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Searching For Google's Successor

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the looking-down-the-line dept.

weink writes "A new generation of scrappy search engines is emerging to challenge the dominance of mighty Google . An article at Wired News lists up-and-coming search engines, WiseNut , Teoma , Lasoo , CURE , and Vivisimo . Take a look, and give them a try. But I still say that nothing is better then the almighty Google ."

37 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Google has already proven itself by bartle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The thing that has most impressed me about Google isn't its technology, but the restraint and good sense they've shown in the Internet community. While every other search engine has tried a go at the portal route, Google has focused on simply being a search engine. They've continued to add features that improve the user's experience at the same time other engines sell their results to the highest bidder.

    Some of the most annoying companies in existance came about because they pulled a massive version of bait and switch, they adopted a consumer friendly strategy for the short term but changed when they got big enough to destroy the competition. Google has done remarkably little despite their impressive potential marketing position. Companies like this is where our business should go, it is our power as consumers to make decisions like this.

    My point is that if/when something better than Google comes along, you should think twice before changing your homepage. When choosing a company, it's not just who provides the best product in the short term, you have to take into account long term as well.

    1. Re:Google has already proven itself by bartle · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Fact is, even the company itself may not know; sometimes the switch comes because the company didn't make it trying to execute Plan A, and Plan B is to sell out to advertisers or some acquisition. Anyone have either logic or heuristics to offer as far as trying to navigate these situations?

      You are exactly right. There is no way to know what a company is going to do in the future, the best you can do is try to predict their future actions by looking at their past actions. In my mind Google has maintained an impressive consumer focus and generally done right by their users, this gives them positive points. A new company has no past to judge by, so I can't judge them positively or negatively. But the important thing to note here is that I'm judging both companies on their actions, not what they say. So in the end it doesn't matter what the new company says is in their future, Google still wins my business because they've proven themselves to me.

      I brought up this whole line of reasoning because it seems like a lot of Slashdot readers are very anxious to "get ahead" or at least get in on the ground floor of the next big thing. We're riding the technology wave here, we don't want to stick with what's proven, we want to move ahead. It would be a shame to lose a good product just because we were taken in by some marketing hype. It happens enough in the real world, let's hope it doesn't happen here.

  2. Re:Hmm.. by b0r1s · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How about a search engine that doesn't index 'rpmfind' mirrors and newsgroups so searches for linux related info turn up something more useful than 50 pages of rpmfind entries...

    Ok, I agree with the rpmfind mirrors, but I have to disagree on the newsgroup issue. Usually when I'm really stuck on something (ie: Linux SMP box hanging under high network load (which makes backups a real bitch), forcing me to power cycle : flawed APIC handling for the 3c905 ethernet card), I hit google specifically LOOKING FOR NEWSGROUP discussions on the topic. Granted, I dont need 50 mirrored copies, but I definitely do want to see newsgroup archives indexed.

    --
    Mooniacs for iOS and Android
  3. Candidate Roundup by seizer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wisenut - seems to work as well as Google. I like it. Doesn't offer alternative spellings, though, and I can't ever spell Skylarov correctly first time :-) The results are harder to parse visually than Google.

    Teoma - needs to crawl a lot more before it becomes a viable alternative. Obviously it can find the easy stuff, but most people (I hope) don't use search engines to find the easy stuff. Results are easy to read, and categories meaningful and well placed. Phrase match is kinda cool, because you get to put back in your common words that Google disallows ("and", "the", etc).

    Lasoo - lousy spelling looks terrible, even if it was intentional. Aside from that, what makes this different to Mapquest.com plus a Yellow Pages? I know which I'd rather use.

    CURE - this search engine has reached its user limit so I'm not allowed to search. Boy, is that going to be popular :-) Hopefully, that's just a beta feature...

    Vivisimo - is a metasearch engine, whatever the FAQ begs you to believe. If you like em, then sure, but speaking personally, they are of no particular use to me.

    Google still rocks my world, with cacheing, fast fast oh so fast searching, and relevance that beats the crap out of everything ever. Rock on.

  4. All I want from a search engine... by scott1853 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Recent results. Google only seems to be getting updated once every couple months. I know they must be pulling down a lot of data, but every other search engine seems to have more recent information that Google does. Anybody have any actual stats of googles refresh?

    1. Re:All I want from a search engine... by bleeeeck · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Most of my sites get spidered by Google monthly (or more often). It seems like it takes about 3 - 4 weeks for Google to get the new content into it's database. Here's an example of it on one of my pages that has the date, from Google's cache. The date it was spidered is in the right hand news column.

