Forum Moderators: phranque
At the time, most of us were using search engines more and more. I feel that inpart, we went to the search enginess in order to escape the overblown, spammed out, and unusable nature of the meat market one size fits all mega portals.
I think the bad news is that entropy is happening in all it's glory to one of our favorite sites on the web today. Known for it's low key universal interface, Google has slowly whittled away at it's own legacy. Other than the Google home page, todays SERP's [searchengineworld.com] are but a shadow of their former usability.
It shouldn't come as any surprise really. We've been down this road with Yahoo and Altavista before it.
For a historical and visually stunning perspective, take a look at the Open Directory Project homepage [dmoz.org] at Dmoz.org. Then compare it to todays Yahoo [yahoo.com] homepage. The Dmoz homepage is nearly a 1997 Yahoo [web.archive.org] clone. While Yahoo was once king of the low key universal interface that appealed to millions of new net users, it is now filled with CEO appeasing self spam du jour.
This process of low impact usable pages to pages that throw everything but the kitchen sink in, takes two to three years to unfold. Techs and management get bored with the interface and can't resist the urge to tinker. While they are at it, they tend to over do the self links under the guise of "navigation".
The Altavista entropy process was due more to a identity crisis than anything else. Their run at portaldom was noble. They even tried to back track with their Google'like Raging search. They never have recovered from it. Even todays Altavista serps are overweight with javascript bells and whistles.
The bad news, is that we are watching the same slow process unfold at Google. Many SERPS now have a dozen advertisements. They often features a handful of self links to other Google pages. It's a classic case of too many techs, with too much time on their hands.
We've also been watching Googles page quality degrade in other ways. Even though Google once boasted about there PHD loaded staff, they never have been able to meet web standards and have more-or-less thumbed their nose [webmasterworld.com] at the W3C since they went online day one.
Just last week, Google implimented new features [webmasterworld.com] that left a few users behind. That's the way web entropy works - a few users here and there in the name of progress. You wake up one morning to being bought out by the competition [webmasterworld.com].
Google added Javascript onfocus (pseudo PopUps) to their Usenet groups last summer. This stopped people from being able to click multiple pages into the background while continuing to read in the foreground. First seen in the adult site space, these type of popups are not blockable. The only way to stop them is by turning off all javascript support.
If Google continues down this road, I don't think it will be long before we are staring at another engine with unusable noisy testiments to web spam.
One thing that distinguishes their ads from overture is that the Google ads have an algo behind them to help drive relevance. So, the ads in some cases are more relevant than the serps. (Hmmm... does this confirm your premise? Or is it an argument against it?)
I've been preaching that preservation of longevity is the ONLY Holy Grail in this business. I've often felt alone in this opinion.
The rise and fall of internet companies is too fast. The internet is too dynamic. I long for the days when we see blue chip eBusinesses. I am afraid to name one for fear my proclamation would prove disastrously false.
Affiliate programs come to mind >;o) If all products are equal, why is there an echo, the manufacturer or a single POS is all I need.
One positive thing I can draw from reading your post, is that when Google became popular - they made minimalism fashionable - even if they are now heading in the opposite direction. :)
On the flip side, I'm sure all the huffing and puffing about Pagerank has sprung up a few pages that wouldnt have existed otherwise (not meaning pigeonrank explanations and the like), like the "links" pages and "directories" that sprung up to discretely pass on PR. Mind you, they were probably an offspring of the link pop fad.
What about blogs and entropy......
That large contingent of the press who will publish anything about ms, as long as it is good and keeps the advertising revenue rolling in. For many years, this was the status quo at many trade magazines.
Feels like Google have replaced Microsoft now, the amount of articles being published about Google is huge, and most of them is not very good.
>>confusing javascript forms that even pro's have to study to figure out.
Happens all the time and will not go away.
>>gratuitous usage of flash that take forever to download.
I've got a really good leason by a super-flash-guy, and Flash is a excellent tool for a lot of stuff, and i really mean excellent, but there is nothing more that he dislikes than Flash Intros, he can't see any usage for them.
I think that's where you can win with Flash, if you can use it in the right way when it comes to usability, because according to him, that's the main function for Flash, not to present a "flashy" site, but to increase the usability for users.
>>links that are unidentifiable as links.
*ducks* yes i've also done that mistake a few times, it's underlined text that does it, no question about it.
>>security
Will never go away will it? There is always the human fault, it's like with security vans, it's not the van that causes the most troubles it's the human.
>>a never ending stream of virus warnings.
Similar to security.
>>surfers running into adult content by accident.
I think this one has gone down quite a bit, except if you don't count emails.
>>spam
Check out Lawmeme [research.yale.edu] today.
When i read topics like this one, and the one before, i really wish i understood more about the Internet, but it's huge! That's why it's so hard to comprehend, it's like a surgeon being able to do all different kind of operations.
I stick to a few different parts of the Internet, and let other people analyze the rest for me, but yes it's an interesting question "Internet Entropy" and what to do with it.
(oppsss, post when a bit off topic sorry for that)
>>The bad news, is that we are watching the same slow process unfold at Google.
I think what we are seeing is the natural life cycle of a search engine. It is inevitable for any SE that wants to grow past a certain size. IPO will accelerate this process.
But if Google continues to decline something else will replace it.
