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Will Google Become Another Netscape?
kaluta asks: "The Economist has a typically clear and concise story about bringing Google to the stockmarket. Basically, is it going to be the next eBay or Amazon, or will it 'simply be the next overhyped share sale to make its founders rich only to wither away miserably, either for lack of a sustainably profitable business model, or, like Netscape, because it finds itself in the path of that mighty wrecker, Microsoft?' Cool picture too."
This quote from the article is the key issue I think. (The IPO is rumored to be for a total of $15 billion)
Google is doing great, but they can't expect to dominate internet searches any more than they do. In fact, their business plan should allow for their market share in that area to decrease significantly. Each time a the next great new SE comes along, it quickly takes a big bite out of the market as Google itself has done most recently. Where might they expand their business in the future? (And how much revenue and/or profit do they need to justify a $15 billion market cap, anyway? I know it's alot more than the profit numbers in the article).
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
it still provides a good search engine with no ads it can't become another Netscape. If it becomes too bloated on the main search engine page it'll still be a good search engine. However, if they change the search engine code so much that it no longer functions efficiently and smoothly without problems (the way it does now), it may become a failure.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Google is so immensely popular, it is practically "a must" for most web surfers now. It is hard to imagine Google losing advertisers any time soon, and easy to see Google using its new money to pioneer further innovations. In the least, you would expect Google to expand more into other markets, with a portal like Yahoo, more appliances, or even web hosting (host on Google, get a bump in your search rating?).
I'd like to see google stay small and private. An IPO opens google up to stockholder pressures, and all sorts of not-good things. Besides, part of the appeal of google, at least for me, is that it is lean and has few ties, obligations, or partnerships with EvilCorportations.
Google holds way too much power. MS buying them would taint the brand and encourage people to seek out alternatives, which have been busy narrowing the usability gap. Diversity in the search engine space would be a very welcome development.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Ah yes, a search engine company attempting to "find" itself. Maybe they could just goo... never mind.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
The real problem is it being overvalued.
From what I've read they're going to generate anywhere from 20 to 45 billion during the IPO. How can a company that relies on ad revenue and provides only a search engine (albeit a very good one) be worth that much?
It actually depends on the expectations of the shareholders, if an IPO leads to the death of a company. Normally a company is expected to be worth a certain multiple of its earnings (or better, the cashflow, because cashflow is difficult to forge). A normal multiple would be 10, which gives me a 10% return rate (I buy the company for 100 and get 10 out of it every year). If google has USD 100 Mio of earnings, it's worth would be USD 1000 Mio, if valued this way. This of course would be a fair value, because it enables them to pay their investors an annual dividend of 10% of the stock price, even without any growth. In this scenario, they could stay in their search-engine-business, something they can (obviously) handle successful. The problem is, google will not aim at a valuation of one billion, they will aim at a valuation that is about ten times higher. And that means, they will have to grow a lot in a short time, something that will propably kill them.
.... and contact Archive.org
Google is now more than a business: it is a cultural phenomenon. But where will it be in a few years?
IF THE ultimate measure of impact is to have one's name become a new verb in the world's main languages, Google has reason to be proud. When they founded the company five years ago, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, friends at Stanford University, chose a word play on "googol"--the number 1 followed by 100 zeros--because their ambition was to organise the information overload of the internet in a transparent and superior way. These days, singles "google" suitors before agreeing to a date, housewives "google" recipes before cooking, and patients "google" their ailments before visiting doctors. Dave Gorman, a comedian, even has a popular show, the "Googlewhack Adventure"--a Googlewhack being what happens when two words are entered into Google and it comes back with exactly one match.
As search engines go, in other words, Google has clearly been a runaway success. Not only is its own site the most popular for search on the web, but it also powers the search engines of major portals, such as Yahoo! and AOL. All told, 75% of referrals to websites now originate from Google's algorithms. That is power.
For some time now, Google's board (which includes two of Silicon Valley's best-known venture capitalists, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital) has been deliberating how to translate that power into money. They appear to have decided to bring Google to the stockmarket next spring. Bankers have been overheard estimating Google's value at $15 billion or more. That could make Google Silicon Valley's first hot IPO since the dotcom bust, and perhaps its biggest ever.
Will Google go public?
Feb 21st 2002
That alone is enough to have some sceptics whispering "Netscape". Now that the worst of the dotcom hangover is clearing, they wonder, will Google become one of the few valuable internet survivors, joining Amazon and above all eBay? Or will it simply be the next overhyped share sale to make its founders rich only to wither away miserably, either for lack of a sustainably profitable business model, or, like Netscape, because it finds itself in the path of that mighty wrecker, Microsoft?
The search for profits
Google, naturally, is determined to avoid Netscape's fate at all costs. This was why it made Eric Schmidt its chief executive in 2001. Mr Schmidt was 46 at the time--Messrs Brin and Page were in their twenties--and was the boss of Novell, a software firm decimated by Microsoft but given another lease of life under his leadership. He seemed suitably "adult" to turn Google into a money-making machine.
