New Google Search Index 50% Fresher With Caffeine

Ponca City, We love you writes "When Google started, it would only update its index every four months. Then, around 2000, it started indexing every month in a process called the 'Google dance' that took a week to 10 days and would provide different results when searching for the same term from different Google data centers. Now PC World reports that Google has introduced a new web indexing system called Caffeine, which delivers results that are closer to 'live' by analyzing the web in small portions and updating the index on a continuous basis. 'Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale,' writes Carrie Grimes on the official Google Blog. 'Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day.' Now not only does Caffeine provide results that are 50% fresher than Google's last index, adds Grimes, but the new search index provides a robust foundation that will make it possible for Google to build a faster and more comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online."

Comments

Re:100 Petabytes

[dingen]

I heard it's over 9000.

Caffinated Freshness?

[RivenAleem]

I've been using Caffine (in it's Coffee form) to freshen my breath for years. I find it is really useful to increase the alertness level of staff around the office by breathing heavily in their face. It only takes a few goes and suddenly most of the workers here are on a much higher alertness level whenever I'm around. I would estimate it at least matches, if not exceeds Googles 50% increase.

Re:Caffeine

[ledow]

Nuke the site from orbit - it's the only way to be sure.

(And yes, I know I've jumped to a different film - bonus points for anyone who can name the common actor. I play a game where I can link any movie to the one I just quoted using actors / actresses... the worst I ever did was six-degrees-of-seperation).

Re:Altavista

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Google would argue that the fade in speeds up user interaction in the vast majority of cases by not distracting users from the search box. Actually, they did argue that. And their justification did not come from a marketing VP like you imagine but from benchmarking real users. It's as if they consider actual results a better metric than childish rants posted on a forum somewhere.

Except, of course, that this entire "study" is utter horse shit. Most corporate users do not use Google home page for searches (they usually have a corporate intranet home page and use the search browser box - present in all browsers today - instead). They use the Google home page as a switchboard to News, Maps, Gmail etc, which is precisely where the useless "feature" gets in the way. I should know, I have watched hundreds of them do so. Personally. It got so bad that we now push a standard set of bookmarks to desktops for News, Maps etc that allow people to bypass Google home page.

So Google can stick these kind of transparent face-saving and "we are right even when we are wrong" studies and stick'em whey they belong. Up theirs.

Furthermore, this entire discussion would not be taking place if Google actually stood behind the fake "studies" and allowed an opt-out to the older, simpler (and thus easier on bandwidth and what-not, Ajax-free, page). That alone would prove if they are right or wrong. They however know quite well what would happen and thus no choice will ever be offered to the users (save switching to Bing - with its own litany of issues - and the like).