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Gap Between Google and Competition Widening
eldavojohn writes "Business Week has up an article trying to explain why it is getting harder and harder to 'catch' Google in the search engine game. We've heard of many different kinds of search engines and many different companies entering the market but: '... Google keeps gaining share in the face of newly launched capabilities on other engines. In August, Google sites gained 6.8 percentage points of search share from a year earlier, according to researcher comScore Media Metrix. Meantime, Yahoo lost 1 percentage point, Microsoft's sites lost 3.3 percentage points, and Ask.com lost one-half of a percentage point.' All of this on the heels of recent news that A9 scaled back its features. Is it possible to think of a number better than a one with a hundred zeros behind it?"
Meta will eat itself
A 1 with 100 zero's behind it is a Googol... As far as I know, a Google is a search engine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Google_(company)
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
The Google-plex!
Oh no, Goolge is turning into a monopoly. Call the DOJ and EU !!!!!
It's odd that people should say Google are widening the gap... Google's certainly the best, but lately I've been noticing a lot more search results that lead to pages that don't load, or result in 404s (in fact, a domain I used to run 3 years ago is still in Google's index).
Is google not removing ages from their index to try and seem impressive, or getting lax with recrawling sites? Or am I the only one noticing this?
Global symbol "$deity" requires explicit package name at line 2. - If only $scripture started "use strict;"
Oh no, now they're going to be the biggest and best... Shouldn't you Linux lovin, MS hatin, open source carin, people get your picket signs ready for battle against another "big boy" in town? ;)
Look at the way great ideas have grown quickly: YouTube, digg, and so on.
And you can bet that if someone came up with a radically new search algorithm that provided noticeably better search results than Google (which is actually falling a bit behind, which is a dangerous mistake...) you can believe that most people would quickly migrate to their new engine of choice. (Of course, if it had little to no ads, speedy and reliable service, etc...)
Expanding Territory - Google is expanding into areas previously dominated by Yahoo!, Microsoft, and eBay.
... ask a question, get an answer sites.
New Formulas - Ask.com hopes their new smarter algorithm will win over searchers.
Topic Communities - Clusty.com has a new feature that retreives related topics to your query instead of related links.
Social Search - Yahoo! has been working hard at
An Issue of Trust - Ask.com and Snap.com work on a more visual interface compared to googles plain ordinary links returned.
Google Still Gaining - Google can easily acquire or replicate any new search method that makes signficant headway.
Yes. A Googolplex (not to be confused with the Googleplex) = 10^(10^100). In fact, reading up on the googol, one finds out that it's not that big a number these days.
Nothing wrong with having a monopoly. Abusing the monopoly is where we get problems.
Inertia is a powerful thing, people tend to not change services unless the one they are using has serious flaws, or a new one with a "must have" feature shows up.
Unless someone comes up with a revolutionary feature for search engines, Google won't be losing terrain any time soon.
Fabio Aquotte
It may actually be that anyone has yet to best any technology offerings Google has, hence nobody is able to challenge their dominance. Apart from that, Google is hardly a monopoly. You have a wide selection of search engines and nobody is forcing you to use any of them over the other.
Join Tor today!
Yeah but, the more people who are using the Google search engine the more people see the ads on Google. That means more money.
Quality Hosting e3 Servers
Is it possible to think of a number better than a one with a hundred zeros behind it?
Yep...... 1
Although it is the loneliest number..
Man, A9 must have the most wasted publicity budget. I see them prominently placed on sites like IMDB and Amazon, and assume they're "search this site", but no... it's just generic websearch, sometimes with a little bit of themed advertising content on the side.
The thing is, I don't go to IMdB and Amazon to do generic websearches, so it's kind of a waste. I have no idea what "value add" they're trying to bring to the table.
Plus, their name kind of sucks.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
...I have to say this is great news but not wholly unexpected. If you provide a very useful service for free, then you deserve to be at the top of the heap. There's no competing with free unless you're, oh how should we put this... BETTER.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
There is of course the Googelplex
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Linked site has zero content, parent is just using /. to up his pagerank...
I loved the image search on A9 when it first came out. Then all of a sudden it was gone, and it is still gone. I stopped going there.
