They also ensure continous innovation and technical breakthroughs in *evading* firewalls and filters. If they were smart, they'd find the people that are effectively getting around the firewall and start hiring them. Maybe their real motives are to secretly breed the next great army of hackers that will dominate World War 3.
Yahoo actually used Google's search engine for a long time (among others - they switched a couple times in the early days and ended up with Google since it was the best). Yahoo has hardly been anti-Google until much more recently when Google has decided to compete directly against Yahoo. They actually owned a fairly large stake in Google and were one of the initial investors in the company. They made in the neighborhood of $900 million when Google went public. Times have changed with Google's emergence of a portal and competing web site, but this was competition was something that Google initiated.
All that being said, Yahoo is still the most popular site on the internet - by far. They have more than twice the amount of traffic than Google and Microsoft COMBINED! (http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details ?&range=6m&size=medium&y=p&url=www.yahoo.com#top). Yahoo is lacking in a lot of areas and I don't always appreciate the approach they have taken with advertising, etc, but they do have the most comprehensive set of internet services out there and have been doing this for a lot longer than Google has. Bash them all you want, but I wouldn't write them off:)
Except it doesn't work like that. Google Talk basically sucks compared to any mature IM client out there at the moment. It will get better of course, but right now it doesn't have many features and just will not cut it. Nor is the Google IM network open so there is very little reason to switch to their very small closed network.
Google Talk will not take off until Google makes it worthwhile for people to make the switch. If the MS, Yahoo and AIM networks start opening up, then there is even less reason to switch unless Google also can communicate to those networks. Trust me, you don't want to be a Google exec going to ask MS to join their IM network right now... this will be an uphill climb for Google to break into this market.
Censored eh? You mean someone disagreed with you and edited your article? If you believe you are right, then you shouldn't give up. Quote your sources, start a discussion, and be persistent.
You should also ask yourself how relevant this alternative view point was in the article in which you are editing. There are certain rules to follow and they try to cut down on redundant information. Kary Mullis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis) and her views are represented on the site. Perhaps a simple link to these views would serve better than a full out discussion. (Just guessing here as I have no idea what kind of edits you made).
You have to keep in mind too that Wikipedia is very young. As its popularity has exploded recently, a lot of new content is being added to the site. While its easy to add content to the site, it takes a lot of time to refine that amount of information. NO Reference works are created overnight. The quality of the information on Wikipedia is improving, but it is a gradual process.
I don't think anyone is arguing that you should take every word you read on the site as fact without a credible source, but isn't that the beauty of the site? It basically forces you to challenge and evaluate every piece of information you read and then gives you the opportunity to do something about it. Most people are not used to thinking this way, and when you bring together millions of people that are going through this information evaluation excercise... what are you going to end up with down the road?
Where will the site be 10 years down the road? It will probably be the most scrutinized website in existance... talk about trial by fire. After 10 years of nitpicking about every word and punctuation mark on the site, the question will soon become how any other source of information can possibly be more credible than wikipedia.
>> I personally avoid Wikipedia for that very reason. >>
Instead of avoiding it, why don't you just fix it? In the time it took you to read this thread on Wikipedia and make this post, you could have corrected the article in question and educated a lot of people.
Google's offering was enough to make me switch from Yahoo when it came out. And I had ditched Hotmail long ago due to the ridiculously small inbox which filled with spam every day. 30Gig isn't enough to make me switch though - I don't have capacity issues any more and am curious as to what kind of customers they will attract by competing on capacity. I wonder if they will support the "online harddrive" types that are currently filling up their Gmail boxes... and I wonder how profitable those types of customers actually are.
Btw, it seems as if Hotmail and Yahoo have improved significantly since Google entered the market. Less spam, more capacity - I still use both on occassions since Hotmail is basically my spam box and still have a lot of stuff directed at Yahoo. Even if you don't use Google, you gotta love them for bringing a little competitiveness to the market.
Slashdot Mirror
The Story is now being covered on the front page of Google's News aggregator (news.google.com).
