Comments on: Do you google?

By: jon.k

jon.k — Mon, 08 Mar 2004 17:32:13 +0000

martin, i will venture that the point eszter is making is one of raising consciousness about who has power – i.e., controls information. proprietary (non-transparent) code is one illustration of how information access is controlled, though it may be difficult to clearly understand who’s interests are being served. many folks have commented upon the uproar that would ensue if search engines were to engineer bias, or sell listings. (a) how would we ever know? (and, isn’t there bias built into any system?); (b) as eszter points out, search engines do feature lisitngs that are paid placements. further, as her research points out, there are a whole lot of folks using the net who are not skilled users – this disparity in foundational knowledge, compounded with poor skills, solidifies social inequality. (c) it is a stretch to think that known corrupt systems (that favor extant power dynamics) will result in those systems changing, or being forced to change. a prime example of this going unreported and largely uncontested is diebold’s black box voting – i don’t see changes happening here, and this is our democracy getting hijacked!

By: Martin Wisse

Martin Wisse — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 20:10:15 +0000

Also, why would looking at refer logs be problimatic for measuring popularity? The overwhelming majority of searches is bound to result in a visit to some other site: if the majority of visits to any given site always show google as the highest ranking search engine, conclusions can be drawn from this. (One has to be careful of course to look at more than one site and to draw up a reasonable sample of sites for this.) Anecdotically, it seems that roughly 99 % of visits to the websites of the political party I volunteer for that do come from search engines, come from google.

By: Martin Wisse

Martin Wisse — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 20:01:54 +0000

You have to forgive me, but what exactly is your point, either here or in that First Monday article?

By: James

James — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 09:50:40 +0000

The adoption of the term “googling” (“to Google”) through what appears to be word of mouth is especially interesting as Yahoo tried to get something similar going through advertising and failed (remember, “Do You Yahoo”? to which the correct answer was “No, I just keep my dignity”)

By: eszter

eszter — Sun, 07 Mar 2004 01:39:48 +0000

Keith – I wasn’t badmouthing Google. I was showing concer for depending on non-transparent services too much. I was also pointing out that the majority of Web users don’t search on Google. This is interesting to those of us who study how people access content on the Web.. possibly of interest to a future librarian as well.

By: CK

CK — Sat, 06 Mar 2004 20:24:42 +0000

Nutch is an effort to develop a transparent, non-proprietary alternative to the dominant commericial web search engines. http://www.nutch.org/docs/en/

By: Keith

Keith — Sat, 06 Mar 2004 04:15:14 +0000

I’m in library school and we use Google all the time, much to our professor’s chagrin. One of my professors has this obsession with Dialog which is an archaic batch search that uses a command line interface to access 400+ databases. The problem is, I can find the same information faster, easier and for free on Google. So as a soon-to-be reference librarian, which will I use to preform quereys for clients? The free fast search engine or the slow innacurate search portal that costs money? A lot of academics like to badmouth Google I’ve noticed. That’s fine,one man’s opinion and all that. And if you can show me something that is better, faster and cheeper, I’ll use it. Until then, I’ll be googling.

By: eszter

eszter — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 16:00:34 +0000

Today’s pop quiz: why is Robyn’s suggestion for looking at referrer logs of a site problematic for measuring search-engine popularity? Tom T. – Are you suggesting you need the same amount of start-up costs today as you did in ‘94 or ‘97 to get an online service going to the point at which it becomes a serious competitor to existing options? Moreover, are you suggesting the same amount of potential investment is floating around to support such initiatives?

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 13:54:13 +0000

I imagine similar concerns were raised back in the day about the Encyclopedia Britannica and the OED. The salient feature of the Internet age is that it’s far easier to start up a competing alternative. The notion of needing billions of dollars is misplaced; Sergey Brin and his partner were not billionaires when they crafted Google’s algorithms, just as Jerry Yang and his partner were not billionaires when they founded Yahoo. Millions of dollars found its way to them, just like millions of dollars found its way to Lycos and Excite. Some succeeded, and some didn’t, and there’s no reason to think that Google won’t be overtaken someday. The fact that the word has entered the language seems as much a consequence of the ease with which “googling” trips off the tongue as anything else. Besides which, what is the consequence? No one speaks of “Electroluxing” a floor or “Canoning” a piece of paper, yet those companies and many others still produce plenty of vacuum cleaners and copiers.