"The thing is, I don't go to IMdB and Amazon to do generic websearches"
The only time I use them is if I accidentally click on these "outside" search buttons instead of the nearby buttons to search inside IMDB or Amazon. Other sites have these useless outside searches, including Myspace.
Where were you when the voynix came?
One thing I have noticed is that on one site with > 100,000 page views per day, YPN pays better than AdSense does. Now I try to run about 95% YPN and 5% AdSense to monitor the ratio. I hope that ContentAds and a non-beta YPN will "encourage" AdSense to do better on the payouts. I prefer Google's targetting to YPN's, but money talks.
Without an improvement in payout with a non-beta YPN and MS's ContentAds, AdSense will lose share which is something Google should worry about.
This article betrays complete ignorance of "disruptive" technology. These small percentage changes aren't what keeps executives awake at night. It's the prospect of one company making a breakthrough that changes the game significantly overnight and moves percentage points by a decimal point or more. It's good to see multiple players in the game. If google ever takes M$ and Yahoo out of the game entirely, we're much less likely to see such innovation.
As soon as my new search engine, Centillion, opens, Google won't see me for dust.
Nobody will be able to beat me, nobody!!!!!!
(Evil laugh)
Summation 2
To me, more and more Google is a tiresome chore -- you have to make stuff work with it, but searches are hugely hampered by blogs, aggregators, search engine traps, link farms and so on to the point where:
If I want to find out about some general topic, I use wikipedia.
If I want to find out about a specific thing, I use a site such as riskglossary or MSDN.
If I want detailed facts, I use a bookshop, still as true today as it was before teh n3t started.
If I'm looking for a line from a half-remembered song, I use google.
In other words, google is strong when you want 'something that contains text X' but not strong for 'a page that describes 'X''. And Google's attempts to preserve quality can actually become a nightmare -- that's how Search Engine Optimization got to be a big business.
I like google and I use google, but to me, the days when it was my one-stop shop for absolutely every visit to the web are long gone.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index. Indexing can take time. You may find it helpful to review our information for webmasters and webmaster guidelines. You have submitted 1 Sitemaps. You have no Sitemap errors. Find more answers in our help center, including: * Why isn't my site included in the index?
I like Altavista's actual search mechanism better (it is more precise, and makes sure that the returned pages contain the information I look for without having to place Google's annoying required) "inanchor" tag. However, sites like Altavista and others don't have anywhere near as many pages as Google. Also, the UI/interface/look on all of the other sites really sucks compared to Google.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Google have won this round of the search engine game. As far as keyword search goes, there is no reason for me to switch. They're free, they're fast, they almost always get the info I'm looking for in the first couple of links. There is simply no incentive to change. Unless google feck up (start to support wars/slavery so it becomes political, add one feature too many, finally stop with the search results and just returns ads)
However, its not sewn up. What I really want is a search engine that actually understands what I'm asking for. Rather than a library index, what I want is a librarian. The company that get that right will be the overal winners... but thats decades away - and I imagine it will come from left field, just like Google did.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
I find that Google is becoming less and less useful.
...?
The web now has become so large that a simple keyword search just doesn't cut it anymore. Try searching for information about a popular digital camera from someone who isn't trying to sell them. It is next to impossible. (Yes I know about http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/ - a good try, but not really addressing the fundamental problem.)
The best way that search could get better in my opinion is to introduce some kind of filtering on the type of organisation that produces the pages you are searching for. Google already does a bit of this with Google Scholar. But we need something far more general, and more to the point, a facility for excluding results of particular types, e.g. blogs, sites trying to sell something,
I know that some people will complain that it may be a very subjective judgement whether site X is commercial or not. But search results are never going to be perfect anyway. Let's have the improvements where they are available, and worry about the corner cases later.
and, say, Clusty.com, except that the latter doesn't collaborate with the Chinese Communist Party.
I dont think so. Google operates in a field where the switching cost to the user is zero. If GOOG does not deliver, it is extremely easy for the user to switch to a competing search engine. So I dont feel threatened by GOOG. But MSFT monopoly was created by increasing the switching cost to the user. It realized long before its customers, the key to revenue is lock them in. MSFT effectively confused interoperability with IBM-PC compatibility and later Windows compatibility and got bulk of the users locked in. As long as it prices its products, mainly MS Office a tad less than what it would cost the corporations to switch t a competing product they will keep raking money in. And they use the money to make sure that the playing field does not get leveled ever again.
