In Google We Trust 246
firstadopter.com writes "The New York Times (registration needed) writes about how far Google has penetrated our culture (soul sucking "Free" registration required) in the last six years with the pros and cons of its success. It's amazing to think 200 million searches are done on the search engine each day on an index of 6 billion pages."
The multi million dollar question... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not impossible... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, I think when Google started out, Venture Capatilists helped fund it and they probably want to cash in, and get themselves some booty. That is what they do, invest in something so that they can sell it at a profit later on.
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:3, Insightful)
2) They want to buy something BIG. Lots of rumors but nothing solid.
-B
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Brands are valuable. But companies can't stand if they only rely on them.
Simple examples are Netscape, DEC. An upcoming example will be SCO.
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I know, I learned of Google on slashdot. Its lack of advertisements and painfully plesant and simple homepage devoid of millions of options and ads was just wonderful. I recommended it to all my friends.
Unless someone else can come up with a better reason, I believe Google is so strong because of the endorsement of Nerds. Probably also why AMD/Intel/ATi/NVIDIA let slip highly overclockable products every now and then.
Don't forget history... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't forget history... (Score:2)
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can personally vouch for why a good chunk of my home town (population 120K) uses it.
When Google was in Beta, I told my parents. They saw the usefulness and being teachers immediately started recommending it to students and other teachers for research. Students in turn talked to other kids and their parents.
About a month after that, the local librarian was recommending it, having heard about it from someone at the board office, who heard about it from another teacher that works at my mothers school.
That's as far as I traced the path but I'm fairly confident it went further than that.
Of course, I picked it up on Slashdot.
Re:The multi million dollar question... Dejanews (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once people realized that Google just
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Winamp became almost the defacto music player, and while WMP has also a large share, winamp gained popularity through word of mouth as well.
ICQ *used* to have the same, until the software began to deteriorate. Now, AIM, MSN and Yahoo are the popular ones, though I don't know of anyone that uses Yahoo (I hear different ones are popular in different regions of the world).
Programs such as Kazaa, Gnutella, Imesh, etc also gained widespread usage pretty fast.
So, how come Mozilla and Opera (obviously technically better products) didn't spread as fast?
It is true that the default setting by Microsoft makes a huge difference. That helps with MSN (Windows) Messenger and MSN.com. AIM gets a boost due to the many AOL users. But we know that quality products and services do spread rapidly through word of mouth endorsments. What is keeping Open Source Software behind?
GAIM isn't as popular as Trillian. I don't know of anyone that uses Jabber, though I wish more did. Is OpenOffice.org being held back severely by those that pirate (copyright infringe) Microsoft Office? But two things being free, obviously that also means there is enough hassle to change or the product is inferior (in the minds of the many users).
Switching OSes is even more of a drastic change, so if people seem unwilling to embrace Open Source less than piracy for application software, then it seems unlikely Linux will be embraced in the home anytime soon.
I think GNU/Linux is not ready yet for the home (though I do think it's ready for business desktops) but beyond that, I think word of mouth reputation must also improve. Hell, based my own experiences, I wouldn't recommend people use Linux except Knoppix or MandrakeMove right now.
It's obvious that advertising and Microsoft's monopoly and default settings make a huge impact. But word of mouth recommendations make a huge difference. And right now, Linux's reputation (and I guess Mozilla as well, though I'm not sure as to what reasons those are) also need improving.
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:2)
What Microsoft realizes is that its monopoly isn't secure. When (or IF for the less hopeful) Linux makes inroads and starts to get more third party support, costs for transitioning from MS Windows to Linux begin to erode for everyone. That's why FUD is even more important for them, because in whatever way they can, GNU/Linux's reputation and credibility can never gain high standing with the public.
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:2)
I.e. I sometimes get asked for advise on things way outside my skilset, like medicine, personal relationships or cars. People naturaly asume that if you can resolve an IRQ conflict you can setle a lovers quarel too
By this logic if Neerds endorse Google it is sean as great.
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:5, Insightful)
type in search.yahoo.com..then wait for all the images and special stuff to load...
type google.com in.. bam.. loaded. put in what you need.. results come up in almost an instant.
that, and better and more accurate search results, minimal ads, etc... makes it king of the ring compare to others that show every off topic search result, load hundreds of images, ads, and other crap... it's easy to see why google became king.
it simply offered a better service.
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:4, Informative)
Yahoo spiked big right after the IPO, and then it took years to return to that value.