By: Backword Dave

Backword Dave — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 09:22:42 +0000

When I used Windows, I searched with the Google toolbar on IE, or I used the built in Google search on Opera. Now I use Safari—also with a built in search. I haven’t seen the Google home page for well over a year (a pity since I like the whimsy of the Google doodles). Google isn’t just very reliable—if you use many word searches, it’s there in a way that rivals aren’t. Though I, too, started using Google in Beta, and found it much more useful that its rivals at the time. I also like the practical and targetted adverts. You can see Google being commercial without the intrusiveness that gets in the way of so much online content. And I click on them: if someone is serious enough to advertise on Google, they’re probably worth a look. That said, if CT were to recommend an alternative, I’d take a look.

By: anatoly

anatoly — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 09:00:23 +0000

neil, The top five search engines in January were Google, with 59.3 million unique visitors; Yahoo Search, with 45.8 million… You have to take into account the fact that Yahoo used Google for actual search results, until very recently. It remains to be seen whether the new Yahoo! Search can compete with Google (having tried it a few times, I think it’s very promising, being only somewhat worse than Google). sigivald, I wouldn’t worry. If people don’t like how Google is handling their searches, there is no barrier to entry for another service; the nature of the network is that anyone can map and (at least as well as Google does) cache it, given sufficient bandwidth, CPU, and storage space… It’s not just a matter of throwing enough storage space at the problem. Google runs entirely from memory to achieve the response speeds that it does, and uses many smart algorithms not necessarily known publicly. Here are several interesting thoughts about how that may affect the barrier to entry.

By: anatoly

anatoly — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 08:59:43 +0000

By: eszter

eszter — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 01:50:42 +0000

Searcher – since this is what I study and I have conducted in-person observations with Internet users I can tell you that yes, the people who do not use search engines often find information by going to Web sites directly (although often these are just bad guesses for sites that lead to an error) or by clicking on various links on their default homepage. The AOL users I had in my study who did not use search engines tended to rely on the AOL Channels quite a bit.

By: Searcher

Searcher — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 01:34:25 +0000

But now anyone with a few billion $’s to spare can create a search engine of comparable quality. Precisely. And since there are so many of us running around with a few billion to spare, this is likely going to happen. The point is not the number, that just a wild guess. It is more that it is not very useful to create a Google clone. But when either Google fucks up or there is something better, then it is possible to compete with Google. IBM is spending a lot on research into search engines: http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5153627.html It is for the business market but it shows that the technology is still moving forward. Arthegall & Motoko – the Web changed much more b/w ‘97 and 2000 than it did b/w 2000 and ‘03. I had the pleasure of experiencing that in person. But it hasn’t come to a standstill. Far from that. If you compare the services you could get in 2000 and those you get in 2004 there is a lot of improvement. And today those companies make a profit. Google is making a profit, and it is not unreasonable to expect that if there is a serious competitor for Google it too can be a profitable business. Many of the people who’ve come online in the past few years take given things for granted much more. They use the search engine that is default on the homepage of their ISP, etc. So I would argue that it is no longer that easy for an alternative to find a large following quickly. True, but most ISP’s don’t make their own search engine. And as the Prince song says: ‘Cuz they say two thousand zero zero party over Oops out of time So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999 … But life is just a party And parties weren’t meant 2 last So it’s no party anymore in the internet business, but that’s no reason that the position of Google can’t be challenged. I think it is fascinating that the survey found that only about three-fourths of users rely on search engines. I’m not shocked as I encountered such users in my study, but I think a lot of people think everyone uses search engines all the time. Again, not true. There are even many people for which sending an email attachment is a challenge. But that is just part of it. If you see how someone below 18 uses the internet it is a whole other story. I would interpret the 75% figure differently. I think it is saying that search engines have become the most important way of navigating the internet. And as for those 25% not using search engines it would be interesting to know what they use the internet for. There would certainly be a percentage of mostly email users, a percentage of users of a certain number of fixed sites. But I would be curious if there is a group that can find information and entertainment on the internet without using a search engine. For example by only visiting sites that are suggested by friends and family and colleagues. Or by relying on the portals (without using the search functionality). But then I use Google even as a spell checker, so I can’t imagine that there is anyone using the internet for more than just the basics, who is not using a search engine.

By: Mary Kay Kare

Mary Kay Kare — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 00:14:27 +0000

I used all the early search engines while working as a reference librarian and was happy indeed to dump them for Google. I use it constantly and so do all my friends. And last night on West Wing, Toby’s secretary mentioned using Google. MKK