Google is exploding in popularity and is developing technologies other than searching the web. What I post here are some of my concerns about Google as a search engine.
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Advertisements are a major revenue source of Google. They make a huge amount of money from sponsored results for search. These ads from sponsors are shown along with your search results when you search from the google home page. The ads will be placed on the top of your results in a highlighted background and also as a seperate pane in the right side of the search results.
Now let me quote the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page from the “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”:
“……Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results……In general, it could be argued from the consumer point of view that the better the search engine is, the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want…… “
This was what they thought, back in November 1997. Still, I don’t think that Google has ever compromised on the quality of the search results provided by it. But the amount of advertisements in a search engine designed to be in the “academic realm” should be much less. Now Google has become a company which is controlled by advertisements.
Still the same old search?
Yes. Of Course. Google works, and it works fine. But it is not the perfect search engine. Given today’s technological advancements, a search engine should try to “answer the query”, rather than listing some links to the information. If I ask “What is Artificial intelligence?”, the search engine should give me at-least an introduction to Artificial intelligence. After that it could give links to relevant websites.
Google has an abundance of quality intellect working in it. They have eminent mathematicians, computer scientists and researchers. They have some of the worlds best in their campus. What are they doing there? Tweaking Orkut?
Given their expertise in the fields of AI, Machine learning etc, and the technological support they can give to the researchers, I think Google is one of the companies which should be developing a more advanced search engine than Google itself. May be the research on “Knowledge Processing” is still in its early stages, but I would be happy to know that somebody is developing a search engine that can give answers rather than results.
hey there!
i am glad you invited me to read this article. ye, i like the idea of finding answres, as opposed to results. i think THAT would have solved my “little problem”
i am sure google is resourceful enough to provide better search ANSWERS only if they put their mind to it.
Thanks for the invite to check out your blog. I agree with your comments on the search process. With the internet surf experience changing radically through the development of VoIP, social networking sites (more Facebook – LinkedIn also has some interesting stuff…but not as fun to use), and even simple things like IM integration into web-based clients like Yahoo…I’m surprise there hasn’t been a great development of “new” ways to search the web.
From Facebook to MySpace and Skype we’ve had Web 2.0 changing the way we surf, maybe we need the same thing Search 2.0 on the search engine side of things.
> They have some of the worlds best in their campus. What are > they doing there? Tweaking Orkut?
Yes, that is exactly what they are doing.
While going mobile represents Google’s number one advertising opportunity, their number one advertising threat is being deployed by FaceBook today.
Here is an article about R&D for Google search. From 10/23/07.
Thanks Stephen.
I like th term “Search 2.0″
I always use google for all of my searches, use “define: ” in the google search and it’ll give u definitions. I’ve always found.
Regarding Adds, I’m using these adds on my site, 15 months gone but still no payment received
. and still hoping 
.
goog-411 service is a greate addition.. how can v get it in Pakistan ??
Iqbal,
Thanks for visiting.
I don’t think goog-411 service is available to users in Pakistan.
HI Niyaz,
know tis is a late response. Use wiki, which is first result probably