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A Peek Into the Google 182

Posted by Hemos from the going-under-the-hood dept.
A number of people sent in the most recent story from the NYTimes (reg yada yada) from a reporter who visited the Google-land. Interesting story, no real information though, but the ability to see what people are thinking about and interested in is pretty cool.
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A Peek Into the Google More

A Peek Into the Google

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  • alike? (Score:5, Funny)

    by tanveer1979 ( 530624 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @08:59AM (#4774423) Homepage Journal
    "Stare at Live Query long enough, and you feel that you are watching the collective consciousness of the world stream by. "

    Its amazing that most people of the world search for similar things, irrespective of language! Good they put filters.... otherwise a normal visitor would be shocked that most of the world wants naked ladies.

    • Hey Taco (Score:5, Interesting)

      by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:12AM (#4774468)
      Its amazing that most people of the world search for similar things, irrespective of language! Good they put filters.... otherwise a normal visitor would be shocked that most of the world wants naked ladies.

      How about an E2 [everything2.com] zeitgeist [google.com]? Cream of the cool is close, but it would be interesting to see what people are searching for as well as what they are contributing. I sometimes even check E2 before Google, because at least there is some active quality control on E2 nodes, unlike the web at large.
      • Ive found that Everything 2 seems to be missing a LOT of nodes that would be easily found on google. What do you think if all the missing nodes in Everything 2 automatically pulled up the Google "I'm feeling lucky" link?

      • Re:Hey Taco (Score:3, Funny)

        by sg_oneill ( 159032 )
        Isn't it scary that one of the most powerfull computer clusters in the world spends half its time looking for pr0n.
        I remember once being a little..... erm.. drunk, and amusing myself in a uni computer lab having altavista , hotbot, yahoo and excite all simultaneously searching for "sausage politics". It struck me as rather bizare having the finest computer dataminers inthe world all simultaneously searching for left-wing sausages. self abuse hey? *hICK!*
      • It's kinda funny to look at the zeitgeist [google.com] page.

        Who can guess what the top query from canada is?
        Jepp... you got it... "britney spears".
        ... and here I was wondering why they made canadiens look stupid in southpark.

        There should be a section on zeitgeist called: Top site to cause a Denial-Of-Service on other sites... I'm sure /. would win :)

    • We wouldnt want to shock anyone now would we? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JanStah ( 139241 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:38AM (#4774532)
      I'm constantly amazed at the lengths people go to in the states to avoid offending people.

      Wouldnt it be better to let people know the true extent of peoples e-desires rather than filtering them out for fear of suprising some prudes?

      Jan.

    • Personally I like playing "Who wants to be a google millionaire". As I watch the show I race the contestants to the answer before they can "lock it in".

      Good for sharpening your search skills, but I spose it also just makes me a geeky loser in the end.

      -------
      tickedy boo my son, tickedy boo. [wallpaperscoverings.com]

      • I've sometimes wondered whether many of the Millionaire lifeline(?) call recipients do exactly that - sit at home with the broadband fired up and Google on the screen, waiting for the phone to ring.

        • One tried (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I know of one case in Australia where someone tried that. Instead of reading out the question, he first read out keywords to be used on google. Oh and the phone was on speaker phone so it could be heard at the computer.

          Didn't work though. They ran out of time before they could get an answer.

    • Re:alike? (Score:3, Funny)

      by newsdee ( 629448 )
      a normal visitor would be shocked that most of the world wants naked ladies.

      Why? Isn't that kind of, you know, evolutionarily genetic?

    • Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right, But Three Lefts Do.
      No, they don't. Three lefts will get you to the intersection just before the one where you were supposed to make a right. Make a little drawing if you don't see that.
      • C'mon, you know what he meant. The idea is, if you missed the right turn, go straight through the intersection, and then make three lefts. Now all will be as if you had turned right.

    • Re:alike? (Score:3, Funny)

      by The J Kid ( 266953 )
      Good they put filters....

