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Google Local, Definitions, & Registrar
A few Google bits in the bin this morning starting with Philipp Lenssen writes "Google Local has now moved to the Google homepage. The service, while still in beta, has been around for quite a while as one of many Google tools in the Google labs."
Mr. Anonymous noted that "In the past, when you clicked the [definition] link after a Google search, you'd be taken to the Dictionary.com page for the word. Now, Google has jumped aboard GuruNet's Answers.com, which not only provides definitions, but encyclopedia articles, etymology, medical defnitions, legal definitions, and word translations all on one page."
And lastly, several folks noted that Google has moved into the Domain Registrar Biz which we mentioned monday.
Oh, and if you see your mom this weekend, be sure and tell her Dupe! Dupe! Dupe! Dupe! Dupe!
Um, it's not exactly a dupe when they say "as we mentioned earlier" with a link to the earlier article.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
"Have" has been corrected to "has" in the above sentence. Last time I looked at PCs being sold, many were Dells and "E", but none were Microsoft. Unless you want to count the Xbox as a mutant PC, they don't even sell PCs, let alone corner the market.
You are right about Google. If they fixed their bogus result problems, I'd never have to use another search engine again.
Google has a problem of returning many results that do not even contain the phrase being looked for. See "miserable failure" for a famous example. 3 of the top 10 results for "to be or not to be" do not even contain the phrase. Altavista, while it has fewer results, worse ads, and no cache, has no problem getting 100% relevant results for both searches. It's a bad bug when you search for phrases containing a phrase and the results do not even contain it.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
why does google keep on moving that invite notice back and forth?
Well, that is the price to pay for a "beta" service/software. Maybe they are looking for the less obstrusive way of puting there, btw I also like it as it is now.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Why is everyone so hard up for Google?
IBM has a lot of cool technologies, so does Apple. Yet there is more press on Google than on the Iraq war.
Is Google really God?
It's not a bug, it's treating the linked text of links to a page as additional metadata. Which is a very useful feature if the page is about a subject yet hasn't used that exact keyword in its content.
For example you might search for "horror author" and a page on Stephen King comes up, even though the page itself calls him a "horror writer".
One of the reasons not to link to Wikipedia is the fact that it is simply not a reliable source of information. Anyone can make changes to a definition at just about any time.
I am not trying to defend Answers.com using Google ads, I am just trying to point out the huge weakness with Wikipedia.
I'm not too worried about Google becoming the Microsoft of the Web. They've been good online citizens, and they've focused on facilitating access to other people's content rather than trying to create their own content monopoly. Still, it's only reasonable to keep on eye on their plans, and not assume that they'll always do the right thing. But for now, I find their entrance into new markets (and their astonishing financial success!) quite reassuring.
The other reason they may want to be a registrar is to avoid what happened to panix a few weeks ago.
For those that missed it, panix.com got hijacked because a domain re-seller (melbourne IT) didn't check that their customer (the supposed recipient of the domain transfer) had the proper authorizations in place to request a registrar move for panix. Panix had (apparently) forgotten to request a registrar lock on their domain, and their registrar didn't protest the move, so the request went through, moving panix to a new registrar. Once it was moved (changing ownership in the process), changing the authoritative DNS servers for it was easy...hence, hijack.
If google were their own registrar, they could enforce their own registrar lock for google.com, as well as setting up automatic refusals for any attempt to transfer google.com.
Let's be clear about which feature Microsoft got better... Yes, they discovered my location accurately. However, any local searches I do on msn return absolutely useless results. I live in Nebraska, and the first result I get for "pizza" is a radio station from northern Alabama? Where's the sense in that?
I'll admit that my location is relatively rural, and that Microsoft may not want to bother with indexing businesses in a community of ~40,000, but apparently Google had no problem doing it, with their beta.
However,