Mr Schmidt understood that the key to monetising all those customer searches (now 200m a day) was to place small, unobtrusive and highly relevant text advertisements alongside Google's search results. Advertisers like this system because they pay only if web surfers actually click on their links. And consumers either do not mind, or even learn to love these commercial links for their relevance, just as they appreciate the Yellow Pages.
Google did not pioneer this "paid search" advertising. That honour falls to Overture, a Californian firm bought this year by Yahoo! which still has about half of the $2 billion-or-so market. Nor did Google's founders readily embrace the concept. Mr Page was once heard to say at a trade show that commercial exploitation was "bastardising" the search industry. Mr Schmidt made the concept uncontroversial at Google, thereby helping paid search to become the fastest growing part of the advertising industry today.
The next step is to take this approach to advertising from the results pages of search engines and on to other web pages. Increasingly, web publishers--from hobby bloggers to small businesses--allow firms such as Google to crawl through the content of their pages and place relevant text advertisements in the right margin. Once page visitors click on the links, the webmasters share
Google is the leader in search engine industry. It's going to be interesting to see what Microsoft does, since they will no longer be using Inktomi, they need a search engine.
cool link: Google Ranking Report find out where your site is in google's results!
Although 'The Economist' can be thought provoking [good thing] its economic analysis is trash [bad thing] - articles brush over facts, present dodgy one sided (and often politically biased) analysis and present conclusions as fact. So draw your own opinions from the article but do not take anything from The Economist served on a plate.
-- Alchohol is a hard drug. Cannabis is a soft drug.
define google -- look at the top listing where it says: Web Definition.
Google has a couple neat things I never knew about like definitions..
define linux
define irc
It also has a calculator and unit converter:
1.21 GW / 88 mph
1 parsec in lightyears
The biggest Q that bothers me is : why hasn't anyone come up with a serious alternative for google ? I mean : the concept of pagerank might be pattented & hidden, but investors should know by now that there's loads of cash to be made with searchengines. Hardware isn't so much of a deal anymore too, and neither is bandwith.
I find it amazing that other searchengines are not capable of copying google's keywords to success (pagerank + simple & clean interface). It's astounding actually... now where's that $100M when you need it ?
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Google still can't do phrase searching:
a search on "to be or not to be" produces 2 bogus results in the list of 10 (pages that do not contain the phrase). Other phrase searches produce other irrelevant, non-matching results among the good ones.
There is no good reason for such glitches. It is comparable to an SQL search for "last = jones" that well, shucks, produces a list with a few Smith's in it.
As for Netscape, I stopped using Netscape because each new version was slower and crashed a lot more. The way for Google to avoid being Netscape is to fix their bugs.
Because it just may happen
I personally have trust in Google for right now. As long as they don't violate that trust, I'll use them. If they do, I'll seek other alternatives. Google got its audience through word of mouth. They can also lose it through word of mouth.
I think that it is inevitable that Google will be swallowed up by MS for the simple reason that Google has a terrific hardware/software search asset and MS has 50 Billion Dollars. This will cause other services companies such as AOL and Apple to devise cluster computing farms of their own to provide internet search and data computing services. After Google gets swallowed another of the many search engines in the market will try to become top dog but the internet will become more and more of a .NET internet and everyone else comes third. Eventually their will be a MS/Intel internet and everyone else. Somewhere along there I will no longer have much interest in using the internet anymore as it will resemble the great wasteland of repeating garbage that now describes television and radio.
that Google will become another Netscape is if Microsoft abuses their desktop monopoly to force them out of business.
The real question here is if the DOJ will make MS allow other search engines to be used in Windows in place of MSN sort of like what they are supposed to be doing with web browsers, etc. in Windows right now.
My own two cents on why it won't happen.
Microsoft hasn't been a big enough fast-follower to take over Google's stranglehold. Microsoft was quick enough to get a browser out there while the internet was still in the process of popularizing itself.
Given that you can get search results from Microsoft's website content quicker through Google than through Microsoft's own search engine, I think it's too late for them to edge Google out short of buying it.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Paraphrase: "Its going to be a success or failure"
No shit, Sherlock
"Google is doing great, but they can't expect to dominate internet searches any more than they do. In fact"
Yes they can: there is room for improvement:
1) Phrase Searches. Google still can't do them: if you want accuracy, you have to elsewhere. If Google fixed the bugs (where sometimes 1/5 of the results do not contain the asked-for phrase), no more need to go elsewhere for accuracy.
2) Sloppy Meta Search Engines. I sometimes go to alltheweb to see what Google missed. If Google did this same kind of thing, another reason not to leave Google.