      Yeah, you have to look at it encoded, but I just see brunet, red-head, wet teen.....
  • but the ability to see what people are thinking about and interested in is pretty cool.

    this together with the link to a registered users only article is pretty funny.

    • On the top of links to sites where user registration is required, could everyone please stop with the footnoting of such URLs with tags such as "free reg yada yada" and the like? Maybe I know what that means, but a lot of people coming here might not catch the meaning. Besides, while I don't mind juvenile comments, I do mind article postings that look childish and unprofessional. It's one of those things that keeps me from telling people about Slashdot. It's embarrassing.

      How hard is it to just type in "(free registration required to view link)" or something like that? If the registration stuff is so annoying that you can't just deal with it, then stop linking to sites that require it.

    • Google: /. Yes, NYT, No (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Snork Asaurus ( 595692 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @12:31PM (#4775399) Journal
      Curiously, a Google News search does not currently turn up the NYT article on Google, but does turn up this Slashdot thread on the NYT article on Google. I mention this because when you follow a Google news link to the NYT, you don't need to register (partner site).

  • Privacy issues with google (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kemikalzen ( 173455 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:06AM (#4774449) Homepage Journal
    On request whether Google gets subpoenas for giving out personal information:

    "Google does not comment on the details of legal matters involving Google," Mr. Brin responded.

    This is most interesting, and one can only assume that since they're US based, at some point they will/can be forced to give out data for crossreferencing Gov't databases. Imagine [insert gov't agency here] gets hold of the IP-address of [insert (suspected unamerican/criminal/terrorist) person here] they can easily extract profiling information on the individual.

    Scary

    • Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. Let's hope John Ashcroft isn't reading this.
      • the sites on which the user clicked
        How can they do that ? They don't return redir links in the search results, there is no way they could see what links I click on ? Or is there ?
        • They sometimes do redirect links in the search results; I've seen it happen a couple of times.

          There is also a 'Unhappy with your result?' link that appears every now and then through which you can sent a message to an operator or sth.
        • Yes they may. If you clik on a link, take a look at it, and go back to Google, they will get the referal address of the site you just visited, so they can mach it with your current sesion.

          They will not get all the sites you visited, but they will get most of them.

    • Re:Privacy issues with google (Score:5, Funny)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:27AM (#4774499) Homepage Journal
      The first rule of Google is ... you don't talk about Google.
    • Regarding the search logs...

      As such it could be of tremendous value to entertainment companies or retailers. Google is quiet about what if any plans it has for commercializing its vast store of query information. "There is tremendous opportunity with this data," Mr. Silverstein said. "The challenge is defining what we want to do."

      I guess we'll see more tailored spam in the future, wether it's email, mail or by phone... it's going to be more of "what you want".

      • Personally I don't mind the one or two tailored messages a week I get advertising a product there's a good chance I might actually want to buy. Part of my job is procurement so it actually makes my job a bit easier.

        What I object to is the 3 hundred messages a day advertising Viagra, breast enlargement, penis enhancement, MMF schemes and Nigerian money laundering.

        YMMV

        Stephen

    • Perhaps there is an easier way to make yourself anonymous if your a hacker, but it would be interesting if someone opened a company in Switzerland or something that provided anonymous internet access. Perhaps, a giant virtual private network that routed all packets to the internet through a single set of ip addresses and did not keep logs. Hence, people could access the Internet anonymously. All Goggle or anyone else would know is that the trail stopped at your service. Anybody know an easier way?
      • Just use one of the millions of internet service provicers where you get a different dynamic IP every time you connect. That's hell for statistics. :)

        • Re:how to make yourself private? (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Just use one of the millions of internet service provicers where you get a different dynamic IP every time you connect. That's hell for statistics.



          Probably not, since any network guru would still know which ISP leases that block of addresses, and The Government could go to the ISP and say, "who leased this IP address at such-and-such time?".

    • Scary

      Yeah, just look at this data:

      Pinned up next to the GeoDisplay are two charts depicting Google usage in the United States throughout the day. For searches as a whole, there is a single peak at 5 p.m. For sex-related searches, there is a second peak at 11 p.m.

