Google Turns 5

Gantic writes "The BBC has an article on Google's 5th birthday. The popular search engine now handles over 200 million queries a day and the word "Google" is now a noun, adjective and verb. Lets see how long the most popular search engine in the world can last, here's to another 5 years and more Google!"

Comments

Happy Birthday!

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple and to the point :-)

Why..?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why another five years? Do we not want a better search engine to come along? Google is nice and all, but if someone can come up with something better... Well, I'd prefer that.

google censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

While I normally have nothing but praise for google, there have been a number of recent censorship issues which one should be mindful of. Google is a privately own company, based on profit, don't forget it.

That said, thankfully you can still type "google censorship" into google itself and get a heap of results. The force may be strong with this one.... but it was strong with Vader also.

Re:google censorship

[Sphere1952]

I'm very impressed with the way google is handling the whole DMCA crap. They are adhering strictly to the law in order that they not be the butt of a lawsuit, but they are also making a mockery of the law.

It is google policy to: "...document all notices of alleged infringement on which we act. A copy of the notice will be sent to a third party who will make it available to the public."

The third party is the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, and Google puts up a statement at the bottom of the page pointing at this notice. Since the notice has to list the specific sites to be removed, there is a nice list of all the removed sites -- and who wanted them removed.

If this isn't giving the DMCA the finger then what is?

Re:google censorship

[jesterzog]

The third party is the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, and Google puts up a statement at the bottom of the page pointing at this notice.

I agree entirely, but I'd prefer it if google put the notice at the top of the results instead of the bottom. How frequently do you scroll to the end of a page of search results?

Tech beats marketing

[j_dot_bomb]

The thing that makes feel good about google is that it is a company that is so driven by what tech people think would be useful to people rather than by MBA marketer types who seem to want popups and cluttered image filled pages. Employees spend 1/3 of their time just creating new wild ideas. I wish I was good enough to work there.

Copyrights ..

[jest3r]

I would guess that living under the law of the DMCA will eventually be the downfall of Google.

Google is good but dangerous as well

[acegik]

Since google is the most popular search engine out there, they have the power to "remove" you from the internet. If someone at google headquarters decides to remove you from the search results, you don't exist. I know this debate is old but maybe some restrictions should be enforced since they hold much power, some would say too much.

Re:Google is good but dangerous as well

[smart.id]

They don't just remove people for no reason, and they certainly wouldn't do it for their own vendettas. Google has shown that they believe in free speech. In the past, the only reason they've censored their results is because of cease and desist letters claiming DMCA violations (usually from big companies). Besides, you could always use MSN, with their Fair and Balaced(TM) results!

Remember when they bought the Dejanews archive?

[mfarah]

Man, we've come a long way. Back when they bought the Dejanews Usenet archive, all comments I saw were of the "Who are these guys?"-"What do they want with our beloved archive?"-"Will they keep it public or they'll make it a paid service?"-"Is their search engine any good?" kind.

Now we take its groups search feature for granted, we think nothing of other search engines (Yahoo!, anyone?) and we use Google to search for images (back in MY day, those were the hardest to search, having to search and download lots of stuff from ftp sites and then discard the junk).

I love Google.

Re:Not the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I do a search for something and all I get are the top sponsored sites.

Sponsored link which is clearly highlighted as a sponsored link, and is easy to ignore as a sponsored link. If you truely think this is a problem then I do not know what to suggest; how else are Google to stay afloat? Its not like they inject paid links into the relevent search results in an effort to trick you into clicking on it.

I do agree that Google should not be removing links just because some jumped up lawyer coughed up a C&D letter, but then you also have to look at it from Googles point of view; their job is to run a web search engine, not to defend litigation.

alltheweb has ftp indexes!

[Pegasus]

something i'm still missing at google are 'file searches'. lets say i know a name of the file and would like to find some ftp servers that still have it. how i do that with google?

Re:Adjective?

[AaronStJ]

> Seriously, can someone come up with an adjectival usage, or are they just dumb?

How about 'google search.' As in, 'just do a google search for it.' That usage is pretty common, and in that contect, google is an adjective modifying the word 'search.'

Google and SEs: Positive Force for Western Society

[reporter]

Google and other search engines (SEs) have ensured that people can have timely access to key items of news. Merely having an Internet is not enough. The Internet is huge, and you can become lost in the jungles of useless information. SEs provide a roadmap through the jungle and show you the way to the information that you want.

Do you remember the "bad old days" before SEs and the Internet? We often recall an article of news that may be relevant to a discussion with friends and colleagues. We want to retrieve the article, but we have already forgotten the title (or worse) the source of the article. With a SE, you can now find the article via the Internet. Many of the relevant articles shall remain on the Internet for a long time.

In general, any reasonably educated person (i. e. a person who distinguishes reputable news sources from unreputable news sources) can now have ready access to high-quality information about almost any subject of interest. Just go to the SE and do a search. In this way, SEs and the Internet benefit society greatly. Now, we can more intelligently make decisions about the actions of governments and whole societies since we can easily retrieve and review the previously read information that is necessary for those decisions. Agents of deception seeking to manipulate, for example, American society and American government will be defeated. With the power of the SEs and the Internet, we can more easily distinguish lies from truths.

A case in point is "Reality of Taiwan". I was able to retrieve key information that might have been lost in the "bad old days" before the SEs and the Internet. Using the retrieved information (which comes from reputable Western sources), I constructed an accurate image of Taiwan. This image is the same one that senior government officials have contructed in the highest echelons of the American government. The image is quite shocking to the general American public, which Taiwanese agents (including paid lobbyists, Taiwanese politicians, etc.) have long manipulated.

... from the desk of the reporter

Re:Google Fan Boys

[evilviper]

Let's cover the objections shall we?

1. Google's immortal cookie:

Fair point, but cookies are well-known and expected by now. Mozilla allows you to set an expiration date for all cookies, proxies like Privoxy allow you to selectively allow cookies from sites, and block all others. Most importantly, none of these privacy-increasing measures hinder the functionality of Google, which is unusual. Lots of sites give you the brush-off when you don't allow cookies and/or javascript, even though they don't have any use for them on the site. Google comes out ahead of 90% of company sites here.

2. Google records everything they can:
It's obviously that they have to record some information to function, but everyone expects information to be collected in aggregate. If someone can say that google has all my search terms linked to my IP address, with dates and times, then I would be concerned.

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Well duh.

4. Google won't say why they need this data:
And other companies will? I think not. They have a privacy policy.

5. Google hires spooks:
Any large company has people that have been emplayed in unusual places. That doesn't show any rational link.

6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
Everyone knows this, and installing it is completely optional.

7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Sorry. No. Wrong.

8. Google is not your friend:
Couldn't think of anything good, so now we resort to name-calling.

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
Way too vague. Saying that there is potential for abuse is ridiculous. You could make any conspiracy theory about any sector. Maybe HP is hiding microphones in computers, and the goverment is spying on you. Maybe Zenith is hiding cameras in your TV. Maybe, maybe, maybe. In other words, there is NO evidence of any of this.

Anyone want to fill me in on why google is bad?

Re:Do you use another?

[evilviper]

alltheweb. why?

Even better... "Why not?"

For one, the fourth search result returned for "slashdot" happens to be goatse.cx... WOAH! If it can't get "slashdot" right, I don't want to even think about how terribly awful searches for rare/hard-to-find subjects are going to be. That's one of the reasons I love google so much... All search engines were that bad before it came along. Even if you don't like it, you have to love how it improved the quality of other search engines!