If you're going to frame this as an "on the one hand" and "on the other hand" situation, Netscape vs Ebay or Amazon is wrong. It should either be:
Webvan/Dr. Koop vs Ebay or Amazon (web companies with viable models vs web companies w/o viable models)
or
Netscape vs Intuit (people who got in the path of Microsoft and were destroyed vs people who got in the path of Microsoft and did just fine)
The two axes are totally orthogonal -- all kinds of combinations are possible.
I think it's safe to say that Google has a viable basic model: provide high-quality search, sell placed ads. It works. So the questions should really be: are they going to make stupid mistakes while being crushed by pressure from Microsoft, like Netscape, or are they going to keep their lead, like Intuit, who's resisted all attempts to be destroyed by MS?
My prediction: if the smart people stay running it, they'll stay ahead of MS. This is where the IPO comes in: in a public company, majority shareholders can take control and replace the smart folks with someone else who they think will do the job more like they'd like it. And it's easy to see what could happen then...
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Google holds no power. It's a search engine you can choose to use, or choose not to use. Until it is the ONLY search engine out there, it has no power at all. Where, pray tell, is the power of Yahoo! Or Dogpile? Or any of the other search engines out there?
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Google is the same way and they are expanding the breadth of their content like Amazon. If you want to find something on the web, newsgroups or news, you go to Google first.
I don't see how anyone else can easily overcome the economies of scale that Google has already attained.
Is Howard Dean's candidacy doomed?
"that Google will become another Netscape is if Microsoft abuses their desktop monopoly to force them out of business."
Netscape has only itself to blame for dying. While Microsoft was improving their browser technology, Netscape decided to downgrade it, making it much slower and crash-prone. Things might have been different if Netscape had bothered to improve their browser.
I stopped using Netscape because Netscape made their browser unusable.
Even now, they can't be bothered to compete. "Pop-up blocking" is a greatly desired feature. MSIE doesn't offer it. Netscape is too damn lazy to offer it themselves: it is like there are no brains left at the company (go to Mozilla, which has brains, for a pop-up-blocker version of Netscape).
Your search - Apple - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing "Apple".
Did you mean "Microsoft"?
Exactly. What is the Economist saying?
"Google is going public, just like another company once did! Are they that company?"
Uh, why would they be Netscape?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Depending on how Google plays it, they could still do quite well.
Netscape lost their position because MS not only integrated IE into the OS, but also because Netscape 3-4.x series was unmanageable spaghetti code, resulting in an inferior product. IE during that time made matters worse because it was improving in leaps and bounds. Sadly if only that last part were still true...
If Google wants to keep the crown against the likes of MS, they are going to have to fight hard, fight well, and never rest on their laurels. They're also likely going to have to play some hardball with MS too - keep in mind MS has not only the OS and browser, but also content sites such as MSNBC and a number of others.
Either way Google folks, best of luck to you!
As I read slashdot inside of epiphany, a variation of Mozilla, grandson of Netscape I ponder. A Google implosion that would result in the code being freely distributed and a 1,000 Google's across the net. You could even have a personal Google on your computer.
Dateline 2007: Girlfriend and you having a fight about something. She goes over to the computer and searchs for something you've carefully erased but the cache is still there! (*)&(*&#@$!
Note: this is "funny" not "troll" and no, personally I don't want to see Google IPO and explode. Its too useful for my everyday life.
become IPO billionaires, so I doubt your quaint notion of mom-and-pop will sway them!
What, you thought they were doing this for altruistic reasons? Welcome to capitalism.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
If I wanted free email, I go get free email. If I want to play java games, I go play java games. If I want to read news, I go read news. If I want to search the net, I search google.
It's simple, plain, and to the point. Sure, it has a bunch of features-in-testing that are full of maybe less than useful, but it still keeps the Search Engine aspect of Google a priority.
A logo, text input box and a couple of buttons is all it takes.
I will keep using Google unless it starts cluttering itself up with too many useless features on its front page.
- shazow
why no competition?
All The Web has been around for ages.
Whoever wrote this article for the economist was very "creative" with the truth. For example, they say that Schmidt (google ceo) brought in the text ads, but of course google had text ads long before they had Schmidt.
That's the great thing about the media; they start with a story and then make up facts or speculation to go with it.
My personal opionion is that google and netscape are very different if for no reason other than the fact that netscape consistently put out defective products. It wasn't until the very end (4.71?) that netscape finally got rid of most of the crashes and memory leaks.
...when they're making the kind of money even Google makes? The two founders of Google must be making several million dollars a year (if Google's profits of $150M a year are accurate).
I'd collect $10-20 and then go find something *interesting* to do. I'm sure running google would be interesting, but there's a whole huge world out there to be enjoyed, and $20M would make it very interesting indeed.
is it going to be the next eBay or Amazon
eBay has been a resounding financial success from day one, just incredible. You can't say that about Amazon, whose foray into profitability is somewhat recent, and nowhere near eBay's margins.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
"Wow, you must be some sort of fucking genius! Writing a search engine that returns results incredibly quickly from a base of millions upon millions of possible pages is a far cry from "where last = 'jones'"..."
