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New Google Toolbar Brings Browse By Name
Philipp Lenssen writes "The newest release of the Google Toolbar (Internet Explorer only) comes with a Browse by Name feature. It lets you enter keywords in the browser address bar, and when Google decides this is a sure bet you will be directly forwarded to the right page. Is this the return of Internet Keywords?"
"It lets you enter keywords in the browser address bar, and when Google decides this is a sure bet you will be directly forwarded to the right page."
Google hacking will be really damn funny. Just imagine, say, for 6 months, people get used to typing 'update windows' in their address bar. Then, some google hacker figures out a way to suddenly spike the value of some other site somehow to include 'update windows' as the first choice. Hopefully not to goatse.
other fun things to do with google
Unfortunately, if you enter a single word, it does not check to see if it can resolve the name on your Intranet first. Instead, it immediately does the "Browse By Name."
This caused a lot of issues on our Intranet. Just warning everyone.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
Looks like some else already patented this concept: http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06101537__
"A universal electronic resource denotation, request and delivery system allows a user to locate information on a distributed computer system or network such as the Internet by knowing or guessing a short mnemonic alias of an electronic resource without the user having to know the physical or other location denotation such as the universal resource locator (URL) of the desired resource."
If that's the case, this will only serve to inflame the domain war disputes. Does Visa have more of a point about registering Visa.com if Google won't even display the credit card company on a search for "Visa"?
Oddly enough, typing "visa" went to a standard search results page when I tried it just now. Of course visa.com was the first link displayed (aside from the links promoting google's news service), but still that's interesting. I wonder what the actual mechanism is.
Firefox has had this for a while. Anyone running firefox (I'm running 0.9.3) type "New York Times" in the url bar and hit enter, it puts you at www.nytimes.com. It just takes you to the I'm Feeling lucky link, but it comes in handy.
Regards,
Steve
I am curious about the impact on commerce sites who currently use search engine rankings as part of their overall marketing mix.
Why would a search for "Harman Kardon" take me to HarmanKardon.com instead of showing me the Top 10 results which might include discount resellers of Harmon Kardon products? Instead, I, the websurfer, now must wade through informational content and somehow find my way to resellers officially listed at the HK site.
Why would a search for "Grand Canyon" *not* take me to GrandCanyon.com?
If I type in "tshirts" or "cheap tshirts" what would I get (i.e., how it is determined what the "real" website is for a given keyword/phrase)?
I could go on and on, but surely it is readily apparent, if adopted en masse and if keywords/phrases are increasingly populated with a single response, the results could be highly disadvantageous to a wide range of commercial websites (and information sites, for that matter). Many changes at Google have already had the side effect of destabilizing some small businesses who previously relied on (ethical) search engine marketing as a major component of their commerce exchanges (and the many customers who were thankful to have found that commercial site).
Those magically blessed by Google, through a process we do not understand, will be the rare few who benefit.
(In some small way, it reminds me of Microsoft whereby they have all the answer [singular] you need. And only their official channel benefits. Because the mass of people are not Slashdotters who understand how to use a wide variety of tools for a wide variety of purposes. Instead, the masses are funneled through a pre-determined strainer.)
Finally, is there some kind of legal liability if Google directs searches for (something like) "Britney Spears" to the wrong site? Or, perhaps, if they have the technology in place to point it to the right site, but instead show raw search results none of which contain the official site? It seems to me that its a bit problematic to be the One and Great Arbiter of what's the single correct response to a query.
Contrary to some other posts, this type of 'technology' (whether in FireFox or in a Google ToolBar or AOL Keyword) is *very* newsworthy in that it can change the landscape for a wide number of commerical (and non-commerical) website traffic.
How about adding a "trademark-domain" namespace scheme to Google, like "tm:music-distribution:apple", that finds only pages about Apple records, and not Apple Computers, using the existing trademark system?
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make install -not war
It's called "Local Names," and it allows you to use short names for URLs.
The idea is that you should be able to use short names in:
We can presently use LocalNames in most wiki (any wiki that supports InterLinks,) in WordPress blogs, and in Firefox browsers.
The LocalNames spec doesn't describe what linking syntax should look like, but it'd generally be something like this: [[short name of URL][long text to link.]] So for example, you might write:
Which would render out as:
The names lists support defaulting, so that you don't have to name every URL you like. If someone makes a names list you like, (for example, the contents of a wiki,) you can just default to it.
There is already: a site for keeping your own names list, a web-browser redirection site, and a site for adapting a Wiki's title index into a Local Names list.
Python programmers may be interested in the Python library reference names, which you can use with FireFox to jump straight to any Python module's documentation.
Bloggers may be interested in MooKitty's plug-in for WordPress that lets you use LocalNames in blog posts.
Really, I get a little upset now when I have to look up URL's mid-post. I think, "Geeze, I've got the LocalName for this right on the tip of my tongue; Why do I have to actually resolve it to a URL myself, and then stick a href tags around it?"
Once you start using short names for stuff, you never want to go back.
The google toolbar is IE only, it attempts to implement missing features into IE that firefox already has.
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