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Honeymoon Over For Google?
scubacuda writes "Business Week has an article on some of the challenges Google faces as it gains popularity. For a while, things were looking good: unobtrusive ads, a hardware search appliance, and the fact that 'google' has become a verb (like xerox, kleenex, hoover, etc.). Now, Yahoo! has dropped the 'exclusive' part of its contract, Overture won a series of key contracts, Verity has announced a deal to purchase Inktomi's assets, and Y! announced it was buying Inktomi's web-search business. And other engines such as WiseNut, Teoma, and FAST now mimic Google's 'popularity placement technology.'"
They may start to see more channenges, but by and large people will still "google" things. People who always use google will as long as they remain a great search engine...if they start letting the results slip, then all bets are off.
Google has IMHO the best search-engine technology around. However, the time is coming for more intelligent engines--content based searching is around the corner, and I'm sure that development is being done at Google. I want to search for pictures by content (not by filename). I want a larger set of query commands (NEAR, etc). Kartoo has an intuitive (and addicting) interface, and the ties it generates are... cool.
I don't think google losing some contracts will mean very much. Anyone can piggy back off of them, and if they can make a better product, more power to them, but I think google is around to stay.
Any word on an IPO?
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Is whatever happened to Alta Vista. Remember when they ruled the search engine universe?
:-(
I first heard of Google when I got a semi-hysterical letter from Assembler God Steve Gibson raving about it.
I didn't abandon AV until after their second edition of Personal Alta Vista insisted on using my browser (where the first edition used a little window) and engendered a whole bunch of 505 errors and became useless.
They HAD to add a layer of complexity...
So whatever DID happen to Alta Vista?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
With all the recent talk about Google becoming a search monopoly, we should welcome this. This will keep the pressure on Google to remain excellent.
Oh, and I know this sounds a lot like the comment I just made under the KHTML story.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
"I for one hope that google lasts - I would even pay a small amount if it would help keep them going"
Gotta wonder what it would take to dethrone Google, thouogh.
Personally, I think their image search is great. If they'd beef that up a bit, I'd be seriously considering a subscription not unlike the kind Slashdot has. $5 for 1,000 image searches or something like that. The catch is that it'd have to be better than the one today. Perhaps if they had a rewards system where you could earn searches by taking pics around the web and logging meta-data for them or something.
Google uses (at the last count I've seen) over 50 different factors in deciding what ranking a website should get on a certain search term. Part of their monthly rankings dance is rebalancing the importance of these factors to try to maintain the integrity of the results. Searchking's earlier lawsuit was over the effects of one earlier dance. PageRank is only the most visible of the components deciding a page's score, due to it's ingeniousness and to it being the only quantitative data released about the evaluation process (because of the google toolbar).
Also, don't forget about google's wildly successful Pigeon rank system.
Google: 1, Google 2, Yahoo Yahoo: 1, Google 2, Yahoo Lycos: 1, Lycos 3, Google Altavista: 1, Altavista 2, Google Pretty amazing that Yahoo doesn't clock out on #1 on their own site...
I agree. Google holds *too* much sway on the Web. Their listings either make or break a web site. I know that Google does some very wierd things with some of my listings (first page one day, not in the directory the next), and there's literally nobody to contact, and nothing that I can do about it. I know that other people are in the same boat. I'm all for multiple search engines.
There are tons of "races" like that on the Internet. Google gets to decide the winners. Yes, it is just silly fun, but the point is that the masses accept google as the definitive source.
--naked
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
I think their News search is downright revolutionary. Not only do I get news categorized by what people really want to see but I can instantly check out viewpoints from all sides at the same time.
Its now my primary news source.
I think one of the key things Google had going for it from the start was a funky, easy-to-say name. The marketing guys thought up a wonder there. Probably the only reason it has become "verbified" is because it's the only damn search engine that's easy to say. Remember when Alta Vista was the shiznit? Anyone ever try to say "i'm gonna altavistararaaadiddlyah some page"? It just doesn't work.
I got a sig so you would remember me.
But I'm saddened to see yet another Slashdotter using Windows NT 5.1. Surely you can tear yourselves away from the soft, familiar womb that is Windows.... Try it, give it a go, be adventurous. You might never leave the town your were born in, but do something crazy, wild, exciting in your life....
Ya know, I'm kinda getting sick of always seeing this on slashdot.
