Forum Moderators: open
2odd...
(BTW, how's the cricket going - is it gonna be rained off again? ;)
Google may be very close to their second major disruptive event which Malcolm Gladwell calls "The Tipping Point" in his book of the same name.
I would agree with this and the risks for Google are higher because of the interconnected environment that Google operates in. With a typical real world business, there has to be a lot of person to person communication to achieve the kind of tipping that Google first experienced. The necessary elements such as the super salesman to sell the idea and the super connector to tell the potential users are all there with in easy reach.
This second event may well turn it all back and an epidemic in reverse may cause millions of people to be "cured" of their Google Addiction within a very short time frame.It could take some time for this to happen but an alternative second event could be the actual entry into the market of a significant search player such as Microsoft. And Microsoft always takes advantage of an competitor's weaknesses.
Regards...jmcc
Those which sing the praises of google too highly remind me of the analysts and insiders pushing all crazy tech stocks during the boom, and most for google probably are in the marketing department of google gearing up for the IPO.
If you are an SEO or you own a website you of course want your results to appear in google, but there will always be a way of spinning the results in your favour (paid or otherwise), and your time may come again.
Play by the unwritten rules and you get results is the normal theory but the trouble with google at the monent is they may well not be playing by the rules themselves.
But google may well have had its time so lets please stop the google brown nosing. It serves nobody but the merchant banks pushing for the big one.
At least the BBC article shows a beginning of a main stream break from the idealised 'GOD' image that google has carefully created (due to amazingly great marketing). That can only be good. We need competitors in search, 1 company running 80% of results one way or another is not good for anybody. Its normally called a monopoly, in most businesses they are not allowed.
Or, as time goes by, people may find that this whole time we've been working on infrastructure and algorithm improvements that will make search even better
How long might we have to wait GG?
How long might we have to wait GG?
I'm guessing when the "New MSN search" hits the net, and Google gets a shocker!
The same as when ATW reached the index of 3,151,743,117 docs, and Google was still on 3,083,324,652, it got Google to update their index page.
Sid
So, I gotta ask, are the other SEs actually better than Google these days, or is it just easier for them to produce good results because webmasters haven't yet dished up so much tuned-for-them crud that they have to wade through?
Hi GoogleGuy,
People won't notice if they aren't using it any longer. The only time I use Google now is to backtrack on my stats and see how people are finding me through them.
Yes.
Every full scale crawler encounters a percentage of spam, most still have the ability to identify and filter it without continual solicitation of spam reports. The reliance on outside input to manually repair indexes indicates technical inferiority.
It's also offensive to accuse the many thousands of professional webmasters who have well designed, useful web sites that they are somehow "bad" because google has put commercial concerns ahead of "relevance".
>infrastructure and algorithm improvements that will make search even better.
err..no thanks, bought that line one time too many.
Every full scale crawler encounters a percentage of spam
That's true, but it misses my point about whose algo that spam is tuned to. I'd submit that (regardless of quality) the sheer number of pages trying to please/game Google's algo in some fashion is much greater than the number taking aim at any other SE. Other SEs have been protected from that by their own insignificance.
When Altavista was king, it eventually had enough spam problems to push the door wide open for a new player. For a while now it hasn't been worthwhile to invest much effort into deducing Altavista's algo. They're producing pretty good results at the moment. Co-incidence? Not entirely ....
It's also offensive to accuse the many thousands of professional webmasters who have well designed, useful web sites that they are somehow "bad"
I sometimes chat with a woman who has several websites comprising over a million pages, most of them machine-generated with affiliate merchant datafeeds. Many of those pages are near-duplicates of what other affiliates produce with the same datafeeds. In many cases, the page templates and site link structures have been set up to take aim at Google's algo rather than anyone else's. If some pages happen to hit someone else's sweet spot it's just chance.
I think that at the moment, comparing Google to any other SE is like comparing two marathon runners, one of whom is stuck with carrying a forty-pound pack. Their finish times won't necessarily prove which is the "better" runner.
Yes, and just watch how quickly Google's popularity decreases if they don't get their act together and stop playing God. What many of you who are critical of the BBC article forget is that the BBC and other media are very powerful. Joe Public listens to them not to announcements from Google (or what is written here on WW). If the media turn on Google it's curtains for them. I would also echo the sentiment regarding Google's omnipotence in the search engine world. It's time their share was reduced for the good of us all.