So GOOG can keep its only if it constantly innovates and provides a better service than its competitor. As long as there is competitive pressure on a company, I dont begrudge any billions they rake in. But I strongly resent even pennies made by unfair companies that do not have the burden of competition. Cable monopolies, electicity utilities, MSFT, teacher unions, anyone who found a way to dodge the pressure of competition irks me. Because I am under so much pressure to constantly learn and fight off competitors 20 years younger than me who are gunning for my job.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
One searchier! I have a new catchphrase. Sir, I applaud you!
Look at the way great ideas have grown quickly: YouTube, digg, and so on.
YouTube isn't a great idea. That's like saying that Empornium and Suprnova are/were great ideas. YouTube, just like Empornium and Supernova, is successful because there is a metric fuckton of copyrighted shit on there. No other reason.
If the site was only starting out and didn't have that stuff no one would have started to use it. Now that they are huge and people know of them because of allowing copyright infrigement, they are going to stick around -- even after they scale back those activities.
but the domain name is so long noone ever uses it
all ask or other sites would have to do is implement some minimal set of filters, eg get rid of the link farms and a few other filters, better search features in advanced search (how do you say google sucks big time here) I'm sure /.s could add a few more
this is just like firefox: ALL you have to do is find the one or two really simple things people actually need and want
This would have the added benefit of reducing google revenue; the financial markets are fickle sharks, and one quarter unexpected bad news will cause google's stock to collapse
Google is, generally, the best search engine for English, and it's normalization is quite good -- i.e. widening the search to include plurals or singulars, recognize words that might need accent marks, and so on.
But frankly, Google and Pagerank suck when it comes to searching in languages like Japanese. I can search for a Japanese company or item and get two pages of completely irrelevant links first. Not spam links, but junk like blog posts. Normalization sucks; Japanese uses a mixed script (phonetic kana plus Chinese characters), and Google does no conversion or normalization when searching. It would be a cinch for anyone to top Google in the huge Japanese market, and I think they're already getting pummelled by Chinese search engine.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
It's a 'googol'. Google is a trademark not a number ;)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Google may be loosing ground in quality. There results are often redundant, wiki.com, about.com, 404 sites, you get a bunch of canned results regardless of your search (or maybe I just search for things only on about and wiki). They have a few concepts they are working on; their coop is going bumping up their results (especially with health topics) they have rumors of launching mashups which would clean their results. They seem to be looking at other ways to provide the same data. I can search for a health topic or I can coop a health topic. I would assume they will start a few other sites (they have http://www.searchmash.com/ going) but I expect to see others come up with a variety of uses. The big upcoming challenge for search engines is to provide a smart list of sites, searches that produce safe sites to go to (no spy ware) sites with accurate information (not blogs and other junk which is all lies), I expect in the next few years the consumers will begin to demand this from the search engines once they get tired of the crap their computers catch on the net, they will want some filtering from the search companies.
It seems that if you cant catch them, you take shots at them to change peoples view, or you try to change the rules to make it harder for them to succeed. We are seeing this with the threat of a non-neutral Internet where most proponents nearly always use Google as the example.
I think the shots at Google are a little bit of 'tall poppy syndrome' kicking in. The only thing keeping Google from being resented is their 'humility' - that they aren't flaunting their position and their committed to 'not be evil' - like not handing the info to the NSA without a warrant like the 'others' did.
I bet there is a correlation between the switching rate from IE to Firefox. It having google as prime search engine makes up for a lot of searches.
You mean from AdWords? ;)
In Windows Vista IE has Windows Live Search as the default search engine. Ithink this will be the google killer along with the GB+ hotmail box.
Link to the Google Name Origin. Quick clarification - the "check" referred to above was a search check, not an investor's check.
