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Yahoo Will Use Google Instead Of Inktomi 158

Posted by timothy from the repeat-your-search-in-esperanto? dept.
Yoje writes: "Someone's probably already submitted this, but it looks like sometime in the next 30 days Yahoo! will switch from inktomi to Google for search requests. More attention for Google is always good. :)" I'm not sure Google strictly needs attention, but capsteve and others pointed out Google's own press release which says Google has now indexed over a billion pages. (Note: around half of these are not fully indexed.)
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Yahoo Will Use Google Instead Of Inktomi More

Yahoo Will Use Google Instead Of Inktomi

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  • My understanding of the Google model is that they sell you a customised view on their database, rather than selling you a software package. Although if Yahoo pay them enough, perhaps they'll change that.

  • Yahoo: FreeBSD web servers, and now, search technology supplied by Linux. (Google being a vast farm of Linux boxes)

  • 1. You don't have to bribe them to get in, but to get anywhere before the thousandth returned url or so, you have to pay some $$$.

    Are you talking about Yahoo or Google? I've never used Yahoo, but I doubt you have to pay to get into Google. For one thing, I didn't, and searches on my real name return me. Searching for ntop and gtml's home pages got me them in the top three. In fact, I've probably only had to move to any kind of refined search a handful of times with Google. Whereas Altavista, my old search engine of choice, required more thinking to get results.

    And now it's covered in ads. Who'd a thunk they could make cable seem so slow?

  • They may be, but anyone browsing linux-kernel will know that the Google boys are using Linux for their heavy lifting (the DB servers).

  • If the people who have contributed to free systems had wanted to spend their time writing proprietary operating systems, they would have been doing that already.

  • That's all right then. As long as you're not defaming my favourite search engine 8).

    (Well, given that Yahoo is offering a service that professes to return useful information, among other things, it really isn't that OK at all. But it doesn't appear to bug the people who use Yahoo.

  • Here, use this [raging.com]. Screw Google. >;)


  • I belive they managed to cram 4 (maybe just 2) machines into each 1u shelf that way. It looked warped due to the way the cardboard insulator was sticking up and out.
    They have a bazillion 1u shiny red machines now in a monster cage. Impressive to look down isles of them.
    Computer cases just take up space :)
  • Google could implement an algorithm like that used by advogato.org [advogato.org], that gurantees the system can't be subverted by any number of sites set up just to get high relevance.

    Danny.

  • AV is bloated but their technology is first rate.

    While I've been a Google fan since way back, I have to say that AV's frills-free raging [raging.com] is my engine of choice these days.

  • I agree, 45 TB seems like a very small amount of data, given the size and scope of the WWW. Even if you just take into account porn sites (of which I have no personal experience with :), the amount of websites is truely staggering, and many claim to have gigabytes and gigabytes of porno (I definately don't find this hard to believe). So for total data, 45 TB seems very small indeed.

    Perhaps it is some metric of original content or something, I have no idea. You can also count sites like IBM who sell downloadable software of their website... would this count too? Or those my.mp3.com or whatever websites. Or internet radio (accessible from the web, right?).

    When you start looking at it this way, though, it seems to me that it becomes harder and harder to define what "the web" in fact is, since what we classically think of as the WWW is more and more integrated with other protocols all the time.

    But, I'm probably way off base anyways, so I'll just go sit in a corner.

    -Ryan
  • The directory is actually syndicated from the Open Directory Project [dmoz.org], which also provides the same content to many other services.

    --

  • What bothers me more is Yahoo's inherent conflict of interest. Originally, Yahoo was useful because it was an index compiled by real humans, in (more or less) useful categories. But as Yahoo's business side has grown to encompass free email, shopping, map servers, just about everything, Yahoo always gets to list its own service first, set off from any of the others. Can we really expect that they will be as rigorous about listing their competitors? Or give a "cool" rating to a service that strongly competes with their own?

    Yahoo may be an occasionally useful conglomeration of services now, but its original utility as an unbiased and hand-compiled index is almost entirely gone.
  • I read my email from an IMAP server. Maybe the search engines I'm most likely to use are archie or veronica?

  • If you liked Altavista' search, but you don't like wading through all their portal crap, try http://www.raging.com/ [raging.com], which
    has the Altavista search without any extra fluff.


  • Geez, guy, where'd you learn English? "Scruntous" is, of course, an adjective expressing the concept of "that which is scrunty".