Oh and BTW, I am finding that their recent search results are as much good as a chocolate fireguard. This is the most disappointing thing - Google is just not working properly and I am saying this from the position of having just got my KW back to the top. My concern is that it is now surrounded by irrelevant results that I believe will eventually chase the punters away from my site.
Methinks that the BBC will still be here when Google has gone the way of so many of its previous competitors. But then the BBC is advertising free :->
But then the BBC is advertising free
No matter what media firestorms might come and go, Google won't be in serious trouble until the hundreds of thousands of sites that link to it start replacing those links with something else.
Generic Google-bashing will have little practical effect on Joe Surfer unless someone also makes Joe aware of other SEs that he could try. Without that, all the bashing will do is make him feel uneasy without knowing what to do about it.
Google won't be in serious trouble until the hundreds of thousands of sites that link to it start replacing those links with something else.
What if, Microsoft starts offering gifts to do that?
Besides, BBC are like snails compared to Google
I don't get this - I've heard they've got a very nice little website ;)
Not necessarily. UK residents do pay a licence fee and get, in return, a news and information service that is, without a shadow of doubt, the best in the world. But the beeb now makes most of its money from overseas sales of programmes like "Weakest Link" and "Walking with Dinosaurs" and hundreds of others.
I used to use CNN for my daily news and current affairs surfing alongside the beeb, but dropped it when the advertising just got too in-my-face. I think the bbc must be the last site of its size to be ad-free and, being the bbc, you know it will always remain so. And yes, it will still be there when people are asking "goggle, giggle...what was the name of that search engine we used to use when the internet started out?"
Well, I posted this topic and had the byline nicely altered by admin. The original byline was something more in tune with what 90% of thread contributors have picked up on: not that the journo has a google addiction but the fact that it is fading and fading fast and fading fast for a reason. That particular column is not meant to be hi-tech or in direct competition with this great site. It is meant to be easily digestible net news for joe public. Therefore the message it carries, carries far....certainly further than anything posted here for a webmaster audience.
I don't worry overly though. As someone else said a few messages ago, our concern for the wellbeing of google is a little odd. We like it because it delivers/ed good results but if it stops doing so, as sure as eggs is eggs, ATW or MSN will come along and do the same and we can SEO for them then. Us siteowners are not about to disappear.
But as I said before, there should be no real logical reason why people continue to want google to succeed (nobody owns shares and only google people have options, unless of course you are marketing departments of said company or banks leading the IPO)
So what is the alterative, well unfortunately there isn't a full facing competitor, but there will be for certain. In the meantime, google itself will do the damage to itself by its results and more blantant commercialism, and we can struggle to get our sites ranked. Fortunately most of mine were uneffected (they didn't rank anyway!).
Happy holidays to all, and relax its only a search engine.
At least they are always looking to improve their algorithm and TRY to make it better for both the public, advertisers and webmasters.
That kind of argument works well in academia, but in the real world results are all that count ("Well, Mr. Landlord, I know I don't have my rent, but I tried really hard to find a job this month."). Google has some time to get better, but it's measured in months, not years.
So, I gotta ask, are the other SEs actually better than Google these days, or is it just easier for them to produce good results because webmasters haven't yet dished up so much tuned-for-them crud that they have to wade through?
I tend to think the latter, but that's what you have to deal with when you're #1. Nobody is out there trying to hack my web sites like they are Microsoft's, the FBI, etc. So the fact that I've never been hacked doesn't make me better at security, but it still makes me never been hacked (even if the reason is that I'm not worth hacking).
I think that at the moment, comparing Google to any other SE is like comparing two marathon runners, one of whom is stuck with carrying a forty-pound pack. Their finish times won't necessarily prove which is the "better" runner.
The finish times, or quality of the results, is all that matters though. Which runner would win if they weighed the same is irrelevant, because they don't. Right now Google is the "800 pound gorilla" and that's a lot of weight to carry through a marathon.