I'm glad you are not involved in programming banking databases, or airline registration. It's not rocket science to quickly return results that are accurate. Hell, even altavista.com has no problem with 100% accurate phrase results from "millions upon millions" of results.
Get with the real world.
From the article:
Yes, except the one element that matters most: the relevance of the search results it returns. It's what makes Google's paid AdWords useful instead of annoying: at Google, even the ad results are (usually) relevant! If Yahoo can't match Google's relevance, people will still have a better experience going to Google. No matter that Yahoo has a competitive "pay to place relevant ads" service.
Actually, they'll probably have to do significantly better than Google. Teoma, as someone pointed out here yesterday(?), is nearly as good as Google at returning relevant results, yet it remains a niche player because "almost as good" or even "just as good" doesn't give people a compelling reason to switch.
I'm glad Slashdot is starting to pay a bit of attention to the economics of this whole twenty-first century schizoid trip. I was pretty sad that they had chose to post about pretty much any Nobel prize, except the one for economics.
And, well, I'm an economist too, and I particularly like 'The Economist' as a medium who doesn't deny the juicy details in the interaction between theory and empirical evidence to the non-economist layman.
Political bias is pretty hard to avoid, but where the left-of-center media will appeal to emotion and to misleading common sense, 'The Economist' shows as much actual content as you'll find outside the academic publications.
Really - it's not Fox News.
So, either Google will be successful in the long term... or it won't.
http://www.talknerdy.org
I thought it was pretty fucking stupid.
With the goo-goo-googley eyes!
It is a pretty bleak view of the future, but one that I could see happening. This should be insightful, not flamebait.
Information wants to be $1.98/lb.
There are a few things that most geeks can agree on. That is that google, and linux are the best, the world is round, and we all hate the RIAA/MPAA/DMCA.
One important difference is that people don't have to download Google like they did Netscape. All they have to do is type the simple text 'google.com' One reason Netscape lost is because people had to dl Netscape at a time when few had broadband. Also, Netscape's technology was becoming inferior.
+"to be or not to be"
That did not work either. Still 2 out of 10 results not containing the phrase.
On bug result is has only "2Bee or Nottoobee", the other just has "to be" in it.
Bring it on baby!
Hookers, high pay, foosball - the works!
It's all about the sticky eyeballs, synergy and the clicks and bricks!
If you're interested, parallel article from business 2.0, from a month or so ago.
Seriously, Mozilla is already much better browser than IE, just rough in few places (like SVG, XForms and MNG formats as well as Flash and Shockwave support) and of course used by only a small franction of Internet users despite the fact it is better. Same as Linux as a corporate server is already much better than Microsoft Servers, just rough in few places (like installation) and of course used in only a small fraction of corporation server rooms despite the fact it is better.
But the future of Linux is getting better and better with a strong help of IBM and few other big players. As for Mozilla its future is getting worse and worse as AOL is cutting the financing it. If Google will bring some cash for Mozilla developers in order to fix few showstoppers (like SVG, XForms and MNG formats as well as Flash and Shockwave) it will bring Mozilla onto desktops in more corporations. And *THEN* Google will become a next Netscape to be killed by Microsoft.
Right now Google doesn't kill any Microsoft revenue: with Google or without same users are buying OS with IE.
Less is more !
Even before Deja was acquired by Google I was willing to pay a subscription fee for access. Deja's (now Google's) technical USENET/newsgroup archives alone are invaluable and will only grow in value as time goes on. So part of their new business model can be a subscription system.
If you'll recall, Amazon's business plan stated that they would not be profitable for several years.
... ultimately it are the Google shareholders who are choosing between a quick MS-buck or an even bigger longer term bet with the IPO. From a shareholders pressure point of view, this could have been a Microsoft-pushed idea,... or not. I, for one, must only conclude that Microsoft tried unsuccessfully to take Google's market share in the past, which was an entirely different story with Netscape. Microsoft says it will launch their own new search engine in the near future, it wouldn't have been their first abandoned technology... Further more, google advertising works very good, and they seem to have a very solid business model. Having sold and bought technology companies myself, everything depends on the amount and (sometimes even more importantly) the conditions of the Microsoft offer. It's always better to ask for an even higher price instead of saying 'no' directly :)
But from a technology point of view, it would be sad to see google disappear as an innovative and independent company.
Microsoft's OS monopoly position will most propably weaken over the next 5 to 10 years, history might look upon a MS aquisition (not merger) as a big mistake...
or Bezos' excuse-making for mounting losses? Seems like that non-profit "business plan" was announced by Bezos about 2-3 years after Amazon went public!
;-)
Now, I don't have an MBA, but I recall from undergrad business that business plans are generally written and implemented before one goes public.