    Now please don't tell me you don't know what "scrunty" means...
  • Google also uses dmoz for its directory listing.
  • No, this is different. You know how when you search for something obscure (or mispelled) and you get a bunch of google/altavista/lycos-style links instead of the categorized stuff? That'll be provided by Google, not the categorized search results. The human-made index will still be there.
  • I rarely use minus in queries, because I'm afraid that they might filter out useful pages. Consider a page that contains a lot of useful information about OpenSSH, but also the sentence "This isn't rpmfind" (I know this is a bad example), or even an informative link to rpmfind. That page would be rejected.
  • Well, if you search for chunder pictures [google.com] then my page is 4th

    However the curious thing is that the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th ....30th (I got bored there) are all my pages description on various Yahoo or Open Directory listings.

    It looks like I have the market cornered!

  • Although I doubt they'd be selling their directory services (I don't even think this would be legal - as I'm sure the ODP data is copyrighted by AOL/Netscape - hence their ability to license it) a lot of their data has to come from the open directory project (ok, well, 1% of it needs to come from it). I would assume they would of spidered the ODP in it's entirity as a good basis for the rest of their search data. If they did this Yahoo is in a way getting to use the data.

    I really think this is a violation persay - just as a search engine could have spidered www.dmoz.org and built that into their search results along with all the other sites. But it just strikes me as being peculier.
  • back under your bridge Fawkin Troll! Besides, you have my email address if you really want to discuss it.

    Fawking Trolls! [slashdot.org]
  • Google

    DevX:The leading online information service for Visual Basic, Java,
    ...DevX Zones Application Server ASP C++ CareerLink DHTML Enterprise Java...
    ...Ask the Pros (on inquiry.com) ASP C++ Delphi DHTML Exchange Informix Java...
    www.cplus-zone.com/ - Show matches (Cache) - 34k - Similar pages

    Ask the C++ Pro
    ...DevX Zones Application Server ASP C++ CareerLink DHTML Enterprise Java...
    Description: Expert answers to your questions about C++ programming, archives of answered C++ development questions,...
    Category: Computers > Programming > Languages > C++ > Resource Sites
    www.inquiry.com/techtips/cpp_pro/ - Show matches (Cache) - 29k - Similar pages

    The C/C++ Users Journal website
    ...Algorithms C/C++ Users Journal is the magazine devoted to practical...
    Description: Practical technical information, with an extensive code archive, for advanced C/C++ programmers. ...
    Category: Computers > Programming > Languages > C++ > Periodicals
    www.cuj.com/ - Show matches (Cache) - 3k - Similar pages

    C/C++ - Home Page
    ...About.com > Computing/Technology > C/C++ One of Over 700 Sites with...
    ...Contact Subjects Advanced C Advanced C++ Beginning C Beginning C++...
    cplus.about.com/compute/cplus/mbody.htm - Show matches (Cache) - 50k - Similar pages

    Altavista

    . Washington, D.C. Registry--Washington, DC's Online Community with over 10,000
    Washington, DC's Online Community, the Washington, DC Registry contains the largest collection of Washington, DC area links to be found anywhere,...
    URL: dcregistry.com/
    Last modified on: 11-Jan-2000 - 18K bytes - in English
    [ Translate ] [ More pages from this site ] [ Related pages ]
    2. C-SPAN Store
    Featured C-SPAN Items: American Presidents. Booknotes: Life Stories Book --> 1999 U.S. Congressional Directory. Booknotes. BookTV. American...
    URL: www.c-spanstore.com/
    Last modified on: 11-Jan-2000 - 9K bytes - in English
    [ Translate ] [ Related pages ]
    3. Into the Wardrobe: The C. S. Lewis Web Site
    This comprehensive C. S. Lewis site includes daily quotes, pictures, papers, several discussion forums, complete lists of literary works, and an...
    URL: cslewis.drzeus.net/
    Last modified on: 18-Nov-1999 - 4K bytes - in English
    [ Translate ] [ Related pages ]
    4. Listing budget accommodations in Washington D.C. Hotels:
    Washington D.C. hotels, find budget listings of DC accommodations make reservations online...
    URL: www.washingtonhotels.com/
    Last modified on: 11-Jan-2000 - 12K bytes - in English
    [ Translate ] [ Related pages ]
  • I have had similar experiences whenever I've shown people google, which usually comes magically closer to "the right answer" sooner than any other engine I've used ...

    people are amazed because they are used to total suckiness to have something that is way way less sucky.