  5. Re:Hmm.. by commbat · · Score: 3, Informative

    They need the AltaVista NEAR operator: foo NEAR bar.

    --
    'Intellectual Properties' are uncontrollable in the wild. To base an economy on them is just stupid.
  6. Researcher's Search Engine Other than Google by robbyjo · · Score: 3, Informative

    is Citeseer. It's popular among researchers since you can directly peek into papers...

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    Error 500: Internal sig error
  7. Re:Hmm.. by Erasmus+Darwin · · Score: 3, Funny

    A similar problem I've found is that when I'm searching on using 'foo' and 'bar' together (for example, if they're two popular options in a software package), I'll tend to get a lot of hits from mailing list indexes. The page'll generally contain a link to a message about 'foo' and a separate link to a message about 'bar', and will be highly rated from all the other things linking to the index.

  8. Re:What did we learn... by sammy+baby · · Score: 3, Informative

    You know that Wired is now owned by Lycos too, right? They were a package deal.

  9. Re:At least "google" is spelled correctly. by isa-kuruption · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ahem! We use more credible sources here, sonny! By it's own definition, Google is spelt correctly ;)

  10. Cache, Dmoz directory, PDF, Deja/usenet... by augustz · · Score: 5, Insightful
    People forget that Google has not only managed to put together an excellent search engine, but to add value to it through some really great features (and no I do not mean altavista portal garbage and patent lawsuit value).

    Site slashdotted? Hit the cache

    Want to see a dmoz.org directory? See it page ranked.

    Doing science research? Find the answers in indexed PDF files.

    And the list goes on...

    Not to mention they do the right thing advertising wise, run on linux. Bring on the upstarts, but they'd better be prepared for a good bit of starting to knock down google.

    1. Re:Cache, Dmoz directory, PDF, Deja/usenet... by kisielk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not to mention that if IIRC, Google is the only search engine to turn a profit. They have managed to sell their search technology to many businesses world-wide and this has no doubt givn them feedback that they used to improve their search capability.
      As Google is actually making money off their operation, they are more likely to keep constantly improving their technology. I believe that this will help keep them in the forefront of the plethora of search engines out there.

  11. Google was most exciting to me... by Ulwarth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...because, for once, a company made their way to the top by simply _having a stellar product_. When I first began using it I was shocked by how many orders of magnatude better than any other search engine it was. But to my surprise, everyone else realized it too, to the point that Google now completely dominates the search engine industry.

    I do hope these other engines (many of which I've tried, and they ain't bad) offer up some competition, because a monopoly is bad even when the monolopy provider is so good. But in the meantime it's great to finally see a product suceeding so well based entirely upon its merit.

  12. I found another feature of google's yesterday by Sludge · · Score: 3, Informative
    Google is the center of the Internet for me. It's as important to me as Emacs (almost ...)

    Yesterday, I found a new feature that I enjoy. Try typing 'link:' into the Google search. It tells you all the sites that link to that site.

    I know if you own the site, you can check it out with an HTTP_REFERER, but that isn't always the case.

  13. Re:Yahoo by ncc74656 · · Score: 3, Informative
    I've noticed yahoo's search has been as good as or better than google as of late. Don't give up on are old favorite yaho!
    ...probably because Yahoo's search is Google. Don't believe me? Try this link, which submits a search to Goog^H^H^H^HYahoo, and see what you get:

    http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=Apple+Assembl y+Line

    Compare the results to this search submitted to Google:

    http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q= Apple+Assembly+Line

    (The first result is one of my pages. I made the rounds of several search engines a little while ago to check the page ranking. Yahoo is using Google's search results more or less unmodified.)

    --
    20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  14. Easiest was to find the best search engine by zombieking · · Score: 3, Funny

    Just ask jeeves... Duh.

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    "The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
  15. Re:One of the great features of Google by Tackhead · · Score: 3, Funny
    >http://images.google.com/images?q=natalie+portman

    It's a good start, but since we still don't get any hits for...

    http://images.google.com/images?q=natalie+portman+ grits

    ...I gotta wonder, like, what's the point?

  16. Re:One of the great features of Google by dboyles · · Score: 3, Offtopic

    http://images.google.com/images?q=natalie+portman

    'nuff said.

    --
    -- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
  17. Re:One of the great features of Google by NonSequor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It would really help if everyone set the ID3 tags in their MP3s correctly. I don't think a single MP3 that I got off of Napster had all of the information correctly set (many didn't have any correctly set).

