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A Very Simple Ethical Principle for Search: Google Fails Miserably

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broken85:
It's too bad (not for google of course) that nobody seems to be able to do what they do, because we have to rely on whatever goes on behind the scenes there to continue to meet our searching needs and desires... As long as they keep getting better, or don't get any worse, that's all fine, but if they ever go too far, or just make some decisions highly frowned upon having to do with advertising, or anything really, what have we got to turn to?

I pretty much lump "every other search engine" in one category and Google over in its own as far as the value I get from it. If that value dissipates, I know of no other company ala-Google who just seems to get (nearly) everything right.

Maybe we'll someday have an open source (albeit less effective I'm sure) alternative for web searching utilizing similar algorithms without the corporate aspect involved. Because of how far Google has expanded, I imagine it would be a gigantic undertaking for any group, and it would probably never be as fast or reliable as Google simply because of their funds and network/server infrastructure.

And web searching aside, I don't know if I could properly function without Gmail anymore either... I fell in love with PocoMail, but rarely even open it up anymore because of Gmail's glory. I've come to rely on Google and their services to supply (or at least direct me to) a lot of my Internet experience.

I guess I agree, Google is the lesser of the (way more than 2) evils out there, and I would rather deal with Google's form of advertising and information collection than just about any other website's out there.

DrJtoo:
And web searching aside, I don't know if I could properly function without Gmail anymore either... I fell in love with PocoMail, but rarely even open it up anymore because of Gmail's glory. I've come to rely on Google and their services to supply (or at least direct me to) a lot of my Internet experience. -broken85 (May 05, 2007, 11:28 AM)
--- End quote ---

I think most people do not really understand why Google is such an advanced platform for searching. In their mission statement they state their strategy -- "Organize the world's information" and second "make it universally accessible".

So what do they do about "organizing" information? They enable people to blog (Blogger.com), organize people's emails (gmail.com), invite people to make notes while they research topics online (www.google.com/notebook/), provide tools to word process and prepared business documents (docs.google.com) -- you have the idea . . .

And how does Google make information universally accessible? Providing server farms on which is housed the world's number one search engine, they provide searching in almost every language on earth, and so on . . .

Want to get listed in Google really fast? Write a notebook page about it and publish the page. Guaranteed quick insertion. Why? Because Google hosts the "Notebook Pages" and every new page is entered into the search engine within minutes -- as long as it takes to disseminate the links to the various copies of the search listings. Crawlers do not need to be involved in searching for and indexing a page. Sheer genius!

The more Google provides us with tools to organize our information, the more it can be the number one search engine where people will find my information. Have you seen how many things Google is prototyping? The Museum of Modern Betas Labs lists the top 50 popular Google Betas.

broken85:
Yes, it is pretty amazing what Google have gotten their hands into these past few years. They're so far advanced beyond any other "web organization system" I have seen before, whether that be searching or any of their other services, that they don't have any real competition and I don't have anywhere else to turn if all of it goes away at some point, or stops being free, or starts including ridiculous amounts of advertising in the results, or--you get the picture. I don't necessarily see that happening, and I really hope it doesn't since I live in a world partially supplied through Google, heh  :D

People have a lot of favorite search engines, but among many of the computer-savvy folks I know, Google is the only answer. That might have to do with its search effectiveness. When I first started using Google I didn't like it particularly more than anything else, except that it was fast and ad-free. However when I stopped asking it questions and started just throwing a bunch of related keywords and phrases at it, and adding operators and learning new search techniques, it instantly became my search engine of choice because of the quality of results it started to return. If that quality starts dissipating, can anyone else even fill Google's enormous shoes in the search technology and research/development departments? Google even has the edge on engines that have been around longer than itself.

Mandork:
Yeah, I like Google and the miscellaneous apps and so on.  The trouble lately seems to be that no matter what I search for, my results seem to get less and less relevant.  I don't really mind ads on a page so much (except the ones that get in the way of whatever you're trying to do) as I do having to trawl through endless pron sites, obviously illegal software, crazy crackpot health sites, and just plain junk to get to the useful things out there.

I read somewhere about the "hidden internet"...someday I should Google it and find out how to search more effectively.   :P

broken85:
Mandork,

It's getting inevitably harder and harder to avoid that, now that there are so many "search sites" buying up domains and putting up useless collections of useless marketing, and directories of directories, etc. And all these years the Internet has been around, it's still getting easier for absolutely anybody to post absolutely anything on the Internet.

And with more effective indexing methods, search engines will keep picking up more and more of it. If those sites are universally hated, and I'm pretty sure they are, then Google/anyone should come up with a way to filter such junk out of the results. There have got to be patterns. Though I'm sure that would filter out some legit sites who would throw a huge fit unless it were 100% effective (which is essentially impossible). It would be so much easier if all these junk sites would just disappear! That and spam are helping to ruin online experiences everywhere!  :mad:

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