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Google Still Ahead In Search Competition
ricst writes "Google is, as we all know, King of the Hill. But Yahoo, MSN and others have come a long ways towards catching up as this International Herald Tribune article describes. The gap between 'best' and 'next best' has narrowed substantially. The good thing is that we all benefit as these guys keep challenging each other."
The important part, do they do no evil?
How is this gap measured? It's all a matter of opinion. All search engines can give you at least somewhat relevent results.
Don't forget A9, which recently added some virtual locality features. I think the fact that it's a subsidiary of another internet behemoth (Amazon.com) gives it some edge as well.
Because of the quality of it's search engine Google has, over time, became a part of speach. How many times have i heard people say "i just googled for it" or "i found this and that after some googling". Internet search is now associated with google, its the mindset of the vast majority and that is going to be very hard to compete with.
I like Google but the statement is not correct in all domains. Technical searches is getting very hard, as the "sales" sites are crowding out the support pages.
Take a technical part of some kind (graphincs card, disk drive etc.) if you want to get a more detailed description or a technical discussion of a certain problem it is very hard to get to this.
You normally get zillions of sites selling this part first and even "reviews" tend to be blurbs left by a few buyers on the site nothing of real interest.
Help fight continental drift.
But had flaws. I knew it would take some time but eventually the COMMERCIAL SPAMMERS got their way with it.
I have tried certain searches in the business fields and have had no luck.
I tried doing a search on science of skin but all i get are skin care companies.
Google is a DUMB technology. Lets look for links instead of trying to understand the request like real human interactions.
I may start my own search engine company. Any programmers out there work for food. I make excellent handmade pizza.
Who cares about Google. They are not God or even close. In fact it's not so much Google is so great but all the others are so BAD.
Google has become incredibly flakey lately turning up worse and worse results, I'm not sure this is all to do with spammers either. Sometimes I have to add about 10 different -this -that to a search to get relevant results. It's very much gone down hill and some of it's page ranking is a nonsense.
The original posting says Yahoo and friends are catching up. Well good. Google desperately needs more serious competition than it has. Things without serious or adequate competition are a monopoly and guess what ? That's bad
When I go to the store I can pick up any box of "Kleenex" - even by a different brand name - without noticing.
But how can you go to "google" something, then type in "www.yahoo.com" (or other search engine). With search engines, far more than with any physical product, the name ties much more directly into use of the product and therefore is far stronger.
Microsoft is trying to head off this tide by making it so easy to search that you no longer need to type in "google" to a browser. But even there Google is one step ahead with the google search bar.
As long as most people get to google via some typing, there will not be the same brand dilution issues that things like Kleenex have.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I guess you worry about Microsofts monopolistic practises. Guess what: In a couple of years, if things don't change, you'll worry about Google as well.
- Even if Google's not responsible for killing usenet, it sure helped speed up the process.
- Take a look at the cached content feature of Google: In every other context this feature would have been called breach of copyright.
- Take a look at the image search: This too is breach of copyright.
- Look at how people are designing web pages today: The old ideas of crumb trails (navigation paths on top of pages) are coming back, not because users need them but because Google needs them to crawl your site well.
The thing is that the web is adapting to Google now, not the other way round. If you're paranoid you should worry more about Google than about Microsoft because what Google does actually matters.
Surely you can't be talking about the International Herald Tribune. The only clean, elegant, readable news site on the web? It looks great in IE and Firefox; what browser are you using?
Someone obvously put a lot of thought into designing this site. Text is arranged in narrow columns, making it more natural to read, kinda like a real newspaper. Navigation is intuitive; printing and emailing articles is easy. What more could you want?
The Beauty Queen
Functional and substantial... compelling...
The designer is a god among mortals..."
In terms of design, Google:search::IHT:news
Caching is *not* a breach of copyright. See "fair use." You can tell Google not to cache the page (via meta tags) if you want.
As for "crumb trails", if a user can follow a link to your site, then Google can too. Google doesn't depend on anything else. You don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Take a look at the image search: This too is breach of copyright.