      I mean 5pm - Schools out, 11pm - 'Hunny' is off to bed
      Imagine if the Terrorist got hold of this!

      I mean, the children will have won!
      No wait, what about the Terrorist?

  • Article body (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:09AM (#4774458)
    AT Google's squat headquarters off Route 101, visitors sit in the lobby, transfixed by the words scrolling by on the wall behind the receptionist's desk: animación japonese Harry Potter pensées et poèmes associação brasileira de normas técnicas.

    The projected display, called Live Query, shows updated samples of what people around the world are typing into Google's search engine. The terms scroll by in English, Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, French, Dutch, Italian - any of the 86 languages that Google tracks.

    people who shouldn't marry "she smoked a cigar" mr. potatoheads in long island pickup lines to get women auto theft fraud how to.

    Stare at Live Query long enough, and you feel that you are watching the collective consciousness of the world stream by.

    Each line represents a thought from someone, somewhere with an Internet connection. Google collects these queries - 150 million a day from more than 100 countries - in its databases, updating and storing the computer logs millisecond by millisecond.

    Google is taking snapshots of its users' minds and aggregating them. Like a flipbook that emerges when successive images are strung together, the logged data tell a story.

    So what is the world thinking about?

    Sex, for one thing.

    "You can learn to say 'sex' in a lot of different languages by looking at the logs," said Craig Silverstein, director of technology at Google. (To keep Live Query G-rated, Google filters out sex-related searches, though less successfully with foreign languages.)

    Despite its geographic and ethnic diversity, the world is spending much of its time thinking about the same things. Country to country, region to region, day to day and even minute to minute, the same topic areas bubble to the top: celebrities, current events, products and computer downloads.

    "It's amazing how similar people are all over the world based on what they are searching for," said Greg Rae, one of three members of Google's logs team, which is responsible for building, storing and protecting the data record.

    Google's following - it is the most widely used search engine -- has given Mr. Rae a worldview from his cubicle. Since October 2001, he has been able to reel off "anthrax" in several languages: milzbrand (German), carbonchio (Italian), miltvuur (Dutch), antrax (Spanish). He says he can also tell which countries took their recent elections seriously (Brazil and Germany), because of the frenzy of searches. He notes that the globalization of consumer culture means that the most popular brands are far-flung in origin: Nokia, Sony, BMW, Ferrari, Ikea and Microsoft.

    Judging from Google's data, some sports events stir interest almost everywhere: the Tour de France, Wimbledon, the Melbourne Cup horse race and the World Series were all among the top 10 sports-related searches last year. It also becomes obvious just how familiar American movies, music and celebrities are to searchers across the globe. Two years ago, a Google engineer named Lucas Pereira noticed that searches for Britney Spears had declined, indicating what he thought must be a decline in her popularity. From that observation grew Google Zeitgeist, a listing of the top gaining and declining queries of each week and month.

    Glancing over Google Zeitgeist is like taking a trivia test in cultural literacy: Ulrika Jonsson (a Swedish-born British television host), made the list recently, as did Irish Travelers (a nomadic ethnic group, one of whose members was videotaped beating her young daughter in Indiana) and fentanyl (the narcotic gas used in the Moscow raid to rescue hostages taken by Chechen rebels in late October).

    The long-lasting volume of searches involving her name has made Ms. Spears something of a benchmark for the logs team. It has helped them understand how news can cause spikes in searches, as it did when she broke up with Justin Timberlake.

    Google can feel the reverberations of such events, and others of a more serious nature, immediately.

    On Feb. 28, 2001, for example, an earthquake began near Seattle at 10:54 a.m. local time. Within two minutes, earthquake-related searches jumped to 250 a minute from almost none, with a concentration in the Pacific Northwest. On Sept. 11, searches for the World Trade Center, Pentagon and CNN shot up immediately after the attacks. Over the next few days, Nostradamus became the top search query, fueled by a rumor that Nostradamus had predicted the trade center's destruction.