Regardless, you unintentionally prove my point: As an investor, I'll take a for-profit business model like eBay's over the infate-you-stock-price-regardless-of-earnings model that caused the dot-com crash!
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
How about the Google text ads? A lot of sites, slashdot being one of them, run these ads. Instead of a banner, you get 3-4 text ads that use Google magic (tm) to make them relevant to the content of the page. These are the only ads I ever click on, since these are the only ads that ever have anything to do with that I'm doing. As far as I know, Google is the only company that provides context sensitive ads. Running ads that people will actually click on seems like a very good way to make money. Plus Google also provides fee services to large companies, and they keep adding new stuff all the time. As long as Google remains as innovative as they have been, they'll last a very long time.
Friends? You have no friends! Nobody likes you!
????
But Google is my friend. I talk to Google everyday and Google gives me the answers. Google likes me.
I think capatalism is great but why not give Google an incentive to stay private or retain there business values. Everyone would condider paying for google. A small amount at lesat :) but it would never be worth billing every user. However a government or private organization grant/contract could gather enough money to subsidize Google's cost plus some and lety them generate the rest of there revenue else where. If it brings value to everyone why not let everyone support it so it can retain its value to everyone. If the contact had to be renewed every few years it would leave room for other businesss to fit the same mold if something else happened to google.
Netscape has a long and sad story, a company that once made the worlds number 1 browser and supported a lot of (at the time) cool features, made a mail program, and also a html wysiwyg editor. Then MS decided to improve IE. Then MS include IE in Windows. Then MS decided to make IE part of Windows and at the same time Netscape decided to stop improving Netscape to compete and now IE is really the number one browser for Windows and Apple machines (although Safari is coming along nicely on the Apple side) Now Netscape is just kinda like a lost cause a portal without any of the subscribers companies lie Yahoo have.
Google on the other hand doens't make a browser. They are a search engine with a minimalistic interface and a tons of great abilities and scalability to their service. MS doesn't really compete YET - i'm sure they do have plans too since they want to rule the world. Still Google makes it's money from 1) companies buying ad space and 2) companies buying it's technology to use for inhouse - Netscape sold a browser, which eventually wasn't worth $20
Will Google's search software continue to be worth whatever their price is? MS, IBM, Oracle, all make DB's and compete, but they aren't going to put eachother out of business because IBM and Oracle continue to make a better product - if Oracle decided not to update after 10g after 4 years they would be gone - a victim to whatever MS and IBM had come out with.
(yes Netscape did update, but they didn't have the stability, features, or function with websites that IE now has...
Ave Molech Setting
Funny how Microsoft has the potential of crushing and/ or "embrace, extend and take over" anything that's worth big bucks, but that it has no power over el-cheapo stuff, which is probably also the reason why M$ has to use the "anti-capitalistic behaviour" dogma too often.
:-)
:-)
"Free as in GNU" is just an extreme example, however, as shareware is just as uncruncheable to Big Mic. The secret is the money required to run the battle. M$ has an awful lot of money to burn, but that's nothing compared to being able to run the battle without any money at all, if needed.
I can't imagine Google not requiring an awful lot of money to run. Think about it: while webhosts still bills at the Mbit and Mbyte, Google seems to have no problem to store a complete, indexed local copy of just about the entire 'net. I mean, for crying out loud, why shouldn't we all just host our website in Google's cache? (Hey, that's not a bad idea at all
Anyway, now maybe if we're able to P2Pize/ SETIze google, so that every search is traded for some caching and calculation power (or something like that), maybe we can reduce the total cost of running the best indexer in the world to a number too low for Microsoft to catch and crunch. Just imagine the costs of maintenance to be reduced to paying a webhost and do some volunteer programming
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
For using the web nowadays I'd consider a fast, simple and unbiased search engine as important as the DNS system. Or almost.
1) I think it's quite important, that such a system isn't owned by microsoft or verisign (remember?) or aol but by the people. As communism is a bit outdated, I'd prefer to simply distribute the shares among as many different people as possible.
2) If it really gets a value of $15 billion at IPO, google simply has to grow big and fat, because it has to generate a hell of revenue - read: agressive advertising, annoying popups, selling aggregated userdata, demanding cash for good ranking at last. This would mean google getting unusable.
3) So it would be wise to keep the company value lower. Yes, that means selling shares a lot cheaper than the market would pay. It should be enough for google founders and venture capitalists to get rich anyway. Auctions are no good idea in this context, I think.
4) Then you've to make sure that the shares get (and stay) in the right hands: With Internet users like you and me and not with Bill Gates or some big fat bank. I'd suggest a google shareholder contest, something like the google programming contest. If you prove your competence by solving a technical riddle or answering some non trivial internet related questions you'll qualify (non transferable...) to buy up to 50 google shares.
5) Yes, it's still possible that people sell their shares afterwards (Microsoft will pay a good price...), but then you really can't complain: If you'd like to have a good search engine, don't sell your stock.