Or, as time goes by, people may find that this whole time we've been working on infrastructure and algorithm improvements that will make search even better. :)
I hope so. Just don't take too long. :)
MQ
I would like to see Sergey and Co resist the temptation to get extremely rich and set it up as a not-for-profit company whose aims are simply to make peoples lives on the net easier.
But alas, not many people are that cool.
stu
As a company google is beginning to look like an idiot savant. If you were trying to make sense of the information that comprises the WWW, you might want to bring in a broader base of wisdom.
AI is a distant gleam in the technocrats eye, why not put the pipe dream away and hire RW (real wisdom). Simply coming up with new ways to sort a few billion documents is not a very compelling business direction.
Anyone over 40 working at google? How about 50? 60? 80?
Don't you see that that was the point I was making? If media channels like the BBC start bashing Google this WILL have an effect because Joe Public WILL be made aware.
What if, Microsoft starts offering gifts to do that?
So the fact that I've never been hacked doesn't make me better at security, but it still makes me never been hacked (even if the reason is that I'm not worth hacking).
Yes. It's valid for you to say you've never been hacked. But you can't extrapolate from that to make claims about your security expertise without a LOT more supporting evidence.
Likewise, it's valid to say that some other SE delivered more useful results for your queries, but making pronouncements about the quality of the engine itself is another matter.
In journalism classes we were taught to be keenly conscious of the difference between describing behaviour or results, and ascribing motivation or making value judgements.
Compare:
Bob is yelling and shaking his fists.
Bob is very angry.
Bob is the town's grumpiest man.
[What really happened was that a bee flew down Bob's shirt.]
The fact that the searches actually returned relevant results kept people coming back and tons of media stories helped a lot.
The MSN people will very likely try something similar and they will have plenty of money to hand out. As long as the search results are as good as or better than Google (not an easy task) then they certainly have the money and the marketing muscle to buy that mindshare back.
The Microsoft team which handles UGR is actually called the Mindshare Team. They know how to play that game and they don't like to lose.
Having said all that I notice that the BBC seems to return strange results. They used to use Google and I can't really work it out? Is this inktomi with Geo targeting? In that case they only used Google for 12 months? I wonder why?
Is this the first tacit admission that the new G isn't quite what it was trumpeted up to be?
Many people, this journalist included, seem to be of the view that the baby has been thrown out with the bath water. Is GG implying that the baby has yet to land, or that there's someone waiting at the bottom ready to catch it?
Whatever the position, someone needs to accept that you just can't tear up a working model and replace it with something inferior - people will notice and vote accordingly.
IMHO :)
I believe the BBC purchased the Google Search Technology backend and database from Google in 2002 and then enhanced it to suit their own needs.
Then in Spring 2003 they switched to Ink results. But they don't seem to be Inktomi results from the US or the UK. msn.co.uk and msn.com produce different Ink results to these. I guess it is some filtered form of the Ink database.
Worldwide inclusion in 72 hours to all the Inktomi search partners through inktomi paid inclusion - including MSN, Hotbot, BBCi, E-spotting and Overture.
I suppose this is quite a good way to monitor pure Inktomi results.
Many people, this journalist included, seem to be of the view that the baby has been thrown out with the bath water. Is GG implying that the baby has yet to land, or that there's someone waiting at the bottom ready to catch it?
I think he's simply saying that the baby took a poopy in the tub (s.e. spam) and they had to take him out while they put new bath water in that has some built-in disinfectant. If we look at the tub while they're putting the new water in, we might think the baby got thrown out, but actually he's being held in someone's arms while the tub is refilled with the new water.
Perhaps they need a little more water pressure, but he is saying it's filling up over the next few months.
MQ
Perhaps they need a little more water pressure, but he is saying it's filling up over the next few months.
Lets just hope that the people standing around waiting for the bath to fill, don't get bored and go look for another.
Rumour has it, that Yink has a hot tub full of rubber duckies and other useful toys ready and waiting...
If we look at the tub while they're putting the new water in, we might think the baby got thrown out, but actually he's being held in someone's arms while the tub is refilled with the new water.
Hi,
I love the analogy. The problem is the guy given the job (no pun intended) of fishing out the poop has no sense of sight or smell. So he's splashing around in the water making one hell of a mess.
I really want to believe the optimists who say just wait a while and it will all go back to how it was before.
Ah hum!
Sid