"The key was Google knew what people wanted, and gave it to them"
I dumped Altavista once Google had indexed more sites than it. I actually preferred Altavista's search results because they are more accurate, but Google having more sites (and caching!) more than made up for the problem of Google searches being sprinkled with irrelevant, unwanted, results. I don't even mind that Google indexes blogs, etc: when I search the Internet for something, I want a search engine to return all pages that contain what I am looking for. Period.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Being the best at what you do does not constitute a monopoly. Effectively being the only one doing what you do is a monopoly. And since search is a huge field comprised of a number of companies large enough that you can't count them on your digits, i'd have to say, parent hasn't a clue what it's talking about. Comments like parent aren't funny because they're not true and they don't make sense, regardless of the facetious intent. Please, either try harder, or just don't bother posting.
There are lives at stake here!
No, successs and being the best isn't wrong. Using your success and money to oppress others through unethical business practices is. There is a huge difference. Staying on top because you have a great product is one thing. Staying on top because you can quash others unfairly is another.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
In general the main cause is the bigger search engines are still not even trying to copy the big selling points of google.
Their front pages are still a big abortion of pictures and junk. Google is simple "box + logo".
Their results are trying to coppy google but the no.1 thing the google results page sells is TRUST. Most people trust google that all adds are going to be labeled clearly and they will not be inserted into the results!
MSN/Yahoo/etc already missed the boat on this issue. If anyone is going to compete with Google it's going to have to be someone new at this point probably. Unless of course someone thinks up a new must have feature.
Google for Google, Google that Google. Google. I sure hope someone is at least getting paid well for the dozen daily Google stories.
I think it's important to note that Google isn't just great at searching. They aren't simply riding the wave of a technology they invented 10 years ago. There are so many aspects to Google as a company that help it succeed.
I am very interested in Google, so I try to keep abreast of developments. I've seen the company attract and hire the top minds in Silicon Valley (and around the world for that matter) in every field, which includes top management, finances, accounting, law, programming (especially programming) - you name it. They implement best practices in all of these areas and follow strict rules while maintaining open discussion and flexibility to change.
Most of us on /. are aware of Google's agile and test-first programming and while there are of course downfalls, these are highly effective methods to producing high-quality software relatively quickly. This, indidentally, is very good for marketing as programs continue to improve and new and exciting products are constantly released to keep users interested.
Finally, and I personally believe this to be the most important aspect of Google's success, is that they consistently appear to be an open and honest corporate body. They follow the law as best they can while still trying to keep their users (and shareholders) informed of how they are handling various issues. I think it's no surprise that thousands of shareholders trust Google enough to buy stock even though Google has told them that they will have very little influence over the companies' movements.
I try to be objective in my life, and I feel that I am being such with my analysis of Google. There will always be flaws, but Google is a very strong company, both inside and out."you have to make stuff work with it, but searches are hugely hampered by blogs, aggregators, search engine traps, link farms"
But for me, that is what I want. When I search the Internet for something, I want a search engine to return all pages that contain what I am looking for. Period. (I even want the pages with robots.txt: if you don't want it indexed DON'T PUT IT ON THE WEB!, but I know that is too much to ask for).
Where were you when the voynix came?
I think among the tech crowd, it's a given that companies who cut back on R&D are simply shooting themselves in the foot. Google is all about R&D and trying out new ideas. The amoebic growth and success of everything "Google" should be more than just noticed by various companies... it should be mimicked.
Instead, we still see a whole lot of "heads in the sand" and people wondering why their previously successful business models are failing. But then again I can see where people are trying to demonstrate that they learned something from the dot-com failures too... but perhaps they didn't learn what they should have since a great deal of the mentality from the dot-com boom is present in Google's "just try it" ideology.
Google, unlike other search engines, has figured out how to make money without annoying the users. Other search engines kept adding more and more ads and clutter. Google's clean interface, and relatively accurate searches have prevented me, and other people to switch to another engine. But I wish I knew a another good search engine, when my google seach turns up nothing.
Compare http://www.google.com/ to http://www.lycos.com./ Google realized early on that to win in the searching business, all you need to do is search really well. As long as I still have to scroll my browser page to see everything on a search site's front page, that search site is too complicated. Having a simple main page lets users set it to their home page with negligible impact to their browser's startup time; that really matters more than some people think.