    Tim
  • I use the browser buttons [google.com] that the people at google came up with on my Mac and it should work under any browser that supports javascript. I thought that this was such a good idea that I adapted it to other search engines and have different buttons for different engines now.

    On another note, I scored 4th place out of 60 for a web search competition using only Google.

  • You of course know that google now has an index too? Tho I suspect it is machine classification in action.
  • >I use HotMail, yet I almost never use Yahoo. Yahoo
    >is nothing more than another capitalist
    >institution, feeding off of others for it's
    >sustinence.

    100 free frags to the first slashdotter to point out the sheer absurdity of that statement.

    Hint for bucktoothed vermin...

    Who owns hotmail?

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • They've used other engines before with no detrimental effects, altavista, inktomi..

    As far as I can tell the only thing this will do is give Google some more income without having anything to do with advertisements.
  • Presumably if a new site offers something that the previous sites didn't, people will link to it. Everything about the internet is fickle, and Google is not going to fundamentally change that.
  • Clearly he means "Scrumptious". Mmmmm...
  • Be that as it may, Google is selling yahoo a service, rather than advertising space.
  • Yes, I ring in at the top... long live the fart machine.
  • I've got 3 customers and my market cap is 20 bucks!

    Does that B scare you?

    I'm sorry, I couldn't resist :P

  • Google is running FreeBSD on many of their internal boxes.

    Unfortunately I can't prove this to you. I've been told this from more than one staffer at Google. There _is_ http://www.google.com/bsd you know.

    If someone from Google sees this comment, please come forward so I don't look like I'm crazy :)

  • That may be true.

    But you should note that it looks to me as if they're using Google technology: not actual Google resources. Hence they should be able to run it under any OS. Let's just wait and see.

  • I use some yahoo services, but not their search. To put it bluntly, it sucks. At least when you compare it to the Open Directory [dmoz.org].

    Indexing things by hand is a good idea, but yahoo can't do it well enough by hiring people. You need the power of open source.

  • Raging search vs Google. Common, which gives more relevent hits? Screw AltaVista and their "clean" interface with a new name pretending to be a new engine. (-;<
  • I always felt that the best way to demonstrate how Google weeds out the chaff is the "pseudo-porn-term test". If you can type in "beaver" as the search term, and get <B>all clean</B> results for the top 10 entries, you know the engine is doing the job. Works for other words, too...
  • Note to self: preview comments first. End note.
  • Not the AC, but i'll bite.

    Second, just because I don't show off my HotMail address here does not mean I don't have one. My HotMail address is pretty much just for IM and recieving spam.
    I think the original poster was refering to people who only use hotmail or people who use it as there primary email vs. people who use non-web based email as their primary email.

    Thirdly, I don't like being insulted. If you said this right to my face, tomorrow would see you visiting your dentist to get false teeth.
    And the day after that you'd be in court paying for those teeth, court fees, and whatever else the lawyers could squeeze out of you.

    And finally, the subject is an example of sarcasm. However, I doubt that you'd understand that. I say this because it seems you haven't really evolved from the tree apes.
    You were the one talking about inflicting physical violence... not very civilized.

    ^Z
  • I vote for the latter. I've never considered Rome a great civilization for just those reasons. The "greatness" of a civilization is its intellectual, moral, cultural and material developement. Any civilization that allows the kind of carnage that went on in a ancient Rome, at the very least, lacks in moral and intellectual developement.

    Finally, back to the point, a definition (from dictionary.com):

    Civilized: Showing evidence of moral and intellectual advancement; humane, ethical, and reasonable.

    Nowhere did i refer to civilization. Violence, at least in my opinion, is not civilized, albeit occasionally necessary.

    ^Z
  • Not counting the porn, that's 10,000 pages of actual content...

    ---
    Chaosnetwork [chaosn.com]: [men will be men]

  • To catch spam, I think I'd rather have email addresses at fuckyou.co.uk [fuckyou.co.uk] or yourmom.com [yourmom.com]
    --
  • yup, and his name is They.

    You know, as in, "That's what They say."

  • Also Mac [google.com] and BSD [google.com] and US Govt [google.com] and University [google.com] searches are available.

