Yahoo Will Use Google Instead Of Inktomi

Yoje writes: "Someone's probably already submitted this, but it looks like sometime in the next 30 days Yahoo! will switch from inktomi to Google for search requests. More attention for Google is always good. :)" I'm not sure Google strictly needs attention, but capsteve and others pointed out Google's own press release which says Google has now indexed over a billion pages. (Note: around half of these are not fully indexed.)

Comments

Pause for a moment

[Alex Pennace]

In today's "go! go! go!" Internet boom, we seldom take time to appreciate what we have done so far.

1 billon. 1 thousand million. 1x10^9. That's the population of China. That's 1/6 the population of the world. If you presume the web was really born on January 1, 1990 (I don't know the exact date, but this is close enough), 261,096 pages were put up per day on average. Impressive.

Inktomi Financials

[superid]

According to this Inktomi has "more than 80 customers". Their current market cap is "Fifteen Biiiillion Dollars" [Dr. Evil]

80 customers and a market cap that ends in a B. This new economy scares me!

want no-fluff searches (warning: No linux content)

[Pfhreakaz0id]

For those complaning about Altavista's and other's portals, there's a nice little solution. If you use IE 5 and windows, that is. I'm sure there's something similiar for other browsers/OSes. The quick search accessory from ms. You get it as part of the Web Accesories Pack. It lets you type "ly search for this" in the address bar which searches lycos for "search" "for" "this". Or type "av thiscompany -host:thiscompany.com" to do a custom Altavista search. You can even "teach" it to use engines it doesn't have built in, like google. I love it.
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Re:relevance vs. profit

[cot]

> "scruntous"? Define please.

What do you mean? It's a perfectly cromulent word.

Re:So what?

[mrdlinux]

Whaddya mean? I sure didn't have any trouble.

Google

[Kyobu]

I love Google (now GigaGoogle (try saying that five times fast)), but I really wish it had better syntax. It supports ANDs, AND NOTs, and phrases, and that's it. No ORs or XORs, and certainly no NEARs or searching by date. I used to use AltaVista before they turned into a portal, but now I can't stand it. So I use Google because it's fast and gives relevant results, but most importantly because it doesn't tell me what the Dodgers score was, or which town in Texas was the host of the most recent gun-nut massacre. I still wish it was a little less primitive, though.

What about Google's use of dmoz.org?

[lsdino]

What I'm wondering is how this will impact Yahoo's use of the open directory. Currently Google uses the open directory in their search results, and you can visit it at directory.google.com, and now Yahoo's using Google's search results? How many of these search results are going to be coming from The Open Directory, or at least spidered due to the work of the volunteers at the ODP? In some warped way Yahoo may have the largest index again.

A Billion Pages?

[Jim Tyre]

Hmm, according to the dynamic web size page Michael Sims has over at the Censorware Project, there currently are roughly 2,140,000,000 web pages.

So either Google really is catching up, or Michael needs to change his formula.

Farting Sounds

[David Wong]

I'd say the most important factor in Google.com's growth is the fact that if you enter "Farting Sounds" as your search term, you get my web page as both the second AND third results.

Over a billion pages... and two of the top three "farting sounds" pages are mine.

Well. I can't think of a single reason for me to go on living.

You know about the Linux engine on Google?

[Booker]

Perhaps this is just slightly OT, but one of the things I really like about Google is their Linux-specific search engine!

They always seem to turn up Linux stuff anyway - sometimes I wonder if rpmfind.net alone accounts for 75% of their 1 billion pages. :)

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Are engines like google bad in the long run?

[wtpooh]

While I love google, and use it for all my searches, a little voice in the back of my head tells me to be worried. Google rates sites based on how many other sites link to them (and how many other sites link to those sites). So, let's say I decide to create a page about the very tasty fish Red Snapper. I'll probably include a section of links to other Red Snapper pages, which I will find using Google. As more and more people create pages with links they found on Google, the set of pages that were popular when Google started get higher and higher ratings, until there is just an incestuous web of interlinking, highly-rated sites.

If everyone uses Google-like search engines, new sites will never become popular, since they aren't linked to by the highly-rated ones. The result will be a fairly static set of pages returned by search results, with an impossible barrier for new sites.

Maybe google can do something to give the new sites a chance (Give extra points to pages created in the last month, or something).

Once again, Yahoo finds the way to succeed

[King Babar]

We all now know very well that there are not very many web- or internet-based companies that make any money at all. But Yahoo does, because they really can deliver a ton of users. And the reason why Yahoo does so well is that it's fast, simple, and comprehensible. From my dealings with grandmothers and undergraduates and most people in between, it's clear that people like all of these characteristics. But what they really liked was the (admittedly naive) notion that everything on the web fit somewhere in the Yahoo hierarchy, and that somebody had lovingly set up that link with care.

On the other hand, it was becoming clear to me that some of the newer search engines, especially Google, were beginning to do a hideously good job of indexing things in a most-un-Yahooly way. Well, not completely un-Yahooly; Google is fast and simple, too. And people really like that, even if they miss that hierarchical, home-made feel.

Now, I understand that the current agreement is for Yahoo to provide Google results for searches it doesn't do anything useful with, but I would be a bit surprised if they didn't adopt the technology more widely to crunch through the Web, which can really no longer be lovingly indexed by hand. And I predict that people will learn to like it, which is something I would not have predicted a year ago.

But the end result will probably be the same: Yahoo will still make lots of money, while very few other outfits will. And the reason will probably be the same: Yahoo provides what people really want.

i don't get this

[fluxrad]

it seems funny to me that all of these supposed 'search engines' are all using other 'search engines' to do the work for them

used to be you had yahoo, hotbot, altavista, lycos, etc. -- now yahoo is going to be 'powered by' google, and hotbot is 'powered by' lycos, and altavista still returns pictures of santa claus when you do a search on "caffeine free diet coke"

you know - i'll bet if you look into this far enough it probably all links back to one guy who stays up all night answering queries.

guy: "jesus another search for 'caffeine free diet coke' - wtf...let's see how he reacts when i return links to pictures of santa claus!"


FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

So what?

[Felipe Hoffa]

Google still can't find my car keys.

Fh

Commercialism

[Yamao]

So far, it seems that Google hasn't fallen into a commercialist trap - they've generally kept everything clean and unbiased, and they turn up darn good results. (Heck, I got a Google t-shirt for Father's Day, and I'll proudly wear it.)

The only thing that bothers me is: what's to keep them from catering to specific commercial interests? How long is it before it becomes YASE (Yet Another Search Engine) that favors some commercial hits above any others? I sure hope there are some people up top at Google who push fairness. Of course, when those people go away, what's left to do that work? Have they forced themselves into a process that will do it for them?