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In Google We Trust
firstadopter.com writes "The New York Times (registration needed) writes about how far Google has penetrated our culture (soul sucking "Free" registration required) in the last six years with the pros and cons of its success. It's amazing to think 200 million searches are done on the search engine each day on an index of 6 billion pages."
5 years ago i would refuse too belive that the name of a search engine would turn into a common verb. ;)
Google it.
Its better than RTFM
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
I just glanced at the google terms and conditions and can't for the life of me figure out what makes them obscene. It's a standard T&C, only shorter and clearer than most companies'.
Well, Google has certainly affected web design. It's not uncommon for designers to arrange their site architecture in order to optimize their page rank.
The good thing is that it's encouraged symantically correct HTML (ie. using [h1] and [em] tags, instead of [font size="30"] or [b]). The downside is that some people still don't understand what it takes to rise in the rankings: quality content and getting linked to. The more shady web designers set up link farms and share links like a heroin addict shares needles.
It's safe to say when a search engine takes place as a verb in the 'tech cultures' vocabulary that it has created an empire "Would you google this for me...". In my opinion it was one of the great replacements for lycos and yahoo when it came out. Quicker more feature rich and over all better and easier to use, and that is why it has been able to grab such a market hold and popularity
Yeah, if you search on "apple" it's going to talk about the computer company. Search on "apples", you know, like human people talk, and the first hit is an excellent, informative site on the tasty fruit. Search on "fruit apple" (well, without the quotes) and you get relevant results as well. (On the other hand, "fruit apple" is a better search than "apple fruit", so there is some seeming arbitraryness to it...until you learn that Google gets some hints from word order on queries and pages.)
But yeah, successfully using Google requires both some search term assemblage skill and some online cultural literacy. Old farts at the NYTimes might not be blessed with too much of either, but I bet their kids are.
It's not perfect, but that college president / symphony director's comment "It's like looking for a lost ring in a vacuum bag. What you end up with mostly are bagel crumbs and dirt." sounds like it's coming from someone who doesn't really know how to use a search engine.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Google, the most popular Internet search engine, "has a near-religious quality in the minds of many users,"
And that is exactly why Microsoft will have a hell of a time toppling it with any MSN Search. Lord, Google is a verb now. The kind of entrenchment that Google has in our culture is extraordinarily difficult to overcome.
The coolest voice ever.
Once you go IPO things definitely change. Makes you wonder why such a profitable company wants to expose itself to the vultures at wall street? I mean really, they don't need to compete with MS and Yahoo because they already have a brand name that is more recognized and highly thought of. Googling is now synonymous with Internet searching.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
The real question is why Google and not Yahoo!? I always used yahoo, and yahoo actually advertises its service on TV, Google does not. So how/why did so many people end up using Google anyway?
From what I know, I learned of Google on slashdot. Its lack of advertisements and painfully plesant and simple homepage devoid of millions of options and ads was just wonderful. I recommended it to all my friends.
Unless someone else can come up with a better reason, I believe Google is so strong because of the endorsement of Nerds. Probably also why AMD/Intel/ATi/NVIDIA let slip highly overclockable products every now and then.
The basic concept of PageRank is flawed because it assumes a monotonic ordering of sites on some single scale (e.g., popularity as defiend by linkage). The problem with PageRank is not the use of links to assess popularity, but the presumption of a single scale.
The search of "Apple" illustrates this well. This search, like s many is deeply ambiguous. It could refer to the computer company, to the fruit, to the record company, to New York City, or to Apple Valley (MN or CA). Even if you know it refers to the company, its still ambiguous. It could refer to the company (as an investment), the products (for purchase), or a question(as in technical support).
The point is that each of these ambiguous alternatives creates an independent cluster of hits. Although one can create a ranking within each cluster, it is impossible to construct a meanful rank for all hits across all clusters - the second hit for "Apple computer" is not comparable to the 2nd hit for "Apple Records".
Instead of a pagerank scheme that sorts the universe of hits the instant the user enters the search, search engines should be more interactive. The first page of hits would emphasize breadth -- displaying hits most representative of their respective alternative clusters. As the searcher selects hits, the subsequent pages might show popularity-ranked hits within the clusters that seem to interest the searcher.
Each hit and each page would serve a double-duty -- serving the searcher's need to get information from the internet, and answering the search engine's question about the needs of the searcher. Until the search engine understands each searcher and each search, it cannot hope to rank the hits.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Once upon a time, Yahoo was cool and had the endorsement of nerds.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Once upon a time AltaVista was the "unbeatable" search engine of choice.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
For me, the major turning point was when they acquired dejanews. The usenet archive was a great resource of help to me setting up my linux boxes, when not everything worked out of the box like it is today.