    I've always wondered why they never put links to these on the main page. I know they pride themselves on they slimness of their pages, but there's no need to be sparse.

  • Your stuff is toast unless you met them at the Playboy Mansion.
  • They (Google) seem really proud of it. On thier page, their main graphic says "GIGA Google" and it proclaims "Google index: 1,060,000,000 web pages."

    Still, I like Google. Clean and simple, and the caching bit is kind of neat. And I can't argue with something that rate s my site #1 under the one query it deserves, 'oscar fish' [google.com]! Thank you very much Yahoo! [yahoo.com] for not updating their description of it, which is now over two years old (after three requests).

  • 1. You definitely don't have to bribe Yahoo to get in. My site, Rings-Online.com [rings-online.com] got in the first time in only two weeks. The trick is that your site needs to be good. They typically pass over crap sites.

    2. Google crushes AltaVista like a grape. AltaVista almost never returns relevant results no matter how much you tweak your search.

    If you haven't tried Google yet, you really are doing yourself a disservice, it is so good, I actually started using search engines again.

    Brian Woodring
    Rings-Online.com [rings-online.com]

  • The link on the Inktomi page is broken. Try corporate.yahoo.com [yahoo.com].


    --
    Turn on, log in, burn out...
  • Well. I can't think of a single reason for me to go on living.

    Being number two and number three is a spectacular achievement, but your work here won't really be over until you get to number one!
  • Wouldn't Yahoo users be more likely to use Yahoo mail than Hotmail?
  • hehe, it's because google is based on linking to pages and you should see rpmfind's linking, like 5 links to one rpm, so they prolly SHOULD be on the top of the list, if you really dont want rpmfind then do -rpmfind (for example if you want to search for openssh do-

    openssh -rpmfind
    )
    .. that's what i do, it's kinda a pain in the ass if you want to find the official page and get rpmfind on the top....

    =]
  • Yahoo, is still going to use Inktomi for Corporate Yahoo! Check out the press release [inktomi.com].
  • I view this as great news. I use both Yahoo (email) and Google (surfing) on my wireless SprintPCS phone. Maybe the marriage will lead to better things. Does anyone know of a wireless portal I can check my POP mail? thx
  • Hi - I'm sorry I can't gush over google.com because it does not respect quoted strings, making it far less useful for searching for exact phrases. For example, if I search for "I love you" on google, google takes out the "I" and just searches for "love you" This is a simple example, but it illustrates my point. altavista does not do this! TWR

  • Is it really better? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is Google really better than Inktomi? Or are a bunch of folks just praising Google because it is linux based and Inktomi is not?

    Right now Inktomi serves up more queries per day for just Yahoo than Google serves up in a day for all customers. And they still have the horsepower to serve several other big sites, like AOL.

    Let's let it run for a while, but like several analysts have said - don't be surprised if Yahoo goes back to Inktomi because Google breaks under the load.

    And if you think this move was based purely on technology, dream on. Google and Yahoo happen to both have the same guy on their board of directors. Don't be surprised if Yahoo even just buys Google at some point. I just hope that Google can take it.
  • Just as Inktomi sells their search engine and directory (ie, yahoo-esque) engine services seperately, i'm sure google does exactly the same.

    No problem there, then.

    ...j
  • The Google version of the Open Directory is great because it ranks the entries using the Google PageRank rather than alphabetically. I hope they do this at Yahoo too - Yahoo would be greatly improved if the entries in each category were ranked by "importance" rather than just alphabetically.

    Danny - http://www.google.com/search?q=danny

  • From waht I understood, Google has sets of more trustworthy pages and less trustworthy ones.

    A trustworthy page is one linked to by many trustworthy pages or a page that the Google designers found interesting.

    Thus to get high relevancy, spamlinkers would have to be linked from trustworthy pages. Of course, if a page links to spam, then it is not so trustworthy.

    I hope Google has a way to continously reevaluate the value of pages.
    __
  • There are lists of the other specialized searches here [google.com].

    ---
  • Yahoo needs google because it isn't a search engine. It's an index, maintained by human editors. They sell it as "the best of both worlds". You get human-filtered stuff in yahoo, but if you want something so recent that it hasn't made it through the editorial pipeline, or something so utterly obscure as to not warrant its own category, you can use google.

    In hotbot's case "powered by Lycos" basically means "owned by Lycos".
  • The only thing that bothers me is: what's to keep them from catering to specific commercial interests?