So I happen to be surfing on my windows box. Yippee! My linux boxes I mostly use as servers (web/mail/firewall),coding and work (I'm a sysadmin in a mostly Sun shop) because that's what they're best at (not to mention one is a P200 that I don't even dare launch X on). I use my windows box to do net stuff (cuz face it, alot of browser plugins and such arent available on windows), gaming and graphics work. I'm thinking of even getting a Mac to do my graphics work instead of doing it on Windows.
Linux is good for some things, Windows for others and Macs for other things. I use whatever platform is best for what I want to do. No OS is the be all and end all of operating systems. They all have their different strengths and weaknesses. So be adventurous, open your mind, don't be narrowminded.
Windows user since 1990
Unix user since 1991 (AIX)
Linux user since 1993-94
Solaris user since 1998
and possible future Mac user
It's better to burn out than to fade away
When it shoves you over to Google.ca, look near the bottom and there is a link to google.com.
If you click this link you get to the regular google.
And for me after clicking this link I no longer get shunted to google.ca.
Plus I think the results are the same no matter which page you go from, so you're not really missing out on anything, you just get a handy little option to search only Canadian web pages.
(posting as AC due to sensitivity of post)
Errr, what in God's name gave you the idea that Yahoo were dropping Google.
Quite the reverse is true, according to a friend of mine who just, oooh, happens to be a search engineer for Yahoo.
Yahoo are furthering integrating Google into their search systems, and are toning down their old hand-moderated systems. I assume this last part is in an attempt to cut staffing costs.
Yahoo have no plans to integrate another major search partner at present (except for ads). I know this because my friend would be one of the people implementing it, and we've talked about it, and he has specifically said it's not happening.
This is not true, as many Canadian users have known for a while and many Australian users such as myself have just discovered. Google now redirects the front page (www.google.com) to a country-specific front page based on your IP address. Sure, it's a nice service to have local information available (the paid advertisements down the side change to local advertisements, amongst other things), but it really sucks that you're forced to use it. Most users don't know to change their bookmark to http://www.google.com/intl/en/ to return to the "real" Google, so they're stuck with it. This was the number one reason why i changed from Alta Vista to Google in the first place, and now i'm really wondering whether i should stick with it. raging.com is Alta Vista's minimal search, and it's just as fast and sleek as google, AND it doesn't assume just because you come from 203.x.x.whatever you're automatically interested in Australian content.
I got a sig so you would remember me.
If you're using Windows...
:, it searches a dictionary instead of Google).
:-)
As long as you don't mind the name, Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar rocks.
Of COURSE, like any useful search utility, it defaults to Google; but unlike many others, it has a HUGE number of other engines, and lets you add as many more as you want, distinguishing what type of search you want to do by little features of your search (for example, if your "search" looks like a calculator expression, it'll just replace the expression with the answer; if your search ends with a
The neatest part? It sits in your Start bar, not in your browser window -- so it takes up less useful space, and doesn't need your browser to be open.
Oh, and it works with any browser, not just IE.
I, of course, use it almost entirely with Google -- but this seems to disprove your assertion that if someone else had a nice search bar Google wouldn't be relevant.
Try it! It's good.
-Billy
A moderation system that promotes closed-minded groupthink and usenet-style trolling, driving away interesting debate and discussion
I think the moderation would be more useful if the moderation were not anonymous, and if the friend/foe list let you ignore certain moderator's moderations.
I also think the the moderation system should allow certain anonymous postings to be completely deleted. Like the time some anonymous asshole called a person who lost his daughter obscene names, and blamed him for losing his daughter.
The friend/foe list is, in my opinion, a much better idea; it more closely mimics a traditional Usenet killfile.
I find it ironic that one of Slashdot's biggest sponsers these days is Microsoft. Perhaps the average Slashdot reader has gotten down to that level.
Usenet has a lot of problems; Slashdot did look like a viable Usenet replacment once upon a time, but is getting to be less and less of one.
Don't forget Froogle (http://froogle.google.com) too! There always seems to be something new and tasty coming out of Google labs... :)
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
People keep asking why Altavista died ...
If I remember correctly, it went as follows:
Altavista was the top search engine among the cognoscenti. Then one day, someone found out that Altavista had been selling top search spots to the highest bidder. These spots weren't specially marked in any way -- they were being presented as plain old search results. People felt betrayed by their old standby and started using other search engines. Some time after that, Google appeared on the scene.
At least, that's how I remember it.