AltaVista got the message, but they're still playing catch-up.
Take care,
Mark
There is a solution...
Google is about to get taught the same exact lesson that Netscape did. MS will not hesitate
to use their platform dominance to crush google from the face of the earth. Now of course MS is
probably going to get sued again for doing so but, so what the gains are much bigger than the penalties. MS is going to just keep them wrapped up in the courts for years until they are nothing more than a smoldering wasteland.
Google had a chance to avoid the defeat they are about to get dealt, but they are not thinking enough into the future. There best chance was to push firefox with the google toobar installed into as many desktops as they possibly could. That means putting the firefox download straight on the front search page in big bold print and advertising like a mad man to get it installed on everything possible including OEM's etc. In order to win and keep winning you have to own the browser / platform.
Got Code?
One-to-the-hundredth power is a "googol."
"Google" has no particular referent other than Barney Google, possibly the longest-running comic in history, about a "cigar-smoking, sports-loving, poker-playing, girl-chasing ne'er-do-well" and his hapless horse Spark Plug.
Barney Google was the subject of a hit song of the 1920s:
Baaaaaaarney Google! With his goog-goog-googley eyes!
Baaaaaaarney Google! Had a wife three times his size!
She sued Barney for divorce--
Now he's living with his horse!
Barney Google! With his goog-goog-gooley eyes!
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
try to search with string "IE7" with google and microsoft live and you know why
...for the comic strip, Barney Google.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Google is elegant by being simple in UI, but complex in algorithm. This is what makes it so appealing. There is also brand recgonition. People can say "Google" instead of "ask.com" or "yahoo.com". It's just easier and more fun to say than the other sites - you don't need to add the .com to clarify what you mean - the word google awill suffice to let people will know exactly what you about (Search). In the case of the other sites, they are either unknown or they serve more as portals than search engines. Google focuses on doing one thing and doing it well.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. I think you are thinking of Googol...
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
"Check them out and you will see why people who become aware of Anoox are blown away by it."
Blown away by how crap it is?
Can i get back the 10 seconds of my life that i wasted at that site plzkthxbai.
Keep in mind that Business week is a major share holder of Google, via AOL-Timewarner who is parent of Business week. Also Google and AOL-Timewarner & Google have major, multi Billion dollar cross advertising deals. So that is why every few weeks Business week and one or more AOL-Timewarner media outlet comes up with a (propaganda) article/news about how great Google is and how much of a genius the Google founders are, etc. etc. BS about Google. After all they are making Billions of dollars from dumping Google shares on the public and making Billions of dollars from their cross advertising deals. If you want a really innovative search engine, one that is really good for the public, specially small businesses, like my own, check out AnooX: www.anoox.com They are totally independent, hey they are not-for-profit!
it's how you use them
wow! it's been more than 3 years since I last had a look at Lycos!
Pamela Anderson is now 2nd on their popular search list! what a shocker!
That would be the other 100 search engines, then?
You must own the site, because I can't imagine that anybody that's ever used that piece of trash would reccomend it.
Just because something is legal it doesn't make it right. There is plenty wrong with monopolies that aren't illegal. Monopolies usually mean higher prices for products.
Way to rip off a +5 informative post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=199403&cid=16
specific matches?
Just yeaserday I was looking for Parklane park.
I got 10 pages hit for Park Lane -note the space.
Park lane inn
Park lane apartmaent, etc.
I don't want something 'close' I want exact. Putting it in quaotes does not help.
So, what obvious thing did I miss?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One-to-the-hundredth power is a "googol."
Actually, it's one.
In the past six months, I've noticed two computer newb friends of mine doing the same exact thing-- When provided a URL for a website, they don't know they can type it into the browser's URL field. Instead, they use their bookmark for google (it's also set as their home page) and then type the URL into the google search field. In most instances, Google returns a link to the URL they have just typed.
In the most recent instance, it didn't because it was a website I had just created for my friend. He told me on the phone that he couldn't find the website I had sent him the URL for. I knew the domain was propagated in DNS, so this sounded odd to me. Then when I visited him at his house, I saw him typing it into google instead of the browser's URL field and I had to explain that google didn't yet know about the website and that he needed to request it directly.