    I think the people at Google understand very clearly that while their money comes from the advertisers, they only have advertisers because of their users. They don't want to piss off their users, and they understand that the key to keeping users is to provide the best results, with no BS.

    In fact, they put pretty big restrictions on their advertisers. Ever notice how the ads are really small text-only ads, that are related to your query? If an advertiser doesn't like the restrictions, it's easy to get another advertiser. It's hard to replace a million pissed off users.
  • ...now yahoo is going to be 'powered by' google, and hotbot is 'powered by' lycos...

    Actually, Lycos has dropped their original search technology, and moved to using the Fast engine (read the press release [www.fast.no].)

  • Wow (Score:2)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 )
    I must say. I really enjoy using google. I really really do. No advertising. pure search.

    Hmm. So now yahoo isn't even a 'search' engine anymore.... they are just an index.

  • Hmm. Today Inktomi announced [inktomi.com] they will provide search services for Corporate Yahoo [I'd put a link there, but my nslookup seems to not be finding it].
  • It's agreements like this that keep Google from having to place ads on their search page. Hopefully they didn't sign an agreement not to compete with Yahoo!

  • The interesting thing is that this provides incentives not to link to other sites, and to spread your content between several machines.
  • Does this mean that they will create customizable personal web-search ehgines called "Mininktomies"? Sorry bad pun
  • Eeeeeeeeeeexcellent... (in Monty Burns tone)

    While debugging an Apache build with a coworker I used Google to look for a certain bug. And, as expected the first few hits contained what we needed. Later said coworker referred to this as the "Google trick" I showed her. (??) Don't know what part of it was a trick. It's just a search engine like the rest. Just happens to be very good ;)
  • hotbot is also owned by lycos, so it's pretty reasonable that they share technology.

  • Actually the answer to how Goggle makes money is more interesting than ads.

    It's good old business2business relationships.

    They are currently in the process of stealing Inktomi's business - the people who supply the data for the searches on most of the major portals.

    Firstly they won Netscape's portal, and now they have Yahoo.

    Google have turned from plucky underdog to the rulers of the scene in a matter of a year.

  • Unfortunatly, Google still returns several of my archived /. posts with the linked .sig before the actual page on CDROM RAID. Thankfully my sig changed, so there won't be too many more interfering entries, but still!
  • Like that <A HREF="http://slashdot.org/articles/00/05/31/124223 7.shtml>article </A> a while ago..

    Google's guys are pretty nice.. They have .. I think I counted 900, servers @ global center where we host our pathetic 20.. Just down the aisle really cool setup if you look @ it.. apparently they had such a heat problem, so they took all the boards out of cases and just have these big boxes with tons of motherboards.. to look @ them though they all look like they're warped/sagging.. either way it's cool.. i've got a picture of myself in front of it :)
  • I actually really like Google's caching features. Quite a few times, I've found a page that will tell me exactly what I want, only to find that it no longer exists, access denied, etc. If google has it cached, then no problems for me. I can't really see people using the caching feature at any other time.
  • Yahoo sells eyeballs to advertisers. I'd guess that with the new Google search engine in place,
    the display the user sees will still be a Yahoo-formatted page, with Google search results but Yahoo-managed banner ads, hyperlinks, and other decorations. I'm more interested in what Yahoo does to link the banner ads with the search terms or search results, though perhaps Google also gets to sell that information to advertisers or information aggregators, even though they're not providing the banner ad themselves.


    Remember when the Internet term "IP" meant "Internet Protocol" instead of "Intellectual Property"?

  • Yeah, my problem is, I only have so much web bar-space.... I like the fact that this doesn't take up any room....
    ---
  • I notice a pattern of people and search engines. Those that use hotmail as their e-mail use yahoo as their search engine. Those who use POP3 use altavista or google. I had a public speaking teacher that wanted us to visit a website. She was too dumb to give us the address, so she said, "Go to a search engine and type in blah blah blah....." I couldn't find it using AV or google. But when I typed it into Yahoo, it was in the first page.

    The point of this is that some people are too dumb to write down URL's. They depend on search engines to find a site again. If they site changes, people might become confused.
  • To search for really common words that google would otherwise skip, use a plus (+) sign. In your example, enter "+I love you" as the search term. Likewise for the words 'a', 'to', 'of', etc.

