Google to be Added to S&P 500 Index

hrbrmstr writes "According to marketwatch.com, Google is being added to the S&P 500, replacing Burlington Resources Inc. While this has provided a short-term boost to the stock price, time will tell what the overall impact will be on this respected index and the institutions (i.e. mutual funds) that follow it."

Comments

It's 1999 all over again

[hadj]

People have been saying this and I will say it again: these are signs of a new internet bubble. People (tend to?) forget. Lessons are learned the hard way.
Although Google's image and bank deposit have become big, be aware their revenues are almost 100% dependent of advertisement revenues. This is a market which can turn upside down in a second.

Re:It's 1999 all over again

[Bemmu]

And there are some interesting contenders out there. Google tends to forget that there are people living outside the US, UK and China. I'm sure they are getting there, but while they linger there are others moving into attack positions. The local ones mentioned before are eating away their user share, since they can take into account location & language specific things that Google may be ignoring while pursuing it's grand world domination plan. In some languages a simple word by word matching scheme may not be enough and conjugation needs to be considered as well. Google has also upset some folks with the China censorship thingy and wanting to move all the users' data on their centralized servers, in general displaying the sort of arrogant behavior that slowly makes people want to see them fail.

Perhaps the most interesting engine to flock to would be http://www.majestic12.co.uk/, a seti@home style distributed indexing system. Sure they're not to Google's index size yet, but they are getting there, faster and faster... and the fairness of their ranking algorithms are open to view and discuss -- perhaps with time such closed algorithms could be viewed with as much dislike as Microsoft's closed OS sources. I wonder if Stallman is using it.

I am not a Google hater myself, personally I feel their search engine is adequate for my needs and their goal of organizing the world's information a very appealing one (although so broad that they might as well have said "we'll do what we please"). All I am saying is that it would not be unthinkable that the public opinion might slowly change, not favorably for them.

Re:It's 1999 all over again

[randomjohndoe]

>Perhaps the most interesting engine to flock to would be http://www.majestic12.co.uk/, a seti@home style distributed indexing system.

Now that is an interesting concept. Indexing the web would seem to be the kind of parallel operation ideally suited for distributed computing. You'd still need a central server to search the index and provide results quickly. (Okay, I decided to RTFL rather than just speculate, and I see that's what they're doing.) My initial assessment is that this is the most credible medium term threat to Google I've seen.

>...the fairness of their ranking algorithms are open to view and discuss -- perhaps with time such closed algorithms could be viewed with as much dislike as Microsoft's closed OS sources

Another excellent point. I wish I still had mod points. The closed nature of Google's ranking algorithms has disgruntled some folks, and an open system could become popular. Robert Cringely did a series on the mysterious workings of the AdWords algorithm, and whether Google is using the algorithms to "unfair" advantage. "Unfair" being quoted because even if they are doing it, it is not illegal, and perhaps not even unethical. But they could be deceiving or "gouging" (another loaded term) their advertisers, and it could be seen as counter to "Don't be evil". Cringely includes Google responses.

The point is, the advantages of open algorithms are pretty obvious.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050922. html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051006. html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051013. html