    --
    My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
  18. But are the search engines independent? by Oestergaard · · Score: 4, Troll

    Would any of the new search engines be controlled by a different government ?

    Since the search-engines are becoming our pointers to information, they do have a lot of control over what information we see. I doesn't matter that some web-server in malaysia has a web page describing the complete meaning of life, the universe and everything, if it's not in the search engines.

    If all search engines are controlled by the same government (and yes oh yes, they are controlled) the web suddenly becomes biased.

    Try searching for "marlboro" on google. What would you expect ? The marlboro home-page ? Oh, no; we have the Marlboro College, poems, but no tobacco company home page. Coincidence? Well, a search for IRIX gives me the SGI home page, so I think the search engine works as designed - what do you think?

  19. Re:Yahoo by Derkec · · Score: 3, Informative

    I believe I read recently that only something like 30% of google's income came from advertising. The rest came from selling it's searching capabilities to other search engines. I know I've read that Yahoo works to maintain there own categories while using Google for its web page matches.

  20. They miss the whole point. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Google does kickass, and I'm sure the guys that run it will continue to fine tune things so thaat it improves. But the truth is, we're already approaching the limit of what a search engine can do, and any gains will simply be the last 1/100 of that last percent.

    Should we stop trying? No, the need for relevant results hasn't been fulfilled, except in the most minimal ways. But we need to look for new answers. I think that to take this any further, it will mean going client-side. To make results more relevant requires too much cpu power, to aggregate it at the engine website. A client side agent, using google as a starting point, and sifting through the results, spidering through them, makes sense. Don't start whining about traffic increase, the same thing happens now, only it's the person himself doing the spidering.

    Also, the entire keyword paradigm is at odds with but the most simplistic search. Sometimes I'm looking for a diagram, or I'm looking to buy aa hard to find part. Some engines, like lycos allow you to search for audio or stills, but it borders on lameness. This needs to be epxanded. You need to be able to tell the engine, "hey I'm just looking for general info" or "hey I want to buy something with these parameters". For instance, the diagrams I look for, they can either be gif/jpeg or ascii art. A decent engine/agent should have no trouble returning results thaat reflect these requirements. Same with the "buying" type search, the electronic parts I'm looking for are not common items, and adding a keyword of "shopping cart" doesn't always cut it. As I see it, there are at least a few different types of searches, that a person might make.

    I want to buy this item (or a simlar)
    I want to find info (of an encyclopedic nature)
    I want to find leads about (I don't quite know what I'm looking for yet)
    I want to hear news about...
    I want to find this file/software (or a similar one)
    I want to be entertained about/with...

    These things all lend themselves perfectly to a client-side agent. Those websites that don't bother to tag images properly, and yet the image is just stylized text? An agent has the power to OCR it back to normal, something an engine could never hope to do. Get rid of all the mirrors? Google is better at this than any other engine, but can it compete with an agent that can recognize a text mirror or a html page, or vice versa? Or any of the other nifty little optimizations that aren't even obvious to me at the moment? Sure, there will be problems. I'm not sure Joe AOL being able to accept that a proper search will take longer than it takes for a web page to load, but it still seems like the next killer app to me.

  21. Wisenut ignored my robots.txt by Pasc · · Score: 4, Informative
    Wisenut continues to spider content that I ask not to be spidered (using my robots.txt). In fact, I have over 200 hits to my site from wisenut.com's spider but NONE of them are to my robots.txt.

    Hence, I refuse to use wisenut.

    1. Re:Wisenut ignored my robots.txt by beme · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Have you told them? Not trying to be a smartass or anything... A couple of years ago I shot off an email to the owner of a spider that was ignoring my robots.txt, and lo and behold a bit later the spider started checking and honoring my robots.txt file. YMMV.

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      -beme
      1971
  22. Re:Hmm.. by ahrenritter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would prefer that the newsgroup messages not be indexed because it can clutter your results list if that is not what you are looking for. If you know that what you are looking for should be in newsgroups (e.g. it is a question you are looking for the answer to) you could look it up at Google Groups

    --

    All I wanted was a rock to wind a piece of string around, and I ended up with the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota
  23. Google's sense of humor by Alex+Kalita · · Score: 5, Funny
    If you get bored, check out some of the languages you can select on Google's preferences page.

