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Subject: Let's talk about Google for a minute.
Google is, undeniably, a major component of our modern internet. I can remember clearly the day I switched to Google from my previous search engine of choice, HotBot. It was a miraculous difference: Google pointed me towards things I was looking for when no other search engine did. When HotBot was saying things like "We removed the javascript that put your cursor in the search bar automatically, which saved us a bit of bandwidth, and no one really minds..." Google was making their site work better, seemingly at any cost.
And it worked. I can't imagine an internet without Google. Microsoft cheats and lies and I cannot trust their Bing (and it doesn't work well anyway) and Yahoo hasn't really been useful for search in, like, a decade.
There is not likely to be a competitor to Google anytime soon. The head start they have, their understanding of their users and search habits, is massive. Any company that wants to compete has to do all the hard work themselves, rediscovering the things Google already knows, and I cannot imagine they'll ever create the same wealth of algorithmic intelligence Google has.
Consider this example from a recent Wired article:
Check out this page for a lot of interesting trivia about Google's algorithms.
Google has hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who sit around all day and refine the rules that make search work. And they've been doing it a long time. How can anyone compete with that?
I fear the day Google turns on us.
Google Italy recently took a hit as a court their sentenced three executives to jail for a video uploaded to Italian YouTube.
Google still hasn't left China. This is good, as apparently Chinese scientists want to keep Google around:
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Meanwhile, over in Europe, two Microsoft shill companies have complained to European antitrust agencies about their recent demotions within Google's search results. Basically, they're pathetic link/directory sites that no one likes, and Google - while revising their algorithms as they constantly do - ranked these sites far lower.
Basically, Google creates a better search engine for its users, and these little scum businesses - now affiliated with Microsoft, so I'm sure their intentions are pure - go berserk with rage.
The company I work for recently got screwed by Google's changing policies and enforcement, but we didn't call a lawyer - we fixed our shit and got back to business.
And it worked. I can't imagine an internet without Google. Microsoft cheats and lies and I cannot trust their Bing (and it doesn't work well anyway) and Yahoo hasn't really been useful for search in, like, a decade.
There is not likely to be a competitor to Google anytime soon. The head start they have, their understanding of their users and search habits, is massive. Any company that wants to compete has to do all the hard work themselves, rediscovering the things Google already knows, and I cannot imagine they'll ever create the same wealth of algorithmic intelligence Google has.
Consider this example from a recent Wired article:
Quote by Wired:Google’s response can be summed up in four words: mike siwek lawyer mi.
Amit Singhal types that koan into his company’s search box. Singhal, a gentle man in his forties, is a Google Fellow, an honorific bestowed upon him four years ago to reward his rewrite of the search engine in 2001. He jabs the Enter key. In a time span best measured in a hummingbird’s wing-flaps, a page of links appears. The top result connects to a listing for an attorney named Michael Siwek in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s a fairly innocuous search — the kind that Google’s servers handle billions of times a day — but it is deceptively complicated. Type those same words into Bing, for instance, and the first result is a page about the NFL draft that includes safety Lawyer Milloy. Several pages into the results, there’s no direct referral to Siwek.
Check out this page for a lot of interesting trivia about Google's algorithms.
Google has hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who sit around all day and refine the rules that make search work. And they've been doing it a long time. How can anyone compete with that?
I fear the day Google turns on us.
Google Italy recently took a hit as a court their sentenced three executives to jail for a video uploaded to Italian YouTube.
Google still hasn't left China. This is good, as apparently Chinese scientists want to keep Google around:
A Nature News survey of Chinese scientists found that 84 percent of them thought losing access to Google would “somewhat or significantly” hurt their work process. Like their American counterparts, Chinese researchers use Google and Google Scholar to find papers and related information.
“Research without Google would be like life without electricity,” one Chinese scientist told Nature.
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Meanwhile, over in Europe, two Microsoft shill companies have complained to European antitrust agencies about their recent demotions within Google's search results. Basically, they're pathetic link/directory sites that no one likes, and Google - while revising their algorithms as they constantly do - ranked these sites far lower.
Basically, Google creates a better search engine for its users, and these little scum businesses - now affiliated with Microsoft, so I'm sure their intentions are pure - go berserk with rage.
The company I work for recently got screwed by Google's changing policies and enforcement, but we didn't call a lawyer - we fixed our shit and got back to business.
BLEARGH
This post was edited on 2010-03-26, 12:55 by 