    But the most trivial events may also register on Google's sensitive cultural seismic meter.

    The logs team came to work one morning to find that "carol brady maiden name" had surged to the top of the charts.

    Curious, they mapped the searches by time of day and found that they were neatly grouped in five spikes: biggest, small, small, big and finally, after a long wait, another small blip. Each spike started at 48 minutes after the hour.

    As the logs were passed through the office, employees were perplexed. Why would there be a surge in interest in a character from the 1970's sitcom "The Brady Bunch"? But the data could only reflect patterns, not explain them.

    That is a paradox of a Google log: it does not capture social phenomena per se, but merely the shadows they cast across the Internet.

    "The most interesting part is why," said Amit Patel, who has been a member of the logs team. "You can't interpret it unless you know what else is going on in the world."

    So what had gone on on April 22, 2001?

    That night the million-dollar question on the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" had been, "What was Carol Brady's maiden name?" Seconds after the show's host, Regis Philbin, posed the question, thousands flocked to Google to search for the answer (Tyler), producing four spikes as the show was broadcast successively in each time zone.

    And that last little blip?

    "Hawaii," Mr. Patel said.

    The precision of the Carol Brady data was eye-opening for some.

    "It was like trying an electron microscope for the first time," said Sergey Brin, who as a graduate student in computer science at Stanford helped found Google in 1998 and is now its president for technology. "It was like a moment-by-moment barometer."

    Predictably, Google's query data respond to television, movies and radio. But the mass media also feed off the demands of their audiences. One of Google's strengths is its predictive power, flagging trends before they hit the radar of other media.

    As such it could be of tremendous value to entertainment companies or retailers. Google is quiet about what if any plans it has for commercializing its vast store of query information. "There is tremendous opportunity with this data," Mr. Silverstein said. "The challenge is defining what we want to do."

    The search engine Lycos, which produces a top 50 list of its most popular searches, is already exploring potential commercial opportunities. "There is a lot of interest from marketing people," said Aaron Schatz, who writes a daily column on trends for Lycos. "They want to see if their product is appearing. What is the next big thing?"

    Google currently does not allow outsiders to gain access to raw data because of privacy concerns. Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly - Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the aggregate can be seem an invasiion of privacy if narrowed to an individual.

    So, does Google ever get subpoenas for its information?

    "Google does not comment on the details of legal matters involving Google," Mr. Brin responded.

    In aggregate form, Google's data can make a stunning presentation. Next to Mr. Rae's cubicle is the GeoDisplay, a 40-inch screen that gives a three-dimensional geographical representation of where Google is being used around the globe. The searches are represented by colored dots shooting into the atmosphere. The colors - red, yellow, orange - convey the impression of a globe whose major cities are on fire. The tallest flames are in New York, Tokyo and the San Francisco Bay Area.

    Pinned up next to the GeoDisplay are two charts depicting Google usage in the United States throughout the day. For searches as a whole, there is a single peak at 5 p.m. For sex-related searches, there is a second peak at 11 p.m.

    Each country has a distinctive usage pattern. Spain, France and Italy have a midday lull in Google searches, presumably reflecting leisurely lunches and relaxation. In Japan, the peak usage is after midnight - an indication that phone rates for dial-up modems drop at that time.

    Google's worldwide scope means that the company can track ideas and phenomena as they hop from country to country.

    Take Las Ketchup, a trio of singing sisters who became a sensation in Spain last spring with a gibberish song and accompanying knee-knocking dance similar to the Macarena.

    Like a series of waves, Google searches for Las Ketchup undulated through Europe over the summer and fall, first peaking in Spain, then Italy, then Germany and France.

    "The Ketchup Song (Hey Hah)" has already topped the charts in 18 countries. A ring tone is available for mobile phones. A parody of the song that mocks Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for raising taxes has raced to the top of the charts in Germany.

    In late summer, Google's logs show, Las Ketchup searches began a strong upward climb in the United States, Britain and the Netherlands.

    Haven't heard of Las Ketchup?