    31337 H4x0r g00g13
    Google in the language of "Bork, bork bork!"
    Igpay Atinlay Ooglegay

    1. Re:Google's sense of humor by Hal_9000@!!!@ · · Score: 4, Insightful
      You forgot Elmer Fudd. but oh well...

      To me this really shows the personality behind Google. They are a company of friendly, caring people, which is apparent just by looking at All About Google, or looking at the story of one of their staff taking a bike trip.

      Google is a company with culture, a web site with a personality and a huge Linux cluster that they show off to the world. IMHO, Google's corporate personality has helped make it the best. That personality is what keeps the staff working, coming up with new ideas and technologies that push the web forward.

      I don't see that on any of these new engines, and I think that that will in some ways dig their graves, just as Altavista's selloff did. Remember when it was altavista.digital.com? Remember feeling that there were people behind that site who cared less about how much money AltaVista was making and more about improving search technology? Then it turned into its own enterprise, no longer Digital's expariment. When it became a garbage portal, it lost that wholesome goodness that it once had. RIP, AltaVista. Congrats Google, live long and prosper.

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      My email is real.
  24. Um, ask slashdot? by JohnTheFisherman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Most people don't use Google anyways, they just go straight to Ask Slashdot. :(

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    +5:offtopic,but anti-American
  25. W.H.A.T. by basking2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The College of New Jersey and Villanova University are working on a search engine called W.H.A.T. which uses AI to apply contexts to search results. The idea is that the user can express some how more than words do, the meaning of the target. Pretty interesting stuff.
    I'm biased as I worked on it for a year, though. :-)

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    Sam
  26. Search Engines We'd Like to See: by Bonker · · Score: 4, Funny

    SpammerQuery - The home addresses and personal phone numbers of spammers.

    EinsteinExpress - When you absolutely, positively have to have next month's kernal patch yesterday...

    SlashBot - The home addresses and personal phone numbers of FP'ers and goatse.cx linkers.

    BootyCall - All porn all the ti... wait a second. We've got images.google.com for that! Sorry, my bad.

    --
    The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
  27. Teoma discussed earlier on /. interesting article by hillct · · Score: 4, Informative

    Teoma was discussed earlier on /.. The article featured in that posting was quite interesting in it's own right and worth a close read, even if you don't go through the comments of the earlier post.

    --CTH

    --

    --Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
  28. my 2 cents by pjgunst · · Score: 3, Informative

    I just tried them all out, here are my 2 cents.
    1) They all try to distinguish themselves by stating "we're not just another search engine...". Basically, they are.
    2) Wisenut is by far the least bloated, and it shows in terms of speed.
    3) Lasoo combines "white pages" with a web directory. Clever, but putting it all on one page is a bit overkill IMHO.
    4) None of them is as configurable as google.

    However, it will be nice to see how they develop. They all need an innovative feature though, something to make the switch from google worthwhile.

  29. Hmm.. by jasno · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How about a search engine that doesn't index 'rpmfind' mirrors and newsgroups so searches for linux related info turn up something more useful than 50 pages of rpmfind entries...

    Ok, yeah, I know how to use '-', but its still annoying...

    --

    http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
  30. Re:One of the great features of Google by jilles · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The cache is a nice gimmick which I've found useful quite a few times, however the main reason I keep returning to google is that I actually find what I need fast. Yesterday I needed some background on C++ templates. I entered the terms "C++ templates tutorial" in the ie google toolbar (that is a great feauture IMHO) and found what I needed at the top of the returned results. 15 seconds later the stuff I needed was on its way to the printer.

    That kind of convenience is hard to beat by a general purpose search engine. The story changes if you start using meta information to narrow the search. Google does not do that as far as I know. However, using meta information inevitably narrows the scope of a search engine. Efficient distributed search engines for multimedia are currently emerging. E.g. morpheus actually uses meta information attached to a mp3 allowing for searches for tracks of a particular album, more albums of the same artist and so on.

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    Jilles
  31. One of the great features of Google by jerw134 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is the cache. Especially for readers of Slashdot, because it allows them to see a site after it has been Slashdotted. From my quick glance at the other sites, none of them had that technology. That is why I will continue to use Google!

  32. Re:Altavista by Lxy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Payola killed the search engine. Yahoo use payola since the get-go (or shortly after) and it was quickly discovered that they sucked. Now all the other search engines have admitted to it, and Google came out a true winner. Now companies want a piece of Google, just as they wanted a piece of Altavista. I just hope Google doesn't become what Altavista is now.

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    There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
    :wq