The other guy opens his browser, which has google set as his home page, then he types "www.hotmail.com" into the search field so he can check his email.
So, yeah, Google has established itself as a fundamental component of the internet for many, many people.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Ten-to-the-hundredth power is what you are thinking of.
Monopolies usually mean higher prices for products.
Thank you for providing an example of abuse, as per the GP post.
As far as I can tell, Google's innovation is subsidized by revenue made through a fairly old and well-understood business model. Whenever I ask where Google gets their money, I hear about ad revenue through the search engine that everyone uses, and sometimes references to "licensing their technology."
I guess I can see the relationship between innovation and the business: by making things that people want to use (particularly the search engine) they get eyeballs and then those people click on ads -- and innovation is responsible for the search engine being what people want to use. But I also see Google innovation being used on lots of things that I doubt will ever be wildly popular.
Is the idea that, by trying lots of things, hopefully they'll stumble onto the next popular place to put ads? That sounds like it might work if you have a shitload of funding so that you can afford to try lots of things, but it sounds pretty speculative. It sounds dot-com boomish. I don't think making a business sucessful is nearly as easy as Google makes it appear. I can't help but think that maybe their sucess is simply due to having the right (i.e. very smart) people at the right time, rather than a magically-good business model.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Agreed,
Those who thinks that Google is defacto "good" are naive. Google is a company, and they do have to increase their market share and profits. Just take a look at recent decision in China. Shareholders have firmly remind them that China is a market they cannot loose.
There is strictly nothing wrong with that. They are a company..."but" it is just a private company, nothing more.
If they can profit from a monopoly (and currently they don't have any monopoly, competitions are one click away), they will surely do it...In fact they "must" do it. Their purpose is to make money. Shareholders, investors expect return on their investment.
One of their most remarquable achievment is their communication strategy. Extremely clever. I guess Yahoo and MSN are taking notes.
well, I don't know if one search is a good enough sample, but for 'webcams' it takes about 10 pages of spam or irrelevant links before anything useful comes up.
:)
WW.com and EarthCam.com don't even figure in the list at all, which seems somewhat of an omission
For me Google always wins because Google just keeps making the searches return not just more information, but information that is more relevant. Combined with Google's advertisements, which have quickly become one of my favorite ways to shop, Google often has the answer to a lot of life's little questions and problems. Contrast that with other search engines: they just try stripping down to a barebones, Google-style layout, and then throw on lame features dreamed up by some team of idiots in marketing. Take Ask.com's cool new feature; the ability to view a tiny image of the page before I click through. This might be useful if the tiny image didn't make all of the text and images so tiny that they're illegible; in other words, it's mostly useless. Amazon tried giving the ability to remember past searches. I'll give them credit for this one, it really could come in handy when doing a lot of research via the web, especially if they would have written a nice Firefox plugin to enhance the capabilities. But because Google gives better search results, it doesn't matter. It's just easier to get better search results from Google and be careful when I take notes.
A word of advice to all of Google's competitors. Cut the crap. Just give better search results. And when you know you can't do better-I'm pointing at you, Microsoft and Amazon-just cut your losses and go focus on something that you do well.
If any of you do have plans for besting the 800lb gorilla, the domain 1E101.com is available. Let us know how it goes.
- p
From the Google whitepaper (initial description of the Google system by the founders)
"We chose our system name, Google, because it is a common spelling of googol, or 10^100 and fits well with our goal of building very large-scale search engines."
Source page
Google didn't catch up to "the big guy." Google caught up to first-movers in a very young market -- who were not even doing search (Yahoo) or who put search on the back burner (Digital) -- with half a dozen servers.
Today the big guys have 500,000 servers. Even if you are somehow an order of magnitude more efficient, and another order of magnitude smaller while you're starting out, that's still 5k servers -- $5M at least, plus an ops team to run them.
Good luck.
--
Carnage Blender : Meet interesting people. Kill them.
It's not the length of your search engine that matters. It's how you use it.
n/t
Money quote:
It's my impression that other companies have caught up with id, as employees have left or been fired. Perhaps the same will happen with Google.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Maybe it's because the best and brightest *WANT* to work at Google for a variety of reasons? If you have the best people, challenge them and compensate them accordingly, then you're going to be the best in whatever business you endeavor into.