  • new sites will never become popular, since they aren't linked to by the highly-rated ones.

    We already have a dose of that with the Bow Tie theory [ibm.com] of the web.

    I wonder what effect Google/Yahoo will have on Spamdexing "industry" ? Rather than stuffing <meta> tags, will the lexicographic whores turn to setting up "stooge pages" with loads of links to their favoured targets.

    A large auto-generated farm of stooges could carry a lot of "relevant" text on a particular subject, and links to the target pages. It's almost impossible for Google to detect wordlist drivel from real sites (that's nigh-on a Turing Test). As storage space is cheap, and bandwidth needed would be minimal, the spamdexers could afford a large collection of these.

  • Yeah; currently this is my favorite thing about Google -- no clutter, just searching. That used to be my favorite thing about altavista, but then they turned into a portal and started to suck bigtime. Then for a while I used altavista text mode [altavista.com] , but now even THIS has banner advertisements.

    I think google's slip into commercialism is inevitable, but by the time that happens there might be another slick clean engine to use. =)

  • They aren't replacing Yahoo with Google searches as some people think, they're probably replacing the 'search engine' portion of yahoo (once powered by AltaVista, in fact) that comes up if you explicitly ask for it or automatically if the regular yahoo search yeilds no hits.

    ----
    Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
  • Google still can't find my car keys.
    Is this [google.com] them?

    Note: http://www.google.com/search?q=Felipe+Hoffa+car+ke ys
    is the URL above...

  • I can't complain about a search engine that ranks relevant things correctly [google.com] (namely the page for my son -- which needs updating!).
  • which lead to the following:


    [postgresql.org]
    Re: [SQL] locked my keys in the car


    accursed database!

  • Pause for a moment (Score:3)

    by Alex Pennace ( 27488 ) <alex@pennace.org> on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:03PM (#974427) Homepage

    In today's "go! go! go!" Internet boom, we seldom take time to appreciate what we have done so far.

    1 billon. 1 thousand million. 1x10^9. That's the population of China. That's 1/6 the population of the world. If you presume the web was really born on January 1, 1990 (I don't know the exact date, but this is close enough), 261,096 pages were put up per day on average. Impressive.

  • Inktomi Financials (Score:3)

    by superid ( 46543 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:17PM (#974428) Homepage
    According to this [yahoo.com] Inktomi has "more than 80 customers". Their current market cap is "Fifteen Biiiillion Dollars" [Dr. Evil]

    80 customers and a market cap that ends in a B. This new economy scares me!
  • For those complaning about Altavista's and other's portals, there's a nice little solution. If you use IE 5 and windows, that is. I'm sure there's something similiar for other browsers/OSes. The quick search accessory from ms. You get it as part of the Web Accesories Pack [microsoft.com]. It lets you type "ly search for this" in the address bar which searches lycos for "search" "for" "this". Or type "av thiscompany -host:thiscompany.com" to do a custom Altavista search. You can even "teach" it to use engines it doesn't have built in, like google. I love it.
    ---

  • Re:relevance vs. profit (Score:3)

    by cot ( 87677 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @10:14PM (#974430)
    > "scruntous"? Define please.

    What do you mean? It's a perfectly cromulent word.

  • Google (Score:4)

    by Kyobu ( 12511 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:44PM (#974432) Homepage
    I love Google (now GigaGoogle (try saying that five times fast)), but I really wish it had better syntax. It supports ANDs, AND NOTs, and phrases, and that's it. No ORs or XORs, and certainly no NEARs or searching by date. I used to use AltaVista before they turned into a portal, but now I can't stand it. So I use Google because it's fast and gives relevant results, but most importantly because it doesn't tell me what the Dodgers score was, or which town in Texas was the host of the most recent gun-nut massacre. I still wish it was a little less primitive, though.

  • What about Google's use of dmoz.org? (Score:4)

    by lsdino ( 24321 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:22PM (#974433) Homepage
    What I'm wondering is how this will impact Yahoo's use of the open directory. Currently Google uses the open directory in their search results, and you can visit it at directory.google.com, and now Yahoo's using Google's search results? How many of these search results are going to be coming from The Open Directory, or at least spidered due to the work of the volunteers at the ODP? In some warped way Yahoo may have the largest index again.