    If you haven't, Google predicts you soon will.
    • Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked.

      How can they tell that? It looks to me as if the links point straight at the real site, instead of using some kind of redirect. Of course they can tell it for the ones that hit their own cache, but what about the others?
      • How can they tell that? It looks to me as if the links point straight at the real site, instead of using some kind of redirect. Of course they can tell it for the ones that hit their own cache, but what about the others?

        Google occasionally have links that go through a redirector. I'm not sure how it chooses who to give these links to, but I have seen them fairly rarely.

        I assume it's a way of just taking a sample of what links were clicked, and using that to guage usefulness of search algorithms. They could use it to tell how often people click the first link, or a link on the first page, or end up many pages into the search, and use that to improve the search algorithms.
    • This article (and any number of other tech articles from the NYT) has the byline Jennifer 8. Lee. Would someone mind explaining to me why her middle initial is a number? Did she name herself after the movie [imdb.com] with Andy Garcia and Uma Thurman? Is Neuromancer [wsu.edu] involved in any way? I wanna know!

      • Re:Jennifer "8." Lee (Score:2, Informative)

        by tbdean ( 163865 )
        Try a Google search!

        It appears her parents gave her the middle name "8" for originality and good luck. 8 being lucky in China.
      • I know her -- she's one of my friends old mates. Her middle name really is 8 !

      • Well, she wrote under the same name for the Harvard Crimson when she was a student at Harvard. Depending on who you believe either a) that's her real middle name, given to her by her parents because 8 is a lucky number in China or b) she took the number 8 as her middle initial to distinguish herself from the multitude of Asian girls named "Jennifer Lee". In reality, I think both have some truth. Her middle name really is that weird, and she uses it and spells it 8 because it gets attention. I mean, she could use Jennifer E Lee in her byline if she wanted, or just Jennifer Lee, due to the weirdness of her middle name, but she chooses to feature it very prominently because it makes her stories and her byline that much more noticeable.
    • "So what is the world thinking about?

      Sex, for one thing."

      It is amusing when people looking for sex find this link:

      Find sex [tilegarden.com]

  • Data Mining the Zeitgeist (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jamyang ( 605452 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:11AM (#4774467) Homepage
    the ability to see what people are thinking about and interested in is pretty cool.

    Which is why the Internet Police in China have set-up a proxy server running an adaptive filtering matrix between the mainland Googler and the oracle in Mountainview.

    http://go.openflows.org [openflows.org]

  • Amazing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kj0n ( 245572 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:13AM (#4774471)
    It is amazing how many of the searches that are described in the article I have executed myself.

    I guess that you can really find out what is going on in the world by looking at the logs of Google.

  • Query performance (Score:1, Interesting)

    by crevette ( 461203 )
    I'm curious how long it can take to write a meaningful query and how long it takes to execute.

    How many query do they get per hour?

    It looks like it's a pretty interesting job at any rate: tap into the conciousness of the global brain...

  • Read an interview from Google's... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by craenor ( 623901 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:27AM (#4774498) Homepage
    Director of Operations. He said they use Linux because it's cheap and because they get better support.

    When asked how they can get better support for Linux, he answered, "We're Google, if we need to know something about the Linux we are running, we can usually find the guy who wrote the code and ask him."

    Must be nice...
    • The trouble is finding the precise page you're looking for, no ? ^_^;;;
      One of the main troubles of Google, imo, is that it archives blindly stuff. So you end up with 4+ results pointing to for instance the same message in a mailing list, because the archives are duplicated.
      And not to mention pages totally unrelated to what you seeking.
      Maybe some 'smart' (a word quite popular lately) merging of results would be cool... Been in the talks for maaany years, still waiting for the search engine that can reply to 'who is the President / Prime Minister / chief-dictator / and so on

      And when searching for someone, they hafta be lucky to find the latest updated page :-)
    • "we can usually find the guy who wrote the code and ask him." Must be nice...