No, it's not. Google doesn't show (or store) the full-res images; they "quote" the images (an image thumbnail is a reasonable analogy to a quote of text), which is an established "fair use," and they use this quote to provide a link to the original source, just as with their text searches.
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In Korea, long hair is for old people!
People don't try a selection of search engines every day then use whichever's best. They find a search engine they like and stick with it.
The competitors are going to have to be considerably better than Google before people will switch in significant numbers. Or they're going to have to cheat... bundling, anyone?
Look at IE versus other browsers: IE has been behind on features for years, but does it make people switch? No, they use what they're used to.
It would be nice if all the selling stuff could be moved to Froogle, although I'm not sure how technically possible that would be.
It would also be nice if they could get rid of the other 'search' sites that often get the top spots. You click on a link, and just end up on some crummy search site with no actual info.
Very true. Infortunately, people doesn't seem to be nice to Google. As an example let's take this "Google file system" from some time ago. As much as I am usually against frivolous lawsuits, in this case I really hoped Google had sued its authors and won. Why? Because this so called "file system" is a classical example of parasite which can only hurt Google. And for what? So its "developers" could have their project posted on Slashdot frontpage? So they could say "look, mom, how bloody 'leet' I am"? But no, Google didn't sue them, even though I strongly advised them to. They are nice even to people who violate them.
But the problem persists. What if one day someone writes a "file system" stealing storage from Slashdot, saving its files in the form of gigabyte first posts filled with goats.ex links and literally tons of uuencoded pornography? This is exactly the same, only much worse, because unlike Slashdot Google has much less intrusive advertisements and no bias and corporate agenda. From every greedy US corporation, Google is unquestionably the closest to being absolutely perfect. And how do we say "thank you"? By stealing their property? By advertising this pathetic thief "file system" on the front page of the most popular website on the north hemisphere?
I just want to remind you that I was strongly against it from the very beginning, explicitly voicing my concerns when it was a "hot" topic, only to get completely ignored by the entire community. But we cannot tolerate such a behaviour, I'm sorry. Google is not another IBM who didn't see anything wrong in helping build concentration camps or Cisco who is perfectly comfortable with building the largest machines of censorship and oppression in the history of human kind.
Google, unlike any other company, is trying to do what is best for us. They deserve our gratefulness and respect. The existence of script kiddies shamefully exploiting Google's services for their own miserable advantage is a precedence not only insulting to our intelligence but a one actually harmful for us in the long run, because that could possibly mean the end of fantastic projects from Google, when they eventually stop to think and inevitably say: "Hey, what's the point of doing no evil? What's the point of being nice guys if people just want to steal from us? Maybe that pop-up pornography ads and paid search results placement weren't such a bad idea after all?" I know I certainly would.
Sorry for a long rant. I just love Google and I hate people who hurt it. I think it is great that Google is still ahead. The question is: how long will they survive in the world of greedy scums like M$N, AO£ and ¥ahoo? Is there a place for nice guys in the world ruled by greedy bastards? I certainly hope so.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
> Hrmmm, does Google do Usenet searches any more?
> Hard to get past that broken interface they have
> on Google Groups these days.
Well, version 2 is still in beta, and groups.google.ca still uses the old interface, but as I understand it, they've fixed a number of the problems, particularly with thread sorting and with older links.
I find Usenet archives, particularly for technical groups, probably the most valuable resource at my disposal when I'm trying to solve problems. I doubt it's very likely that any of the other big guys (MSN and Yahoo) are going to be able to match that.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Google is highly cashflow positive [...]
.coms before the bubble burst), and not mere mortals.
GOOG does have positive cashflow (~$238m last quarter), but that pales to, say, Microsoft ($4b). Buying Google's cashflow (in the form of stock) is highly expensive -- P/E of 234 (!!!), and Price/Sales of almost 20. Those ratios are typically assoicated with minor dieties (or
I'm not saying that Google isn't worth the current price, but they have absolutely no room to screw up.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.