Even Money last month noted that people should not buy stock in a new IPO as most of them rise rapidly, fall rapidly, and then level out after a few years.
I love Google and will love to own a piece of the company... I am just going to wait for the honeymoon period to be over first.
AC
Re:The multi million dollar question... (Score:2)
I just looked at YHOO and except for that rise and then dip for the first couple of months, it steadily rose for three years. Then it dropped at the beginning of 2000 and somewhat leveled around 2002 and began to rise again near 2003.
But
Don't forget history (v2)... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once upon a time AltaVista was the "unbeatable" search engine of choice.
Only appropriate... (Score:5, Informative)
Article Text (Score:5, Informative)
By DAVID HOCHMAN
Published: March 14, 2004
BEN SILVERMAN is what you might call a Google obsessive. A producer and a former talent agent best known for bringing "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" to American television, Mr. Silverman Googles people he is lunching with. He Googles for breaking news, restaurant reviews and obscure song lyrics. He Googles prospective reality-show contestants to make sure they don't have naked pictures floating around the Web. And, like every self-respecting Hollywood player, he Googles himself. Competitively.
"Guys all over town are on the phone saying, `I bet I can get more Google hits than you.' " he said recently. "It's become this ridiculous new power game."
It's more like the new kabbalah. With an estimated 200 million searches logged daily, Google, the most popular Internet search engine, "has a near-religious quality in the minds of many users," said Joseph Janes, an associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle who taught a graduate seminar on Google this semester. "A few years ago, you would have talked to a trusted friend about arthritis or where to send your kids to college or where to go on vacation. Now we turn to Google."
The Web site that has become a verb is many things to many people, and to some, perhaps too much: a dictionary, a detective service, a matchmaker, a recipe generator, an ego massager, a spiffy new add-on for the brain. Behind the rainbow logo, Google is changing culture and consciousness. Or maybe not ? maybe it's the world's biggest time-waster, a vacuous rabbit hole where, in January, 60 million Americans, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings, foraged for long-lost prom dates and the theme from "Doogie Howser, M.D."
"In one sense, with Google, everything is knowable now," said Esther Dyson, who publishes Release 1.0, a technology-industry newsletter. "We were much more passive about information in the past. We would go to the library or the phone book, and if it wasn't there, we didn't worry about it. Now, people can't as easily drift from your life. We can't pretend to be ignorant." But the flood of unedited information, she said, demands that users sharpen critical thinking skills, to filter the results. "Google," she said, "forces us to ask, `What do we really want to know?' "
Google delivers information that can radically alter one's self-perception. About a quarter of "vanity" searchers ? those who search for their own names ? say they are surprised by how much information they find about themselves, according to a survey by the Pew Internet Project.
Sometimes, they're really surprised. When Orey Steinmann, 17, of Los Angeles, entered his unusual name on Google's query line, he discovered that he was listed on a Canadian Web site for missing children and told a teacher. After an investigation, county officials took him into protective custody last month and federal marshals arrested his mother, Gisele Marie Goudreault. She has been charged in Canada with parental abduction, said Barbara Masterson, an assistant United States attorney in Los Angeles. Canadian authorities are seeking Ms. Goudreault's extradition, and Orey is deciding whether to contact the father he never knew.
Then there are the Google miracle stories. The morning after five left-handed electric guitars owned by Robert McLaughlin were stolen from a storage room at his San Diego apartment complex last year, he searched Google's image library for guitar photos to use on a reward poster. Instead, he found the stolen goods. "The thief was selling them in a live auction," he said. "In the past, my report would have gotten lost in a mountain of paperwork. Because of Google, the cops recovered four of the five guitars that week."
While some compare Google's reservoir of six billion documents to the ancient library at Alexandria, it often feels like the shallowest ocean on earth. "Google can be useful as a starting point to research or for superficial inquests," said James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress. "But far too often, it is a gateway to illiterate chatter, propaganda and blasts of unintelligible material."
Re:Article Text (Score:2, Insightful)
Miracle my ass. I call shenaningans.
Are you saying that in the space of a morning, the theft occurred, the thief took pictures, posted
Re:Only appropriate... (Score:5, Informative)
Hmm... Not tin-foil hat time, but suspicious.
Re:Only appropriate... (Score:2)
Links without registration (Score:3, Informative)
WOW (Score:2, Funny)
People use Google!
Calling the f'ing newspaper!
Its impessive. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google it.
