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Also do you honestly believe the suggestions here will reflect that of the general public...i think not...We are basically SEO's/webmasters who are secretly thinking how to win this froogle thing :) ...Google knows it
[edited by: gopi at 11:38 pm (utc) on Dec. 12, 2002]
The service is free, inclusion is automatic, and it will help people find your niche products. If you are selling something the big guys sell, they probably outrank you in the regular SERPs anyway, right? Whereas if you're selling to a niche market, this just makes it easier for your customers to find you.
Also, this is unlikely to replace regular searches much, since it's only for shopping, people will still use the regular SEs to find info.
So why does this have to be bad? Seems to me it just opens up another playing field, not necessarily a biased one.
[edited by: freejung at 12:29 am (utc) on Dec. 13, 2002]
Well, *that* was a quick update! I searched for "froogle" on Google (Oh! I'm going to *love* saying that!), and, this thread, started yesterday, came up 3rd.
Two of my sites are in; one has an image, the other doesn't. Must figure out a way to fix that..
> Googleguy on msg 37 "Woz, our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
Your mission is not, in any way, connected to market share?
> Googleguy on msg 68 "Other suggestions for what people would like to see?"
Frycos, Fraltavista, Freegablast, Freeoma, Freal?
> Googleguy on msg 75 "Speaking of low melting point metals, is anybody else here sleepy? I'm gonna go nap for a bit. Catch y'all later--and I'm looking forward to hearing more good suggestions from you.. "
Here's some :
- To help us better present the world's information I find those green boxes to the right of results kind of distracting and think you should try and avoid them.
- You could also place the two colorful search results currently at the top, the ones that open some page no matter where you click in them colorful boxes, at the bottom. Matter of fact, get rid of them, we don't need that while organizing the world's information :)!
This one is by Lao Tzu or Mao Tse Tung or some other oriental leader. Some say business is like a war too, I don't know why they say that when there are such nice companies out there.
- Stay close to your enemy
ADDED BY P. Soares
- Get lots of advice from these forums, you'll find some really helpful people here (I'm sure you don't find me helpful - I'm just presenting a different point of view ;) ).
I'm getting sleepy too, I'm going to feed my cats - goodnight all and congratulations GoogleGuy on yet another great search engine - amazing stuff.
psoares,
That's probably Sun Tzu, The Art of War. Good advice too, notice how well GG follows it (assuming we're the enemy, of course, which we probably are).
But you cannot compare this monopoly to that of microsoft...in the web the other SE is always a clik away ...the users are not locked to google and the cost of change is not big as is the case of MS windows :)
Google is a business and and their main aim is generating wealth...i agree , but the way they are following the ethics in business is the one we all have to appreciate...
Even in the case of froogle there were rumours for the past 3-4 months that google may try to become a super affiliate with their product search ...Even i believed and preached that :)...but i am now very much happy that Google product search is as pure as its main search....
I am also an affiliate and may be affected by froogle if it takes on but as GG said "Creative Webmasters will always find a way with Google" :)
My sites had been bitten by the Google God so many times in the past....but after all that i am still a great admirer of google
`
i left the judgement of that to the reader, i don't know who's google's enemy of even if there is one, but it's always good advice and since we're here to help each other....
psoares, our mission has been exactly what I mentioned earlier. In my opinion, this is really something that Google nailed at the beginning, and it's always kept us grounded. You can see our mission statement in press release #1:
[google.com...]
(June of 1999) and I think we've stayed pretty true to that mission. Don't get me wrong--we're not allergic to making money! But I love working for Google because it's not only about that. Our mission statement + the whole "don't be evil" thing is part of the essence of Google in my mind.
As far as "stay close to your enemy": I don't really believe I have any enemies. I have a lot of friends, and a few friends who haven't realized that we're friends yet. :)
honest - i don't have any judgement of this latest product except i'm a programmer and that stuff seems like top notch research in may fields in computer science like pattern recognition, AI, neural networks, obviously searching and sorting, and probably stuff i've never dreamed existed!
i do kind of fear just one company organizing the world's info for us though ;) .... not personal with google, i'm also a fan. i just wish we had more options - as a webmaster by options you do know i mean more search traffic from other sources as well, for the sake of democracy.
of course if googleguy came here and said "hey, we're cranking out another information monopoly tool gimme your free advice and get a hello from me" - i don't think he'd be very successful that way.....
--
Hello GoogleGuy thanks for the reply. Enemy is an ugly word isn't it....I don't think I have enemies in life either, I am greatful for that. You're almost winning me there, but you're taking over the web and I'm fond of democracies.
Let's stay close though just in case. Just kidding.
Just saying that if Google's mission is to organize information, then anyone who is trying to influence the way they organize information is... well... let us say "honorable opponent".
Of course, there are many here, myself included, who might consider ourselves friends of Google, since if you are trying to provide real content Google's mission of organizing information actually helps you.
Mostly just trying to be funny... it's late... I'm off to bed, goodnight all...
I don't know if everyone was with us at the time, but we had a wonderful discussion on the Cluetrain Manifesto [webmasterworld.com] about a month ago; even Doc Searls himself showed up and joined us.
Getting back to the subject at hand, I'd still like to know how that feed works. I don't know specifics, but I do remember what the search results looked like at MSN a while back, with the volume URLs from some of the large major companies filling the LS listings and on into the Inktomi listings as well. What concerns me deeply is whether we'll end up seeing the same thing with Froogle.
I have about 6,000 items to add! I wonder how long it takes from the moment it's uploaded to the time it's in the index? Instantaneously? Updated once a month? etc...
But I'll mail them about that.
I got up to page 5 of this thread..
Just went through the first 2 in about 20 mins ;)
I'm not much of an online seller, but I know there are people who are passionate about this.
When the index fills up with products, not only will webmasters be using their "datafeed" to get into the index, they can track down their competition, the size of their stock, their prices, what websites link to them, any webpage mentioning them visited by someone with a google toolbar, a cache of their websites.....I'm sure there's a few more.
So how many people have set up a spider to it and got a "price list" of all the products in their market :)
If google is to promote products, items that are free should rank just as well.
[edited by: Marcia at 5:51 am (utc) on Dec. 13, 2002]
[edit reason] no specifics, please [/edit]
If they do, and Froogle catches on, watch all manufacturers weed out their dealers, cut all advertising etc.
If I were Amazon, and my books were always 5% more expensive than Barnes, I would always loose out with Froogle, if price sorting was allowed.
Google should incorporate "other items of interest" to let the frugal shopper know a free alternative item is available. This of course only only pertains to software.
This is not the place to be doing a bad job of OSS or Free Software advocacy. And I say that as a programmer who has contributed to the linux kernel, and many other projects as well.
Put together your own competitor to cheapbytes and optimize it for froogle and kick M$ from that top spot. By the Unix is not free, Linux is but as far as I know, it has never been approved as being able to be called unix.
Now what do you think of froogle as a technology? Is it something you will use shopping for things other than software?