  • A Billion Pages? (Score:4)

    by Jim Tyre ( 100017 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:07PM (#974434) Homepage
    Hmm, according to the dynamic web size page [censorware.org] Michael Sims has over at the Censorware Project, there currently are roughly 2,140,000,000 web pages.

    So either Google really is catching up, or Michael needs to change his formula.

  • Farting Sounds (Score:4)

    by David Wong ( 199703 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:07PM (#974435) Homepage
    I'd say the most important factor in Google.com's growth is the fact that if you enter "Farting Sounds" as your search term, you get my web page as both the second AND third results. [google.com]

    Over a billion pages... and two of the top three "farting sounds" pages are mine.

    Well. I can't think of a single reason for me to go on living.

  • You know about the Linux engine on Google? (Score:5)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:19PM (#974436) Homepage
    Perhaps this is just slightly OT, but one of the things I really like about Google is their Linux-specific search engine! [google.com]

    They always seem to turn up Linux stuff anyway - sometimes I wonder if rpmfind.net alone accounts for 75% of their 1 billion pages. :)

    ---

  • While I love google, and use it for all my searches, a little voice in the back of my head tells me to be worried. Google rates sites based on how many other sites link to them (and how many other sites link to those sites). So, let's say I decide to create a page about the very tasty fish Red Snapper. I'll probably include a section of links to other Red Snapper pages, which I will find using Google. As more and more people create pages with links they found on Google, the set of pages that were popular when Google started get higher and higher ratings, until there is just an incestuous web of interlinking, highly-rated sites.

    If everyone uses Google-like search engines, new sites will never become popular, since they aren't linked to by the highly-rated ones. The result will be a fairly static set of pages returned by search results, with an impossible barrier for new sites.

    Maybe google can do something to give the new sites a chance (Give extra points to pages created in the last month, or something).

  • We all now know very well that there are not very many web- or internet-based companies that make any money at all. But Yahoo does, because they really can deliver a ton of users. And the reason why Yahoo does so well is that it's fast, simple, and comprehensible. From my dealings with grandmothers and undergraduates and most people in between, it's clear that people like all of these characteristics. But what they really liked was the (admittedly naive) notion that everything on the web fit somewhere in the Yahoo hierarchy, and that somebody had lovingly set up that link with care.

    On the other hand, it was becoming clear to me that some of the newer search engines, especially Google, were beginning to do a hideously good job of indexing things in a most-un-Yahooly way. Well, not completely un-Yahooly; Google is fast and simple, too. And people really like that, even if they miss that hierarchical, home-made feel.

    Now, I understand that the current agreement is for Yahoo to provide Google results for searches it doesn't do anything useful with, but I would be a bit surprised if they didn't adopt the technology more widely to crunch through the Web, which can really no longer be lovingly indexed by hand. And I predict that people will learn to like it, which is something I would not have predicted a year ago.

    But the end result will probably be the same: Yahoo will still make lots of money, while very few other outfits will. And the reason will probably be the same: Yahoo provides what people really want.

  • i don't get this (Score:5)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:14PM (#974439)
    it seems funny to me that all of these supposed 'search engines' are all using other 'search engines' to do the work for them

    used to be you had yahoo, hotbot, altavista, lycos, etc. -- now yahoo is going to be 'powered by' google, and hotbot is 'powered by' lycos, and altavista still returns pictures of santa claus when you do a search on "caffeine free diet coke"

    you know - i'll bet if you look into this far enough it probably all links back to one guy who stays up all night answering queries.

    guy: "jesus another search for 'caffeine free diet coke' - wtf...let's see how he reacts when i return links to pictures of santa claus!"


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

  • So what? (Score:5)

    by Felipe Hoffa ( 141801 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:13PM (#974440) Homepage Journal

    Google still can't find my car keys.

    Fh

  • Commercialism (Score:5)

    by Yamao ( 158661 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:08PM (#974441)
    So far, it seems that Google hasn't fallen into a commercialist trap - they've generally kept everything clean and unbiased, and they turn up darn good results. (Heck, I got a Google t-shirt for Father's Day, and I'll proudly wear it.)

    The only thing that bothers me is: what's to keep them from catering to specific commercial interests? How long is it before it becomes YASE (Yet Another Search Engine) that favors some commercial hits above any others? I sure hope there are some people up top at Google who push fairness. Of course, when those people go away, what's left to do that work? Have they forced themselves into a process that will do it for them?

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