Its better than RTFM
Re:Its impessive. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Its impessive. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Its impessive. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Just Yahoo it" - is hard to say quickly and coherently, and it doesn't flow that much
"Just Alta-Vista it" - this is obvious, too many syllables, and you can't really shorten it to either Alta or Vista
"Just Lycos it" - the S at the end flows straight into the 'it' and can therefore become confusing unless you have an annoying gap to separate the two words.
Hoover and Kleenex are unique, instantly identifiable names that aren't a pain to say. I wonder if these companies would have even touched the level of respective marketshare they've had if their product names were 'bad'.
Re:Its impessive. (Score:3, Funny)
I've heard it used as an expletive
Re:Its impessive. (Score:2)
Using it as a verb is like saying "use this particular search engine" because has become the default/best choice without thinking (with aspirins happened the same at least some time ago), and I would be surprised that that don't happens with more things.
Re:Its impessive. (Score:2)
Alternative search engines (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Alternative search engines (Score:5, Informative)
Fun new one to try: Mooter [mooter.com]
Re:Alternative search engines (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Alternative search engines (Score:5, Interesting)
Some things are fantastic on google/google groups. Searching for technical answers, and often general searching.
Some things work less well for me, often because of the linkfarm pond scum. Searching for say a type of shop in a particular town often isn't as good as Yell [yell.co.uk]. For fact finding, I often use Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. For movie info, I go straight to the IMDB [slashdot.org].
For a search engine, though, I've yet to find anything better.
Re:Alternative search engines (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Alternative search engines (Score:2)
While someone may eventually beat Google for general web search, it's these niche searches that offer a lot of easy opportunity. Because Google is a general purpose search engine, it's not too hard to beat it in a spe
Google link (Score:2, Informative)
Link to Google, free of karma-whoring (Score:2, Funny)
Mike Myers commentary on Goldmember (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Mike Myers commentary on Goldmember (Score:2, Interesting)
google is a modification of the word googol [reference.com]
but pronounced virtually identically, so really its the other way round and it was already in use (since at least 1938) before google discovered its branding potential
Google-centric web design (Score:5, Insightful)
The good thing is that it's encouraged symantically correct HTML (ie. using [h1] and [em] tags, instead of [font size="30"] or [b]). The downside is that some people still don't understand what it takes to rise in the rankings: quality content and getting linked to. The more shady web designers set up link farms and share links like a heroin addict shares needles.
Re:Google-centric web design (Score:4, Informative)
Link farms, and other cheating schemes, are what result when people want to buy themselves a higher PageRank. They don't have quality content or want to wait for links to form.
Re:Google-centric web design (Score:2)
And mispellings. Nothing will get you hits like talking about Rush Limbough and Dr. Laura Shlessinger.
Re:Google-centric web design (Score:5, Informative)
"Symantically correct" html means the tags have meaning. [b] (bold) doesn't *mean* anything. Neither does [i] (italic) or [font]. The preferred tags to use are [strong], [em] (emphasis), and [h1-6]. This idea is that HTML should describe content, and stylesheets should determine how the content looks.
If you surround something with [b] tags, you're coupling the content and the presentation. It's better practice to surround content with [strong] tags and then define how [strong] looks via a stylesheet.
Re:Google-centric web design (Score:3, Interesting)
Indirectly, it does. According to some articles I've read (this month's Maximum PC, for example), PageRank will consider the presentation (bold, italic, font size, etc) of a word when assigning a weight to it. Think of it, sometimes it's a hint of how important a word is, and rating importance is what Google is all about.
It's safe to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is not the only Search. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google isn't the only search engine out there, just the dominant one at the moment. Somebody who is using only Google, and is not aware that their are other tools with which to get a second opinion is missing out on a pretty big portion of the web that Google either hasn't discovered or just doesn't think highly of in PageRank.
The alternative... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The alternative... (Score:2)
Lexis-Nexis is solid, it's just too expensive for the average user.
Re:The alternative... (Score:2)
Devotion to google (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not religiously devoted to Google, I use it because I reckon it's the best search engine available. If something better comes along, I'd switch straight away.
search on "apple"--duhhr (Score:4, Insightful)
But yeah, successfully using Google requires both some search term assemblage skill and some online cultural literacy. Old farts at the NYTimes might not be blessed with too much of either, but I bet their kids are.
It's not perfect, but that college president / symphony director's comment "It's like looking for a lost ring in a vacuum bag. What you end up with mostly are bagel crumbs and dirt." sounds like it's coming from someone who doesn't really know how to use a search engine.