-monique
how could a company that used Dilbert as a mascot on their logo - ever have their business begin to slip?! :)
Seriously tho - I think Google has a good chance of sticking around just because they have such a large user base - which is mostly due to the fact that A LOT of people who search for "things" don't want to look at a big pile of crap like Alta Vista or Yahoo (although I like yahoo's other features). But the fact remains if I want to look for "fish" I don;t want to a site like Yahoo that has hella ads and flashing images and links ALL OVER THE PAGE. I just want to bring up a page that has a field where I type in what I want and THEN get a page full of ACCURATE links.
I think if google was going to start losing money they could very easily add on a "google-groups" feature and "google - email" and keep a significant amount of people.
Ave Molech Setting
I really love google. I remember when AltaVista became a junky, bolated portal loaded with ads and cruft. Google was like a breath of fresh air--light, fast, and accurate.
.NET, 1.5" all stump google), date limits, etc.
The quibbles I have with Google are the lack of more advanced search features. This is a design choice to keep thinks fast.
Here's an idea: a paid subscription to Google (GooglePro?) to allow searches with pattern matching, term proximity, non-alpha characters (C#,
Keep the good and add more real features (more steak for more $, not the AltaVista disaster of artificial sizzle only).
Changing the wording of their logo like that makes it appear that you are trying to capture misspelled traffic for your own benefit. I fail to see how it was in any way a parody aside from the changing of the letters and hawking your links and providing an interface to their engine that can easily be construed as "intentionally confusing" to users.
Hammer of Truth
This seems to me to be a non-issue. So it gives you an Australian version of Google. So what? I went to www.google.com.au, it looks the same as regular Google, by default it still searches the entire Internet.... The only thing that seems to be different is the *additional* option to search only Aussie sites. The ads looked the same too (and if you get ads for services you could actually purchase locally, what's the downside?). I don't get what the problem is. In fact, it's probably better because you wouldn't get DMCA removals and such.
Omnes arx vestrum sunt adiuncta nobis.
People love google...Everyone is now using it...
"Back in the day" everyone used Altavista. The boolean searches were unparalleled and it found things no other search engine could find. I also would pay a small amount to keep Google going. i haven't found anything that comes close to Google's ability to find what I'm looking for. But for years I said the same thing about Altavista...I'm not saying Google's time is up yet, but there have been others before that haven't fared very well.
Crispin
----
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Security Hardened Linux Distribution
Available for purchase
After reading the topic I went to Wisenut.com and searched for GUI RESEARCH, I was looking for an iteresting thread that appeared on past July here at Slashdot:2 36&mode=thread/)
GUI Research - Is it Still Being Done? (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/06/21/0046
Besides my interest on the subject I choosed to look for GUI RESEARCH, because I remember that I accidentally closed the thread I was reading at Slashdot.com, and having many webpages opened in my browser it took me some time to find the thread again. The first thing I tried is searching in Slashdot, failed, oddly I can't find the article with Slashdot's own search engine.
I didn't easily find it in the browser History, because I had visited lots of Slashdot topics and other sites. To my surprise Wisenut has given me the article URL in second place!!! And if I set English as the prefered language, the link comes out in first place.
Google.com shows me in place 92, a site that has a link to the thread, the thread itself doesn't appear in any of the 383,000 URLs that Google found, Wisenut.com found 144,913 documents and gave me right away the article that I was looking for. Wisenut.com also returned the site that links to the thread, in 9th place, as I said the thread itself came naturally first.
Just in case, I tried limiting the search in Google to results from the site Slashdot.org, but the searched thread didn't come out either. 238,087 more documents than Wisenut and Google can't find it, weird.
I'm not sure if this lame search demonstrates anything really relevant, and I'm going to keep on using Google.com as my prefered search engine, but I'm also going to keep an eye on Wisenut.com, wonderful results.
I'm also a big fan of Google News. Another thing about Google I like is the fact that you can input your search term once and then run it through all the tabs (Web, Images, Groups, Directory, News). Saves time and finds you some interesting unexpected results.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
> Google controls nothing which is not their property to begin with.
Who cares about property? The thing is, we depend on google to make the Web useful. Think about what it would be like without google. We'd be stuck with search engines like Altavista and Ask Jeeves. They're not bad, and I used to use Altavista before google came along, (I sometimes use jeeves for queries that are better phrased as questions instead of keywords). Still, they certainly aren't up to google's standards.
The situation is like an electricity company in at the start of the industrial age. At first, big deal, it doesn't matter what they do. Once lots of things become dependent on electricity, it becomes something to worry about. Sorry, not awake enough to carry this analogy further. Otherwise, I might say something about gov't regulation, and whether or not it is waranted for search engines. (remember, just because something ends up a certain way because of capitalism doesn't make that way good.)
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,