      Why is this so spectacular? I have regularly chatted with the developers of OSS apps I use. Go to Sourceforge and get used to it! If you're thinking about the applications custom-written for Google, well, then its really scary if you (and 3 or 4 others) think its amazing that they get to ask questions to the developers they *hired* to write this stuff!

  • Live queries (Score:2, Informative)

    by turbo_magic_hat ( 555235 )
    One of the other search engines (Altavista?) used to let you see 20 random queries while you were thinking what to type into the search field. A lot of that used to be "boobies" or "Kelly Brook naked" as I seem to recall.
    • One of the other search engines (Altavista?) used to let you see 20 random queries

      It was Excite [searchenginewatch.com], but they stopped in 2001.

    • Re:Live queries (Score:2, Interesting)

      by frozenray ( 308282 )
      fireball.de [fireball.de], a German web search engine, has a live query [fireball.de] (aptly named "voyeur-queries"). Most queries are in German, of course, but it doesn't take too much mastery of the language to grok what "+livecam +s*x +studentin", "bl**jobs" or "illuminati" is supposed to return. Hours of fun guaranteed, especially on a Friday night.
    • Yeah you can still do that today with METASPY [metaspy.com] which shows random queries to the search engine METACRAWLER [metarawler.com] which of course, uses different search engine to drive its results.

      There are two types of "spying". The first is filtered, and the second is naked!

  • This reminds me of (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Freston Youseff ( 628628 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:34AM (#4774523) Homepage Journal
    Metacrawler's Metaspy. [metaspy.com] Check out what people are searching for on Metacrawler. Choosing the "Metaspy Exposed" option allows you to see unfiltered queries; a surprising number of them are quite shady. ;)

  • display hack (Score:3, Interesting)

    by geoff lane ( 93738 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:39AM (#4774533)
    I've often wondered if it were possible to get the live display to say something shocking, or possibly display an ASCII image, just by submitting a carefully timed stream of queries.

  • Women have no taste!!!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jonr ( 1130 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:39AM (#4774536) Homepage Journal
    Looking at the 2001 Zeitgeist [google.com] I see disturbing trend:
    Top women searches:
    Britney Spears, Pamela Anderson, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna & Aaliyah.
    And top men searches:
    Nostradamus, Bin Laden, Enimen, Michael Jackson & Howard Stern.
    Is beard in?

  • Great Google Searches (Score:5, Funny)

    by Maddog Batty ( 112434 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:41AM (#4774540) Homepage
    Google Searches #1

    OK so this is a bit off topic but I found the following searches on google rather interesting:

    gfasd: 36 matches
    fgasd: 24 matches
    adfsfds: 10 matches
    sdfassdf: 6 matches
    fsdaasdf: 4 matches

    So what are these searches? Well, just jam your fingers on the keyboard and do a search on that. Most people jam their fingers in the same place (left hand, middle row) and if enough people fill in web pages with garbage then matches are bound to be found. The surprise is the number of times this works.

    Google Searches #2

    Try using Google with the following links:
    Swedish Chef [google.com]
    Elmer Fudd [google.com]
    Pig Latin [google.com]
    Klingon [google.com]
    H4xor (the /. favourite) [google.com]

  • I couldn't help myself.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by insac ( 623145 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:51AM (#4774576)
    I had to... My first Google query after having seen this article has been "mind your own business :-)"

  • New Poll: On NY Times Articles I (Score:5, Funny)

    by secs ( 262721 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:53AM (#4774587)
    - comply and register.

    - karma whore and post the article.

    - wait for the unregister link.

    - wait for the karma whore to post the article.

    - don't both to read and just post whats on my mind.

    - wait for cowboyneal to read it to me.

  • GeoDisplay (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ripplet ( 591094 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @09:54AM (#4774588)
    Hey, that GeoDisplay sounds pretty cool, why don't they put that on the web?

  • No real information? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by F452 ( 97091 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @10:03AM (#4774633)
    What, if a story isn't packed with a blow-by-blow technical orgy, it doesn't have any "real information?" This story has lots of good stuff. Thanks for the link.