Re:search on "apple"--duhhr (Score:2, Insightful)
The single form of the generic word "apple" is rarely used in conversation, when you're talking about just one piece of fruit it isn't a very newsworthy event. If you're discussing the fruit, you're usually talking about more than one apple.
So, "apples" is more likely to mean the fruit, while the single word "apple" more likely to be headed for the computer company...
Media Sensationalism (Score:4, Interesting)
This is so untrue. Almost any computer savvy individual knows that google results are not very reliable. Google is just an online popularity contest. And it doesn't go very deep into the website structure. If you believe in google as your messiah, then you do really need to get your head checked.
As for the story about Left Handed Guitars, all I can say is it took google more than one month to include my site in their searches. So unless the guy did the search after one month, he would probably not have found them.
Google is not at all what it is hyped upto be. It has its uses, but it ain't the oracle my friend.
Re:Media Sensationalism (Score:2)
Google is a religion. (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is exactly why Microsoft will have a hell of a time toppling it with any MSN Search. Lord, Google is a verb now. The kind of entrenchment that Google has in our culture is extraordinarily difficult to overcome.
Firefox (Score:3, Interesting)
Looking back on things, I don't know how I ever got anything done without firefox or google...
Re:Firefox (Score:2)
You can save yourself some time. In Firefox and in Opera, you can type just the letter 'g' followed by keywords. It's really slick--probably the most useful feature of Opera for me.
What about the deep web? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, the "deep web" is the best place to make obscure searches, and I've used turbo10.com to perform searches in this way. It's really interesting to compare the results of two searches between google and turbo10 - google certainly appears to be the quick and easy search engine that grandma can use, but for serious work, I am increasingly finding myself turning to the deep web.
Re:What about the deep web? (Score:2)
Mirror (if we slashdot google) (Score:5, Funny)
http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:zhool8dxBV4
Wait
Google web services (SOAP) API is very cool (Score:5, Informative)
Amazon also provides a SOAP (and REST) API.
-Mark
Re:Google web services (SOAP) API is very cool (Score:2)
dont talk about SOAP around here unless it comes with the BEHIND EARS and DEODORANT patches, getting past the WATER compiler is hard enough for this lot
Re:Google web services (SOAP) API is very cool (Score:2)
We may need more complete site directories (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently many interesting sites, such as wikipedia, everything2, groklaw, are spread by words-of-mouth (mostly on slashdot :) Surely many people has taken the pain to collect a set of links that is hopefully quite complete by the time of writing (which is much harder than simple googling), but such pages usually show up only in obscure places at google. Maybe the community can invent some way to make an easy-to-use distributed link-list service where everyone can easily share the results of their searching efforts.
It's amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
All Hype (Score:2, Funny)
This stinks of hype. With an IPO due later this year, a established news source writing at lengths about the wonders of Google sounds a bit fishy. I began to wonder reading the article - who exactly really wrote this...
Hopefully its just the paranoid part of me.
Some one, please, prove me wrong.
If you're too lazy to reg... (Score:3, Informative)
Username: slashdot2003
password: slashdot2003
Re:If you're too lazy to reg... (Score:2)
Same post (Score:3, Interesting)
Core weakness of PageRank (Score:5, Insightful)
The search of "Apple" illustrates this well. This search, like s many is deeply ambiguous. It could refer to the computer company, to the fruit, to the record company, to New York City, or to Apple Valley (MN or CA). Even if you know it refers to the company, its still ambiguous. It could refer to the company (as an investment), the products (for purchase), or a question(as in technical support).
The point is that each of these ambiguous alternatives creates an independent cluster of hits. Although one can create a ranking within each cluster, it is impossible to construct a meanful rank for all hits across all clusters - the second hit for "Apple computer" is not comparable to the 2nd hit for "Apple Records".
Instead of a pagerank scheme that sorts the universe of hits the instant the user enters the search, search engines should be more interactive. The first page of hits would emphasize breadth -- displaying hits most representative of their respective alternative clusters. As the searcher selects hits, the subsequent pages might show popularity-ranked hits within the clusters that seem to interest the searcher.
Each hit and each page would serve a double-duty -- serving the searcher's need to get information from the internet, and answering the search engine's question about the needs of the searcher. Until the search engine understands each searcher and each search, it cannot hope to rank the hits.
Re:Core weakness of PageRank (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people usually start out searching using simple queries, but as they get more experienced they learn that more complex queries [most of the time] result in more accurate results. This has resulted in classes like this one [jenkinslaw.org].