They also ensure continous innovation and technical breakthroughs in *evading* firewalls and filters. If they were smart, they'd find the people that are effectively getting around the firewall and start hiring them. Maybe their real motives are to secretly breed the next great army of hackers that will dominate World War 3.
Yahoo actually used Google's search engine for a long time (among others - they switched a couple times in the early days and ended up with Google since it was the best). Yahoo has hardly been anti-Google until much more recently when Google has decided to compete directly against Yahoo. They actually owned a fairly large stake in Google and were one of the initial investors in the company. They made in the neighborhood of $900 million when Google went public. Times have changed with Google's emergence of a portal and competing web site, but this was competition was something that Google initiated.
s ?&range=6m&size=medium&y=p&url=www.yahoo.com#top). Yahoo is lacking in a lot of areas and I don't always appreciate the approach they have taken with advertising, etc, but they do have the most comprehensive set of internet services out there and have been doing this for a lot longer than Google has. Bash them all you want, but I wouldn't write them off :)
All that being said, Yahoo is still the most popular site on the internet - by far. They have more than twice the amount of traffic than Google and Microsoft COMBINED! (http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_detail
Except it doesn't work like that. Google Talk basically sucks compared to any mature IM client out there at the moment. It will get better of course, but right now it doesn't have many features and just will not cut it. Nor is the Google IM network open so there is very little reason to switch to their very small closed network.
Google Talk will not take off until Google makes it worthwhile for people to make the switch. If the MS, Yahoo and AIM networks start opening up, then there is even less reason to switch unless Google also can communicate to those networks. Trust me, you don't want to be a Google exec going to ask MS to join their IM network right now... this will be an uphill climb for Google to break into this market.
Censored eh? You mean someone disagreed with you and edited your article? If you believe you are right, then you shouldn't give up. Quote your sources, start a discussion, and be persistent.
You should also ask yourself how relevant this alternative view point was in the article in which you are editing. There are certain rules to follow and they try to cut down on redundant information. Kary Mullis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis) and her views are represented on the site. Perhaps a simple link to these views would serve better than a full out discussion. (Just guessing here as I have no idea what kind of edits you made).
You have to keep in mind too that Wikipedia is very young. As its popularity has exploded recently, a lot of new content is being added to the site. While its easy to add content to the site, it takes a lot of time to refine that amount of information. NO Reference works are created overnight. The quality of the information on Wikipedia is improving, but it is a gradual process.
I don't think anyone is arguing that you should take every word you read on the site as fact without a credible source, but isn't that the beauty of the site? It basically forces you to challenge and evaluate every piece of information you read and then gives you the opportunity to do something about it. Most people are not used to thinking this way, and when you bring together millions of people that are going through this information evaluation excercise... what are you going to end up with down the road?
Where will the site be 10 years down the road? It will probably be the most scrutinized website in existance... talk about trial by fire. After 10 years of nitpicking about every word and punctuation mark on the site, the question will soon become how any other source of information can possibly be more credible than wikipedia.
>>
I personally avoid Wikipedia for that very reason.
>>
Instead of avoiding it, why don't you just fix it? In the time it took you to read this thread on Wikipedia and make this post, you could have corrected the article in question and educated a lot of people.
Google's offering was enough to make me switch from Yahoo when it came out. And I had ditched Hotmail long ago due to the ridiculously small inbox which filled with spam every day. 30Gig isn't enough to make me switch though - I don't have capacity issues any more and am curious as to what kind of customers they will attract by competing on capacity. I wonder if they will support the "online harddrive" types that are currently filling up their Gmail boxes... and I wonder how profitable those types of customers actually are.
Btw, it seems as if Hotmail and Yahoo have improved significantly since Google entered the market. Less spam, more capacity - I still use both on occassions since Hotmail is basically my spam box and still have a lot of stuff directed at Yahoo. Even if you don't use Google, you gotta love them for bringing a little competitiveness to the market.