A related article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,1075 604,00.html
"Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, ages it is the rule." -- Nietzsche
No, they are Astalavista.
You mean when there are more searches they are cheaper?
Yes. One set of crawlers means the search engine spends more bandwidth on providing results and less on spidering pages and computing rankings, though they still have to be sent to the server farm. One set of coders means the search engine can spread out research and development costs over the revenue of more advertisements.
They are expanding the Web?
Google is expanding the amount of useful knowledge in the Web.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This is so cool. Try any of the following:
:-).
1 nibble in bits
1 byte in nibbles
1 kilobyte in bytes
1 megabyte in kilobytes
1 gigabyte in megabytes
1 terabyte in gigabytes
1 petabyte in terabytes
But, for any of you loking for the 'right' answer to that age old question, you're SOL.
P.S. - tan(pi/2) is finite
I worked at a company that went public, long before the .com boom.
The company went downhill immediately. The execs could no longer tell us anything about company plans because of disclosure rules.
The company could no longer take long term goals, instead having to stuff the channel and such to get profits this quarter.
I feel that if you like a company, the worst thing that can happen is if they go public. Because the only thing you can be sure of is that they will be a different company after the IPO. And will you like that new company as much as the old one?
Ron Popeil seems to agree, seeing similar results with his own company going public. After it folded he bought it back for barely more than the value of the company's inventory.
I much rather think the way HP did it is better. Don't go public until you really can't figure out another way to grow. Don't give up control you don't need to give up.
BTW, modding up your troll account with your other account is really unseemly.
You do realize IPs are tracked and that you can't mod yourself, right?
"Sufferin' succotash."
Here is my brilliant advise, worth tons of $$$ :)
The problem with Google is that it is based on the premise that the internet will continue to grow through the web. Browsing will be dead in 4-5 years, replaced by something new and improved. The "web" is dying. Long live the 'net. If you want to throw money away in the market, gamble on biotech.
Looks like it's time to buy the stock now! I'd be happy for them to go public so that I can buy 'em right before Bill pays me for my shares.
I realize this isn't the spin to the article, but I do think that the open source movement needs a good search engine in the same way that it needed (and got from the Netscape code base) a good browser. Especially useful would be a design that allowed the creation of "open clusters", ad hoc networks where new machines can contribute horsepower and storage space to scale the search resources up, and where there is some degree of redundancy which helps prevent dropouts from crippling the cluster. This would make moot such predicaments as whether Microsoft acquired this or crushed that, or whether Google sold out during its IPO. While Google does do some very cool research, we don't actually need advanced features like picture search, news culling, etc; all we need is the basic bread-and-butter search.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Clearly the mods think your comment is as good as it was when someone else posted it last week.
More like will Google become just like all the other companies microsoft has absorbed. I remember when VRML came out and there was this browser that could render it really well, microsoft bought them and VRML is rarely heard of anymore. Well SVG is the next best thing :)
Try 7.1, it does have a pop-up blocker. And it works perfect.
How the hell did this get modded up? Half the post is a troll.
There are other search engines?
"It might be that the phrase is in web pages that link to the page in question"
That should be an easy bug to fix then! What a bizarre way to do things: no wonder you can get irrelevant results.
of Dec's old Alta Vista engine/portal. Anyone debate Netscape added value as a portal, read staged advertisment site and information collecting point ?!?! I did a search the other day on a specific company name and product with model number, which matched the EXACT TEXT on the companies' web page. The results in the top 20 were ALL 'sponsored' resellers or aftermarket sites while the one with the 23 character exact text match was on page 3. Results like that I can get from Yahoo, or any other ad service masquerading as a search engine. I basically gave up on google when they updated the google tool bar and altered my system prefs with out even a by your leave. My employer blocked google as a result of their new toolbars repeated attempts to connect thru the firewall and relay personally identifiable data including machine names and addresses out while loading ads in on the local machine.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Back in the late 1990's Altavista was king of the search engine. Then Google came along a replaced it as king of the hill. I don't even remember if Altavista is still around, but the point is, it won't take much to replace it.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
now IE is really the number one browser for Windows and Apple machines (although Safari is coming along nicely on the Apple side)
I would have to disagree with that statement. I don't know anyone who uses IE on the Mac except as a last resort when a site doesn't render in Safari or perhaps in Camino (Chimera, or whatever they're calling it these days). The fact is, both of these apps have popup-blocking and tabbed browsing, and both of them have more Mac-like interfaces than Internet explorer. They're also faster, and use less memory. What they principally lack is webmaster attention: everyone make sure their malformed HTML/CSS and MS-proprietary JavaScript and ActiveX and Flash render right in Explorer, but they don't check Gecko or Safari.
I expect that Camino will languish or die as its features are basically absorbed into Safari, but my point stands.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Maybe Netscape died, but it went on to become something much better (if not as popular). Firebird is my browser of choice.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
What if they were to make the next version of IIS block the google spider ?