Google simply won because it did what it was supposed to do -- find web pages. Just that. Fast. No advertisement crap and other "portal" bullshit. Remember, when Google came up, other engines were getting gradually more clogged up with crap no one needed -- just because someone wanted to make an extra buck. Look at the other engines now. Like AltaVista. They've all gone back to simpler interfaces and concentrated on what they are supposed to do -- providing a simple interface for a web search, not a shopping mall.
/worked/, the world was conquered simply by word of mouth...
Once people realized that Google just
Miracle my ass. I call shenaningans.
Are you saying that in the space of a morning, the theft occurred, the thief took pictures, posted them to an auction site, and google just happened to index them? Google doesn't index auction or dynamic sites, just how did this particular feat of data work?
Yeah, I think it's going to be great to have one company be the gatekeeper to basically the entire Internet. No potential for abuse here.
Remember that (most) of their staff stand to profit hugely from an IPO - the IPO will happen at some point soon for that reason alone.
Brands are valuable. But companies can't stand if they only rely on them.
Simple examples are Netscape, DEC. An upcoming example will be SCO.
"soul sucking 'Free' registration required)"
Wtf is that about? They're providing you with an article for free, on the condition that you give them some information so they can maybe recover their costs, and you bitch about it? If you don't like registration, don't register -- but then you don't get articles from websites that want to do that. Also, when they say "Free", they obviously mean registration has no monetary cost, not that it has no cost at all (e.g., privacy cost, time cost to fill out form). Many people place a high value on money, but a lower value on time and privacy (to the extent that private info is revealed by these forms).
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
1) VC pressure. They invested in a gold mine. They want thier dumptruck full of cash now.
2) They want to buy something BIG. Lots of rumors but nothing solid.
-B
Which is one thing people forget but makes others things all the more puzzling.
Winamp became almost the defacto music player, and while WMP has also a large share, winamp gained popularity through word of mouth as well.
ICQ *used* to have the same, until the software began to deteriorate. Now, AIM, MSN and Yahoo are the popular ones, though I don't know of anyone that uses Yahoo (I hear different ones are popular in different regions of the world).
Programs such as Kazaa, Gnutella, Imesh, etc also gained widespread usage pretty fast.
So, how come Mozilla and Opera (obviously technically better products) didn't spread as fast?
It is true that the default setting by Microsoft makes a huge difference. That helps with MSN (Windows) Messenger and MSN.com. AIM gets a boost due to the many AOL users. But we know that quality products and services do spread rapidly through word of mouth endorsments. What is keeping Open Source Software behind?
GAIM isn't as popular as Trillian. I don't know of anyone that uses Jabber, though I wish more did. Is OpenOffice.org being held back severely by those that pirate (copyright infringe) Microsoft Office? But two things being free, obviously that also means there is enough hassle to change or the product is inferior (in the minds of the many users).
Switching OSes is even more of a drastic change, so if people seem unwilling to embrace Open Source less than piracy for application software, then it seems unlikely Linux will be embraced in the home anytime soon.
I think GNU/Linux is not ready yet for the home (though I do think it's ready for business desktops) but beyond that, I think word of mouth reputation must also improve. Hell, based my own experiences, I wouldn't recommend people use Linux except Knoppix or MandrakeMove right now.
It's obvious that advertising and Microsoft's monopoly and default settings make a huge impact. But word of mouth recommendations make a huge difference. And right now, Linux's reputation (and I guess Mozilla as well, though I'm not sure as to what reasons those are) also need improving.
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
I think it's the fact that google.com is much easier to type in, it loads fast on slow connections, etc..
type in search.yahoo.com..then wait for all the images and special stuff to load...
type google.com in.. bam.. loaded. put in what you need.. results come up in almost an instant.
that, and better and more accurate search results, minimal ads, etc... makes it king of the ring compare to others that show every off topic search result, load hundreds of images, ads, and other crap... it's easy to see why google became king.
it simply offered a better service.
Why the heck does every slashdot story linking to a free registration required site put it in a parenthetical after the link? 1) don't we figure it out after clicking it anyway? 2) who cares? 3) does this imply some disdain for free registration, even though it is part of the site's business model (i.e. making money)? 4) Isn't the endless repetition of these little phrases DISTRACTING and ANNOYING??!
Here's another way of looking at it. Last year, Google returned about 79% of all search results on the web - a very impressive number. That's because both Yahoo and Aol used Google search results.
However, now that Yahoo no longer uses Google, it is estimated that Google will only return about 50% of the search results on the web - Yahoo will now return about 43%. See the before and after pie diagrams and numbers at Danny Sullivan's SearchEngineWatch.com article.
For those of you who have been depending on traffic free from the boy scouts at Google, who have deliberately avoided lots of different ways to monetize their main asset, have you looked at how you rank on Yahoo lately? And have you checked out Yahoo's Site Match program, where you pay BOTH for inclusion in their index AND PER CLICK THRU if anyone happens to find your site?