One-to-the-hundredth power is a "googol."
One to the hundreth power is still one. However, 10^100 is a googol.
An image search where...
1) You upload an image to the engine.
2) It searches for exact matches of the image, and shows you the URLs where they're hosted as well as any pages href'ing them, what the image has been renamed to, etc.
It can do some sort of advanced pattern recognition, allowing it to compare your uploaded query pic against images which look similar to it in the search engine's index. Upload a smiley face, for example, and it'll find you other smiley faces, or perhaps frowny-faces, etc.
If someone could build this, it'd be huge.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Back when I was in school we didn't have fancy shmancy percentage points, we had mere percents, and boy were we grateful!
A google-and-one?
Monk would freak!
Privacy concerns. Google is amassing so much information it's not funny. By now it probably knows me better than I know myself. I do not like this at all.
And a Gogol is an odd Russian writer that had a nose fetish.
Just yeaserday....10 pages hit....Park lane apartmaent, etc. ...Putting it in quaotes does not help
Google is not your problem. Your problem is probably that you're misspelling something (or maybe you have no hands and you're typing with your elbows). In that short comment you misspelled 4 different items!
Speaking of which, there used to be a system called cow9 over on Alta-Vista, that really worked well for search refinement.
As an example, if you did a search for "atm", you got back a graphic page (interactive, naturally) that clearly showed bank related pages, and network related pages, seperate. You could indicate which group you were interested in, as well as subdivisions based on keywords in the pages retreived.
Cow9 was the best way to find stuff. I have no idea why it was removed.
3 good examples of monopolies who abuse would be MS (still does in a BIG way), IBM, and Sabre System (American Airlines old reservation system). All 3 of these abused their monoply by doing illegal actions. Sabre system used to place AA flights first and their highest competitors on the last page. Once that was found out, the Feds forced AA to break it off. IBM was also abusing their monopoly. The feds were going to break them up, but they fell by not paying attention to MS and Unix. Now, we have MS who should have been broken up, but was not. Interestingly, it probably would have helped MS's shareholders.
OTH, there are good examples of monopolies who aquired it through natural fashions and have hung on. A good example is Jeppesen. They make the aviation maps that about 90 % of all pilots use. At one time, it was 100% of all pilots. They are losing due to a number of reasons. One of the firsts, is that the feds introduced a map for them at almost silly prices. In addition, pilots are moving to digital and jeppesen has not done a good job with moving to that (QC is still lacking and their only solution has been Windows only until recent time. Their competitors are taking advantage of that and jeppesen will almost certainly lose their monopoly within another 10 years (far too much politics being played; similar to MS, comcast, or qwest).
What this shows, is that if you are not doing an illegal monopoly, then you MUST remain at the top by being superior. If you have an inferior product, then the only way to remain on the top is by being illegal and immoral (see the first paragraph).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's the default there too.
I remember Opera Google version in which as soon as you typed something, it populated the combo box with the results of the search.
Somehow the feature was removed, a very sad thing.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
It's called increasing returns.... here's a link - follow it to a paper (c) 1996 that started a wave in thinking
I went to hear Norvig talk this week at Parc and found his talk interesting, yet uninspiring. Sadly it was marketing.
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Like all large organizations, they have limited ability to focus on niche areas, and some of the really important niche areas they are completely ignoring. It really does always come back to limited resources.
Why have they been unable to complete with YouTube, and instead they are in talks for buying them for 1.X Billion?
Why do they have a litany of research projects that have limited to minimal adoption?
Why are they still focused on the big-numbers word game when it's clear that even with 100 Trillion+ word corpuses, they still only achieve 70-90% accuracy for various language tasks?
The answer to all of these questions is that they have a (massive) core business, and the focus of the company if to maintain and grow that core business. To really address the above issues and several other, critical ones toward their ultimate goal, they need to be "more different" than how normal, big companies operate. They need to separate out the core and build an internal financial ecology to mirror the outside world. They currently have an internal idea and development ecology - but that is not enough to incent the niche development internally.