  • Philosophy and Technology (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cap'n Q ( 67443 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @10:06AM (#4774638)
    That is a paradox of a Google log: it does not capture social phenomena per se, but merely the shadows they cast across the Internet.

    Wow. Google has implemented Plato's Cave.

    http://www.vrc.iastate.edu/why.html
  • Obviously, the guys working in google can surely satisfy our inane peeping-tom mentality the most...

  • Real Insight from "Google Guy" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ancarett ( 221103 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @10:29AM (#4774724)
    Over at Webmaster World [webmasterworld.com] there's some great discussions ongoing about how search engines like Google work. There's even a tiny bit of inside information, thanks to the regular posts in their Google forum [webmasterworld.com] from forum member Google Guy.
  • Did anyone else think the reporter's name was odd ("Jennifer 8.Lee")? Reminded me of 3Jane from Neuromancer. :)
  • How about all searching for "Slashdot says 'Hello Google Geeks!'"? Would be a nice way of saying hello to the guys at the Google Headquarters through the Live Query or top ranking seach... It's worth a try!
  • story from the NYTimes (reg yada yada)

    I propose that there should be one common slashdot login at the NYTimes.

    - Martin

  • Japanese google zeitgeist (Score:5, Informative)

    by ZanshinWedge ( 193324 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @11:09AM (#4774906)
    In case people were wondering what the Japanese section of the google zeitgeist [google.com] translated to:

    1. Ragnarok (e.g. Ragnarok Online, an MMORPG)
    2. Gundam
    3. ADSL
    4. Tanaka Kouichi (A pioneer in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy who recently won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry)
    5. Nobel Prize
    6. JA Net banking (online banking at JA bank)
    7. Harry Potter
    8. Shimadzu Factory (FYI, Tanaka Kouichi works at Shimadzu)
    9. Ring tones
    10. North Korea
  • Cypher: "...but there's way too much information to decode the Matrix. You get used to it. I...I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, red-head..."

    If you string together several Live Query columns, you something very similar to Matrix terminal screen.

  • Big Broother under a cute logo? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Everyman ( 197621 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @05:03PM (#4776786) Homepage
    "Mr. Poindexter is pursuing a scheme he thought up right after 9/11 and then sold to the Bush administration. Total Information Awareness, or T.I.A., aims to use the vast networking powers of the computer to 'mine' huge amounts of information about people and thus help investigative agencies identify potential terrorists and anticipate terrorist activities. All the transactions of everyday life -- credit card purchases, travel and telephone records, even Internet traffic like e-mail -- would be grist for the electronic mill." -- New York Times editorial, 18 November 2002

    "Google currently does not allow outsiders to gain access to raw data because of privacy concerns. Searches are logged by time of day, originating I.P. address (information that can be used to link searches to a specific computer), and the sites on which the user clicked. People tell things to search engines that they would never talk about publicly -- Viagra, pregnancy scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the aggregate can seem an invasion of privacy if narrowed to an individual.

    "So, does Google ever get subpoenas for its information? 'Google does not comment on the details of legal matters involving Google,' Mr. Brin responded." -- New York Times, 28 November 2002

    Question: What would be the fastest, most efficient, and most revealing approach to data mining the Internet?

    Answer: Pay Google for a back-door feed on who's searching for what.

    Question: Has Google ever, in their entire existence, issued any sort of statement suggesting that their sense of public responsibility would preclude being used in this way, or that the information they collect would never be sold for a price?

    Answer: No.

    Question: If Google decided to sell out, could they be held liable for privacy violations? Would we even find out about it?

    Answer: No. The Homeland Security Act exempts companies from lawsuits or government prosecution after they turn over information to the new agency. Such information is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Officials who release this information can get up to six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.
  • Here's how Google can make money:

    1) Pipe livequeries through fancy perl script.
    2) Figure out what stocks/commodities/stuff to buy/sell before everyone else does.
    3) Profit!

    Didn't put ??? for 2), coz people may mistake it for the perl script ;).

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