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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?"

12 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Um.. by Achra · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  2. Article Summary by neonprimetime · · Score: 3, Informative

    Expanding Territory - Google is expanding into areas previously dominated by Yahoo!, Microsoft, and eBay.

    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 ... ask a question, get an answer sites.

    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.

  3. Re:Monopoly? Oh no!!!?!?!?!?!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Nothing wrong with having a monopoly. Abusing the monopoly is where we get problems.

  4. Opposite of my experience by kahei · · Score: 5, Informative


    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.
  5. Re:MOD PARENT DOWN - ADSENSE WHORE by ezzzD55J · · Score: 2, Informative

    Nonsense. As /. (and blogs etc, usually) link with 'rel="nofollow"', this will do nothing to GP's pagerank.

  6. Re:Odd by Awod · · Score: 2, Informative

    Google doesn't delete old pages it stores "EVERYTHING" in a google cache that will will not be deleted/available for another 20 years*, every search entered and page viewed websites are updated with new caches every 5 minutes. *Inaccurate number but it shouldn't be too hard to find if you're interested google doesn't hide the stuff..

  7. A link for Clarification by JoshDM · · Score: 2, Informative

    Link to the Google Name Origin. Quick clarification - the "check" referred to above was a search check, not an investor's check.

  8. Re:Monopoly? Oh no!!!?!?!?!?!! by NoTheory · · Score: 2, Informative

    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!
  9. Re:Yep. by Ibag · · Score: 2, Informative

    As much as it pains me to say this, Google is not a number. The number that you are thinking of is googol. Yes, Google (and the googleplex) are named after the numbers googol and Googleplex, but they are spelled differently. They are, in fact, different words. Even the Google toolbar spellchecker agrees with me!

  10. Google: You keep using that word. by xPsi · · Score: 2, Informative
    Is it possible to think of a number better than a one with a hundred zeros behind it?

    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
  11. Re:Even better! by itwerx · · Score: 5, Informative

    Mod parent up!
        A googol (correct spelling of the mathematical term) is a 1 with a hundred zeros, but a googol-plex is a 1 with a googol of zeros behind it! (Read the Wikipedia article on it, lots of cool factoids :).

  12. Re:It's not "googol," it's "google..." as in Barne by night+tilda · · Score: 2, Informative

    One-to-the-hundredth power is a "googol."

    Actually, it's one.