Slashdot Mirror
The Un-Google - The Search Competition
WinEveryGame writes "The Economist is running an article on the state of the competition for Internet Search. While Google clearly dominates, and continues to have positive momentum, its leadership is still vulnerable. The search-engine battle is not over yet." From the article: "In terms of momentum — mass times velocity — Google's lead indeed looks daunting. It has by far the most mass, with an American market share of 43% as of April, which reaches 50% counting AOL, an internet property that uses Google's search technology. This compares with 28% for Yahoo!; 13% for MSN, which belongs to Microsoft; and 6% for Ask, which is owned by IAC/Interactive Corp, a conglomerate of about 60 online media brands. Google also has velocity: its market share grew by 17% in the four quarters to this spring, whereas Yahoo! and MSN both lost share. Only Ask has more velocity — its share grew by 35% — but then again it has little mass."
... you can't even install it.
I know I'm a little off-topic, but (from my own slashgeo website):
The Ogle Earth blog indicates that if you use Google Earth at work (the free version), you're in illegality. From the site: "1. USE OF SOFTWARE The Software is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Software or the geographical information made available for display using the Software, or any prints or screen outputs generated with the Software in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties."
The EULA changed with the new version launched this week. You simply have to buy one of the other 3 (paying) available versions of GE.
Animoog.org
You should be able to hit a button that says such and such a site is relevant for the given search, rerank all other sites accordingly. Sites for musical horns aren't going to highly crosslink with sites using horn to mean "a high pommel of a Western saddle (usually metal covered with leather)". It's also annoying that there isn't a way to sort by pages with major recent content changes.