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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?
MSN and Yahoo still have a long way to go. I like Google for its simplistic site design and its lack of obtrusive banner advertisements shoved in your face. I use the word simplistic cautiously because as we all know Google is very powerful and keeps getting better every day. Who seriously wants to support Microsoft anyways?
The main thing I think that keeps Google ahead of everyone else is that they seem to be some nice folks.
They've never gone and done anything nefarious (Micro$haft), and they've never had to switch search engines every other month (Yahoo!). They've just put out a quality product and improved on it continuously.
They've got good tools that are both powerful and unobtrusive. They have very good search results. And they offer free services that make using their software a real pleasure.
Yahoo and Microsoft can try to do what they like, but they just aren't as cool as Google. I seem to recall a previous article on Slashdot that stated that most searches conducted at Micro$haft are done on Google, even over M$N search.
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.
In case of slashdotting, the article is also available from the NY Times.
It wasn't a very informative read -- quick summary is that Yahoo and MSN are catching up to Google (they don't give many specifics as to what "catching up" means) and each of these companies is making more money from searches than they have in the past. They allude briefly to Yahoo improving their search technology and Google losing focus somewhat due to management being preoccupied by their IPO.
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"To google for something" has became part of common language. People have associated the word with the web search concept, plus it does a great job and is quite innovative.
Every once in a while, I'll use yahoo (as I have an old email there mostly) or when google won't find something (almost never).
But don't count on me to use MSN. I think I've already paid far too much microsoft tax (starting to become more and more fed up about these guys), and they really don't need advertizing revenue from me. And the only way they seem to be able to get half decent results - is by using some bots to harvest google results (not completely ethical imho). Plus, I've always seen "MSN" as crap - especially after having seen the IM. Plus their webpage is quite "graphically overloaded" (yahoo is a bit like that too, flash ads are particularly annoying). When I want to do a quick search, I like google simple logo (which changes with holidays) and a simple seach box.
Google works. The results are great, the (text) ads are unobtrusive, they're innovative, and they've earned everyone's trust. Competition is good sometimes, but I'm not about to switch to another search engine.
///<sig
That's the first time I've ever seen a double-typo! First, you searched for "fired chicken" instead of "fried chicken," then when you wrote about it, you claimed to have searched for "friend chicken." No wonder you were surprised by the results! And UNT only shows up so how because they also misspelled "fried chicken." Hilarious.
Google may best a9.com in the search department, but not when it comes to the patent department. Helped out by parent Amazon, a9.com boasts twenty four patent assignments (17 issued, 7 pending), while Google falls short with twenty one (8 issued, 13 pending).
Until the other search engines release competing APIs (hopefully with a higher than 1000 query limit), Google will remain top dog from the POV of /. types.
>A company normally goes public because it needs
:)
>the extra bit of investment, right?
Yes, but Google isn't an ordinary company. Google is highly cashflow positive and didn't need to raise capital. I think the main reason it went public was so that there was a market for existing shareholders (like employees with options) to sell shares, and because they reached a size where they needed to disclose a lot of information anyway.
>Do shares continue to affect how much money it
>has once it's gone public?
Typically not -- unless they want to raise more money, or want to issue shares to take over another company.
>If investors don't care about ethics and google
>ignores this, their stock will go down and they
>won't be an attractive investment.
Yes, but since the Google founders have effective control, they might not care.
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Google relies on the browser, and although, as noted, Firefox is already very Google friendly, Google is determined not to let MSFT define the battlefield. Google is big enough to take the battle to Redmond, by taking it to the desktop, starting with GMail and Google Desktop http://desktop.google.com/, then GBrowser (see whois below), then a suite of apps - Photos (Picasa), music (GTunes?), movies (GVideo?), etc. - designed to incease their desktop presence and mindshare. Then who knows, a desktop OS? (GLinux - their own version of Linux)
It's the rational thing to do as the new 900 pound gorrilla. Hence they will hire the best they can find in each area, while still trying to maintain the support of the open source community. How users react will depend on the amount of control Google tries to exert, and how arrogant they are perceived to be.
Whois: Domain Name: gbrowser.com Registrant:Google Inc. (DOM-1278108) 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 Technical Contact, Zone Contact: DNS Admin (NIC-1467103) Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043 dns-admin@google.com +1.6503300100 Fax- +1.6506188571 Created on: 2004-Apr-26. Expires on: 2006-Apr-26.
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.
www.jux2.com compares the result sets from google, yahoo, and ask jeeves and you can immediately see what's missing from each
There is no such thing as "fair use" in the UK (and Europe AFAIK).
I doubt that this would really fall under fair use in US as, from what I've read, that applies to re-use of copyrighted works when you have some rights to them already (quoting books, re-formatting musical works, etc.).
This is an adaptation of an original work. It shows the initial artistic work in low quality and therefore infringes not only on the commercial rights of the "artist" but also on their moral rights!
Consider how to prevent people buying a poster and then distributing their own postcards of that poster in competition with the original artist. Sounds like google is doing the digital equivalent.
If copyright laws were strictly followed life would far less of a rich tapestry.
PS: I don't see anything wrong with what google do per se, just pointing out that it seems incompatible with the law.
I work for a long distance company and I spend a lot of time confirming numbers people dispute on their bill (i.e. I DEEN'T CALL THES NUMBER AN IF YOU CAYANT PROVE I DE-ID, I'M GONE SEEWWW YEW SUMBEACHES).
If we can't find a number using AnyWho, we always use Google next and I'd say 99.9% of the time this resolves the issue without having to verify the call with the term party (i.e. If that lady's daughter wasn't sleeping with my husband, my number wouldn't be on her bill).
When Yahoo first said they weren't going to use Google anymore for their search results, I really didn't believe them. I mean it took them forever to admit what we already knew so the trust factor was a little broken.
It took a while, but gradually the returns from searches did seem to be different or different enough. I'm like well, ok, they're on their own now, but Google still gives more or better results.
Until recently. Lately, searching Yahoo has been like back in the 90's when I first discovered HotBot(R.I.P.) then Google. In the past month or so, I actually have found what I wanted easier and faster using Yahoo. By faster I don't really mean return speed, I'm actually referring more to the relevance of the first items returned.
It's not every single time, but often enough and different enough where now, I don't just use Google by default anymore. I actually make a point to check both and lately Yahoo is gaining on them in turns of generating the results I need and on returning a search that's different enough from Google that's it's worth the extra time to see what Yahoo turns up as well.
Now my searches are for very simple and every day thing. However it seems to me, it's always those small things that cause the tide to turn in the larger pool of profitability in the long run.
I also like the new video search. To be honest, it's cut down my pr0n search time a lot. Uh, at home of course, not at work.