5. Had the category "Local time in Sydney", which had a link to the main page of World Time Server. Nothing better than that.

Kartoo:

1. Looks nice, there are a lot of additional options near the edges (found sites, refinements, etc.), but it just fails to find relevant links and present them in a coherent way.
2. Enough results, but the scope doesn't look as impressive as in Grokker. Had some pretty maps, with many links and keywords for the North Carolina city. Completely useless if you were looking for other "raleighs".
3. Rather slow.
4. After some browsing and page checking, found this one, where TARA, a 10 month Alsatian/Husky mix gal from Lloret de Mar, Girona Spain apparently scored 95 on an IQ test. Not something BBC had in mind, but still.
5. Nothing even remotedly relevant. Very irrelevant results!

Mooter:

1. Looks very simple, no clutter at all. The visual part is mostly a gimmick, as it doesn't provide anything a simple list of refinements can't.
2. Few results, some less pretty maps. Nothing useful, besides city-related links.
3. Very fast.
4. It had the 95 semi-result, but not the real one. Funny, the 3rd cluster had such refinements as "lap dog republican red state moron" and "attack dog on bush military service". :)
5. The refinements weren't really needed, since the question is so simple and the timeanddate.com result is so prevalent. But anyway, clicking on "sydney", "current", "time", "australian" or "wales" brought the list of results where the link to curr

1. It looks cool, clearly has the potential, but the algorithms for grouping the results is bad, which results in excessive exploring and browsing. Also, the program emphasises grouping of categories instead of grouping the links. So you open categories, which contain categories, which contain categories, when you would really like a clearly market relevant link.
2. Many results, all visible (to some extent) at once - rather impressive. Created two categories for the explorer and the city immediately. Zooming to more categories didn't show anything, zooming again shows bikes and zooming again showed "International", which had the links to charity. In the first step there were categories for Guide, Hotels, Local, Weather, News, Area, which might have been helpful if we were looking for the North Carolina city. The category for Sir Walter Raleigh appears to be very well structured. Interestingly, the bikes category had information about biking IN Raleigh (links to TriangleMTB mountain biking association).
3. Quite slow. It collects a lot of information during grokking, with results being gradually added to the concept map.
4. After expanding the map twice (clicking on the More Categories), there was one named "Average". It immediately caught my eye and after mousing over it I found a familiar title (the page, which had the IQ=60 answer). It's not as visible as it was in Google, but still better than nothing and a dedicated searcher would have probably found it.
5. Had the category "Local time in Sydney", which had a link to the main page of World Time Server. Nothing better than that.

Kartoo:

1. Looks nice, there are a lot of additional options near the edges (found sites, refinements, etc.), but it just fails to find relevant links and present them in a coherent way.
2. Enough results, but the scope doesn't look as impressive as in Grokker. Had some pretty maps, with many links and keywords for the North Carolina city. Completely useless if you were looking for other "raleighs".
3. Rather slow.
4. After some browsing and page checking, found this one, where TARA, a 10 month Alsatian/Husky mix gal from Lloret de Mar, Girona Spain apparently scored 95 on an IQ test. Not something BBC had in mind, but still.
5. Nothing even remotedly relevant. Very irrelevant results!

Mooter:

1. Looks very simple, no clutter at all. The visual part is mostly a gimmick, as it doesn't provide anything a simple list of refinements can't.
2. Few results, some less pretty maps. Nothing useful, besides city-related links.
3. Very fast.
4. It had the 95 semi-result, but not the real one. Funny, the 3rd cluster had such refinements as "lap dog republican red state moron" and "attack dog on bush military service". :)
5. The refinements weren't really needed, since the question is so simple and the timeanddate.com result is so prevalent. But anyway, clicking on "sydney", "current", "time", "australian" or "wales" brought the list of results where the link to curr

and the competition is not far behind http://www.mooter.com/

how this is any different to http://mooter.com/

Mooter

It presents you with several clusters of sites related to your query. After typing something in, choose the closest cluster to what you want, and you're off!
I like the idea, but they don't seem to have very many pages indexed yet.

Fun new one to try: Mooter

the description of the technology is a bit sketchy ....

• search stuck out as one of the areas where there was a problem not being solved by technology, where our minds were forced to do too much work, and where simple principles of cognitive function were not being applied. [mooter.com - how tech works]

It looks like idea of a javascript front end to show group relationships linked to a standard search. It has a page size of 16Kb and runs in qwirks mode in mozilla. The use of Javascript must be a pain to develop and test on different browsers. Theres no support for multibyte characters. compare standard search to google then moot

• then selecting again .....

the description of the technology is a bit sketchy ....

• search stuck out as one of the areas where there was a problem not being solved by technology, where our minds were forced to do too much work, and where simple principles of cognitive function were not being applied. [mooter.com - how tech works]

It looks like idea of a javascript front end to show group relationships linked to a standard search. It has a page size of 16Kb and runs in qwirks mode in mozilla. The use of Javascript must be a pain to develop and test on different browsers. Theres no support for multibyte characters. compare standard search to google then moot

• then selecting again .....

the description of the technology is a bit sketchy ....

• search stuck out as one of the areas where there was a problem not being solved by technology, where our minds were forced to do too much work, and where simple principles of cognitive function were not being applied. [mooter.com - how tech works]

It looks like idea of a javascript front end to show group relationships linked to a standard search. It has a page size of 16Kb and runs in qwirks mode in mozilla. The use of Javascript must be a pain to develop and test on different browsers. Theres no support for multibyte characters. compare standard search to google then moot

• then selecting again .....

the description of the technology is a bit sketchy ....

• search stuck out as one of the areas where there was a problem not being solved by technology, where our minds were forced to do too much work, and where simple principles of cognitive function were not being applied. [mooter.com - how tech works]

It looks like idea of a javascript front end to show group relationships linked to a standard search. It has a page size of 16Kb and runs in qwirks mode in mozilla. The use of Javascript must be a pain to develop and test on different browsers. Theres no support for multibyte characters. compare standard search to google then moot

• then selecting again .....

I kinda like this one, but not enough to not slashdot them. A cool pun, a funky gui, what more could you want in a nextgen search engine.

Technology Review has a discussion of the coming rivals to Googol in this month's issue. One of them is an Australian outfit called Mooter which does some nifty clustering of results (somewhat familiar to those who remember Northern Light, once a web search engine, now a provider of enterprise search engines). They discuss several others, including efforts by Microsoft, but the general point is that Googol (and Yahoo and Alta Vista etc. before it) have shown the search business to be a very profitable area if you are the leader, so there are a lot of eager pretenders to the throne. Competition is good, web users will end up with better searching, whether from Googol or another provider.

Mooter