Netscape's problem wasnt MS. If they had put out a better product (more stable, mostly), they could have retained their lead. I personally switched because I was tired of Netscape crashing every five minutes, and taking all my other browser windows with it.
Add to that its unwillingness to use many of the Windows-native APIs (printing is a good example), and you have a recipe for disaster. MS built those APIs for a reason; just because Netscape sought to reinvent the wheel doesnt mean other people need to finance it.
Their innovation stopped with Mosaic; Mozilla was them relinquishing control because they were personally beyond the limits of their skill.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
i'd be happy to use alltheweb instead of google had it not been for one simple thing that if alltheweb changed it'd make it just as good.
in google the ads are on the right of the page so that my first search results are there right where i want to see them or expect to see them, time after time, my eyes can just be on the same spot i expect to find the first answer. on alltheweb they put the sponsored ads first which vary in number and length so it always means i have to scroll down, either visually with my eyes or by clicking the scrollbar a few times, sometimes a page down and sometimes a few lines to find my first search result; these unpredictabilities as to where the first search result might be on the screen and the need to visually scan to find it and if need be make a few extra clicks, plus the need to ignore the sponsored search results which are similarly formatted, whereas in google their format is different and i know where they are spatially that i don't need to worry about them, all add up to make using alltheweb a little tedious to a degree of giving me a slight headache of being somewhat annoyed.
it's bizarre and somewhat foolish of alltheweb to do that, especially that if they adopt the google way of not putting things in the way of people they'd be able to cram in some more search results down the page. All it takes for them is to change this one simple thing and i wouldn't care too much about google, except of course for the newsgroups and media news, plus seach, all in one place.
google has just the convenience of usability. i really suggest they have a new tab, like those for images, groups and news.. etc, for blogs and RSS feeds; that way they'd prevent regular search results being contaminated by such often useless stuff.
one other thing; filter band names! too often recently whenever i search for something on google the first result i get is some sorta kids band that happen to have that word in their name; it seems with every kid now wanting to be in a band there's almost nearly as many kids bands as words in the english language.
Quote : 4. Alternatives to Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP Learn about the Microsoft alternatives and how to move to them from open source products. www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/migration
Funny at least they did not dare put this in first position (FYI I did not find the above on the first pages from google but maybe I am blind).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Bundling MSIE as a means of breaking Netscape was at the heart of the anti-trust actions in which Microsoft was found guilty of using illegal methods to maintain it's desktop monopoly. And in case you slept through the last few years, Microsoft was still guilty after appeal.
Bundling meant that all new Wintels purchase automatically had MSIE. But if that and the federal court's decision is not enough for you, recall that installing early versions of MSIE broke Netscape.
Gooogle is the only provider of ads that are useful. Primarily because its the first stop when I want to buy something. Google is not as good as yahoo at filtering out non UK sites but it does provide ads for UK sites when you do a UK only search, which is pretty good when google provides info on what has been made and what is available in europe.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
random text
Many people have ssh access to other computers, can visit a friend, use a proxy server or use a computer at work/school.
weeds them _out_???
if someone made a porn search engine that was as good as google, eg no popups, no clutter, and ads that you know are ads, then i think they'd be on to something.
of course... such a thing may already exist...
It answers your question. But since you are obviously too lazy to do that:
Netscape was an example of a company with a dominant position on the market, but with a moderate profit, being sold to a price that suggested that investors believed the dominant position on the market could be translated into a much higher profit.
Google is in a similar position. The Economist suggest some ways Google may turn their market position into higher profit, and list some of the challanges and risks involved in doing that. One of these risks happened to be the same one that faced Netscape, namely Microsoft taking interest in the market.
Netscape had great early success and teremendous Silicon Valley buzz. They suffered from a flaw that many startups fall prey to - they started believing their own PR. They started spouting stuff about becoming the platform and replacing Microsoft and conquering the World. Netscape made Microsoft the competition. They challenged Microsoft to a fight.
True, Microsoft was asleep at the switch wrt the Internet. But the first rule of walking in the woods is - don't kick the sleeping bear! And Netscape not only kicked it, but tey taunted the bear. Microsoft, when roused, can be a fearsome competitor. Gates and Ballmer didn't get to where they are becuase thy are nice guys. They are as aggressive a team as any business has ever seen. And when you challenge them, trash talk them and threaten their business, you should expect them to fight back.