Isn't it just too demanding to ask the search engine [whichever we
Re:Core weakness of PageRank (Score:2, Insightful)
6 Billion Pages? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:6 Billion Pages? (Score:5, Informative)
Google recently put out a bragging release claiming they now search 6 billion items, but in order to reach that number you have to use web search, image search, and a newsgroup search and add the numbers up.
Google, the friendly giant... (Score:5, Interesting)
So who are all these Dave Gorman trolls mentioned? (Score:2, Funny)
From the article:
My interpretation of the sentence was: hmm, strange that so many Slashdot trolls share the name "Dave Gorman".
"Google Ate My Brain" (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember reading somewhere on the Net (of course) a piece called something like "Google Ate My Brain" refering to the fact that you have to google to know something, and you can't rely on your existing knowledge. While it's great to be able to use Google for nearly everything you would like to know about, it has its sad counterpoints. One of the counterpoints could be the fact that you are more unsure if what you know about a thing really is right, and you have to google for the truly definitive answer. And another counterpoint could be the absence of deep knowledge on websites.
registration needed? No! (Score:3, Informative)
Just google for the following URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/fashion/1
(without the space in "h tml")
Google will tell you that it found no results, but that you can visit the link by clicking onto it. Do that and that's all.
This article has too much fluff (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This article has too much fluff (Score:5, Informative)
Not soooo amazing... (Score:4, Funny)
Less impressive when you realize that 150 million of those searches are for Britney and Janet...
(I kid, google is the most esssential tool for my job...)
My chief google frustration is... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wish google would stop passing the search words along with the URL when I click on a link. That's a privacy invasion.
What's worse, now I've started to receive spam that's addressed as 'from' people whose names I've looked up.
Other than that, I could worship at the temple of googl
Re:My chief google frustration is... (Score:4, Informative)
It's your web browser doing that. In Firefox, go to about:config and change the network.http.sendRefererHeader value to 0. Or run a proxy like Junkbuster or WebWasher.
Re:My chief google frustration is... (Score:2, Funny)
Google averages 2415 searches / second (Score:5, Informative)
200M searches/day = 8.33M/hour = 138888/min =
*** Google averages 2415 searches / second ***
Average page size = 5,563 bytes (a search for "apple", hey I RTFA)
Assume outbound bandwidth requirement of 6000 bytes/search with some overhead.
2415/sec * 6000 bytes/search =
*** 13.88 MB/sec avg or 1200 GB/day bandwidth requirement (OUTBOUND ONLY) ***
CPU.. 2415 searches/second.. Determine required aggregate CPU capacity using various assumed values for 'CPU per search':
0.25 CPU sec/search = 603 CPU seconds required for each wall second
0.5 CPU sec/search = 1207
1.0 CPU sec/search = 2415
2.0 CPU sec/search = 4830
4.0 CPU sec/search = 9660
8.0 CPU sec/search = 19320
Assume they only run the search boxes at 50-80% util and tweak estimates accordingly. Also, the burstiness inherent in the internet will greatly impact these requirements (assume at least +30% for the second to second variations as well as the hourly variations).
quit the whining (Score:3, Insightful)
Wtf is that about? They're providing you with an article for free, on the condition that you give them some information so they can maybe recover their costs, and you bitch about it? If you don't like registration, don't register -- but then you don't get articles from websites that want to do that. Also, when they say "Free", they obviously mean registration has no monetary cost, not that it has no cost at all (e.g., privacy cost, time cost to fill out form). Many people place a high value on money, but a lower value on time and privacy (to the extent that private info is revealed by these forms).
It's a joke (Score:3, Informative)
The "soul sucking 'Free' registration required)" is a compromise that seems to be working (I don't see the complaints that registration is required anymore). Except when
A true test of the internet (Score:3, Interesting)
What if google suddently went down? Completely. Totally. Off-the-map down. I wonder how well the internet would route around the problem. Sure there are other search engines, but think of all the more subtle effects that might seen as a result.
"free registration" parethetical??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I stopped using google. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I stopped using google. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I stopped using google. (Score:2)
Re:Nothing new under the sun (Score:3)
Basically, they have packaged up their search engine into a small server case (1U), which can be used in a single capacity (for small businesses), or networked together in multiples for larger businesses, or as a company grows.
With it, a company can set it up to search their own website, or in a more useful context, search their intranet for cataloging and indexing internal documents.