But worse, netscape's arrogance was not just in the business side but on the technical side. They innovated early and were way better than IE. Everyone told them so. Everyone agreed. They just assumed that Micorsoft could never catch them. Ask those of us who has to write HTML and Javascript for a living about NS 4. Incredibly buggy, finicky, just a piece of crap. All the pages I ever created worked in IE 4 and alwys had to be tweaked for NS. No, I didn't try to use ay of the IE special stuff. IE just ot better and Netscape stayed the same
Netscape put all their efforts into other businesses and forgot that the business that would make or break them was the browser. And they let the browser to hell. They were arrogant and wouldn't support ActiveX controls. Rather than make certain Microsoft had no wedge, Netscape just said no. Yeah, there are lots of reasosn not to do them, but I was with a very large SW company and we wanted to use them for Enterprise apps. NS told us we were stupid. Really! So, we told our customers "Use IE", it's a better browser and supports what we need and you want for your apps.
Microsoft probably did set you to destroy Netscape. They were probably unfair and devious. But Netscape did everything they could to help Microsoft destroy them.
Google doesn't challenge Microsoft. Google doesn't claim to be a platform. Google does not threaten the core of Microsoft's business. Microsoft would like that revenue and those eyeballs, but Google doesn' threaten them in any serious way. The thing to remember about winning in the software business is that anything someone has built, someone else can rebuild and better, if they have the time, patience and $$, but mostly the $$ and the patience. Microsoft has the patience and the $$. Ask Palm. Ask Borland. Ask the spreadsheet folks at Lotus. Ask oracle, if you can get Ellison to be honest. Go after their home turf and you had better have a few spare billion to spend over then next 3-4 years to fight them.
Search engine tech isn't that complex
;)). Now that google is integrated in all our lives, i think we are no longer aware of its achievement..
Maybe it wasn't at the beginning, but I have an impression google is using quite complicated algorithms.. With the web always growing and changing there are some quite interesting problems where complexity problems simply rule out simple algorithms IMHO..
Remember when google was first launched? It was great because other engines simply didn't find the page you were looking for any more.. With google, "I feel lucky" even worked quite well (if you're a good gambler
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I was under the they were a meta search engine witch added som additional features. .
I also understood that they license some of there results from google (hence the high quality of results)
I asked a coworker of mine who works for Google part time about blogs. He says they regularly get complaints about blogs, and it's not hard for them to adjust things to respond to complaints, but the thing is the complaints about blogs are evenly split. Half of the people think Google rates blogs too highly, half thinks they rate blogs too low. They're thinking about a -noblogs command or something like that. trip
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
Best case scenario, it becomes the next Yahoo. Worse case scenario, it becomes the next VA Software. Either way, they have too many captured eyeballs to die, too much pride to sell out, and too few paying customers to be an Amazon or an EBay.
Disclaimer: I own tons of ebay.
IPO IPO IPO - huh? This is what it means.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"I agree that it would be nice occasionally to have Google just act as a "dumb" search engine, just returning pages that actually contain the phrase"
Actually, that is a pretty smart search engine, capable of doing A = A in its logic searches. It is the stupid search engine that can't figure this out.
" but the fact is that every single one of the pages returned did have that exact phrase, or else it had something which is clearly an allusion to that line. "
Yet, I was looking just for pages that had the line, not "allusions".
"Here's the thing: a dumb search engine would ONLY return pages that contain that phrase"
If dumb = better search engine, with more relevant results, why yes. That is what is asked.
"Google returns all of the pages that contain that phrase, PLUS other pages that contain something relevant or related to that phrase"
That is what is really "dumb": I asked for an exact phrase match, even with a +. I did not ask for the irrelevant results.
"Then it ranks all of those pages, and 2 of the top 10 turned out not to have the entire phrase."
So you look for a phrase, and it returns a pile of results, and actually claims that 2 pages that did not even contain the phrase are in the top 10 relevant results? The search engine on phrases clearly does not work. It does this with other phrases as well. I always have to eyeball filter the bogus results out since they have nothing to do with what I looked for.
Altavista, whatever its flaws, at least bothers to make sure such results are 100% accurate.
MSIE on OS X is ass. Use Safari or Camino.
MSIE on Windows is annoying without a third-party popup blocker, and even then, there are still too many security holes.
Do what I do, use Mozilla or MozillaFirebird on everything but OS X... on that platform, run Safari.
The cusp is between tan((pi / 2) + 0.0000000000000001110765125711399415) and tan((pi / 2) + 0.0000000000000001110765125711399416)
Their search algorithm works almost the same as the rules their adwords enforce. To use the adwords effectively is basically just doing the same thing that you would do to position your site better using normal search terms.
This is my sig.
Geek Vs Mundanes. This sounds somewhat either like a Xanth novel or Harry Potty (muggles).
As per MSN search though, I hardly think we're going to see anything to compare to google.ca/linux on an MS search site, which is one of the reasons I'd prefer to see Microsoft's hands far away from that prize.
Your search for "Linux kernel" yielded the following results:
* Is Linux the devil's tools?
* Blackhat hackers using linux.
* Moving from linux to Microsoft Server 2009
Laugh, but how far from the truth would it actually be if MS dominated the search market. After all, your average Joe sixpack wouldn't care all that much.