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Google in The New York Times 120

Posted by Hemos from the our-favorite-little-searchengine dept.
pq writes "The New York Time is running a mainstream review of Google, and how it plans to remain free of banner ads. (NYT, free registration, blah blah.) " Nice little bit - with a bit of the history to the site and what they plan to do - and check out the other jobs at Google. Head Chef - maybe I wouldn't have to eat packet o' sauce and noodles all the time.
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Google in The New York Times More

Google in The New York Times

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  • I started using Google a few weeks ago and have not used another search engine since.

    It just works, the way a search engine should work.

    I can't tell you how many times I have looked at the nonsensicle spew other search engines produce and wonder what their programmers were thinking.

    Search results that don't appear to contain ANY of the key words, search results that include page upon page of links to the SAME site (how easy is that to correct - come on). Ever just try to type a company name into the other search engines? You are lucky if their home page pops up in the first ten pages of results.

    Google comes pretty damned close to what I would expect from a human with almost encyclopedic knowledge of the web. It comes the closest to ranking relevancy the way humans do. Its a shame it took this long for someone to get it right, but I am glad it's here now.

    -josh




  • I think you are thinking of
    Goober [smucker.com], the peanut butter/jelly combo spread. Yuk.
  • Using http://www.google.com/search?q=comput ing+hell [google.com] gives you ZDNet as #1 and using http://www.google.com/search?q=more+hell [google.com] gives you YAHOO! as the #1 (with MS #2).


    http://www.google.com/search?q=search+he ll [google.com] gives you YAHOO!, LYCOS, and Altavista as 1, 2, and 3.


    Has anyone tried this on other search engines?



  • It wouldn't surprise me at all if that arose naturally from Google's search algorithm. The "about Google" page says Google ranks pages by looking at pages which link to that page. So if someone puts up a page which says "Microsoft is more evil than Satan himself" and provides a link to Microsoft's home page, Google notices.
  • Actually, Slashdot readers had it a LONG time ago. The only thing that's changed is that memepool added the "himself" at the end.
  • I disagree with your argument.

    What relevance is there whether Google caches your pages or not? If you choose to make your Web page public, everyone should have equal ability to view your site. Any other behaviour is tantamount to censorship.

    Furthermore, Google is not rebroadcasting or retransmitting anyone's content; that is, Google does not modify anyone's pages or re-package them. Google only provides a historical record, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Besides, relative links are converted to absolute links; following links in a cached page will send the browser to the owner's URL, not to Google's cached version of it.

    If you don't want your content to be archived, don't post it publicly. Don't post to mailing lists or to USENET either, because your content will be archived on various list archive services and Deja.com (among various other news service sites) as well.
  • In this case Google functions like a proxy server - so if you don't agree with the way proxy servers function sue all proxy server owners.

  • Do you know if Google respects the http headers for cache-control and expiration? If they serve pages past their expiration, or serve non-public or dynamic pages, I can understand your concern. However, if they respect the protocols, then how are they doing anything different than a publicly-accessable cache (squid, etc..)? If they respect the caching protocols, then why don't you just configure your server to your preference?

    --

  • And yes 'the worst operating system' works as well.
  • Heh. Did you notice the name change to 'deja.com'. There ain't no news there no more.

    -awc
  • I needed to find out how to measure my hat size, and I went to Google, but received no meaningful answers. I decided to give AskJeeves a shot, so I entered "How do I measure my hat size?" into the search engine. It gave me about seven very helpful, useful answers. I was impressed. For the times that Google doesn't work, I plan to go to AskJeeves.com.

    After seeing the /. article on how companies can buy their altavista rankings, I have not gone back there. If I'm looking for something that is easily categorized, I'll go to yahoo, but not with much frequency.

    -awc
  • I actually use google for everything but the searches that can't be put into "foo&&bar!baz" type searches... for those I use www.electricmonk.com, where I can just say "where is there info about the history of the word foo" or something like that.

    I think it's similar to 'askjeeves.com', but I've never been there.

  • Re:Google doesn't have a brand?!?! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Necessary no, available yes. See the Google Store at googlestore.com [googlestore.com]
  • Search on "best search engine". altavista and Yahoo are #1 and #2, and whowehere is #4. I honestly don't think these funny results were planted by google on purpose. They do seem to say something about:
    A) Google's ranking algorithms-- they apparently aren't kidding when they say that linking is a big factor, and
    B) How much vocal hatred there is on the net for M$ :-)

    ----
    We all take pink lemonade for granted.
  • Not to mention, try http://www.google.co m/search?q=i+always+use+this+search+engine [google.com]. Any more evidence needed?

    I'm having fun searching for odd stuff though, I must say.

    ----
    We all take pink lemonade for granted.

  • Hey, guess what? I have a page of yours cached in my brain.

    omg! there goes a copy of your page through the air in the form of photons from my monitor!

    OH NO! your pages temporarily exist in my router in the form of ethernet frames!

    HELLS BELLS! Your pages exist in the RAM of my computer where netscape renders html!

    What the hell is wrong with you?

    Tell me, where do you intend to get your clue by four? It doesn't look like you have extra clues to spare.
  • GPL exists solely to keep people like YOU from copyrighting somebody elses stuff, attempting to sell it and then preventing somebody else from giving it away.

    If there were no copyrights, there would be no need for the GPL.

    BTW. Depending on copyrights isn't a good idea given the progress of information technology. Sooner or later the whole system is going to collapse and bring people like you with it. Hopefully you have other plans - maybe you can get a good job flipping burgers.
  • Well, Google has the same response for "the best internet company", so I won't draw any conclusions about Google's oraclian capabilities!

    Lars
  • I noticed that also "evil borg","evil man","evil company","evil empire","evil place" will give you Microsoft as firset hit, but not "evil men", "evil person" or just "evil".
  • As I understand it the links to pages are used for ranking in order to use popularity as a metric. They do not however use the links to a page to find search results. If many pages linked to microsoft with 'evil' in them then those pages would show up on an evil search, but it wouldn't alter which searched turned up microsoft -- just how near the top microsoft was.
  • As an Italian ISP we used Altavista as the default search engine in our homepage, and we advised our clients to use Altavista too, as it has the biggest index and is blazingly fast...

    ...since I discovered Google half a year ago:
    Google finds the right terms more often than all other search engines I know of combined (!). Google really gets the right results first. Google simply is the best. So I switched to Google on my ISP's homepage.

    It didn't last long, and my chief (he's a convinced M$ supporter) discovered the change and asked me why I did it, and what this Gogolele is about. After I showed him the difference searching for some common terms, but also some locally related stuff, on Altavista as well as Google, he was convinced and stopped complaining: "Bravo, you did the right thing - we're always trying to give our clients the best service - and Google fits our needs"

    Some of our clients still send me e-mails asking, why I choose this silly beta search engine, which doesn't even find his look-how-cool-I-am personal homepage. But when I ask them to try to search for some terms on both search engines, I silence them easily.

    :-)
    ms

    PS: I'm still missing the "Try your query on other engines", when Google doesn't find, what I search for. I don't need to try other search engines, if Google finds the right URL. So this really should be the other way round (I already asked for this in another post on slashdot some months ago).

  • EXACTLY...what a great idea. I can think of nothing better than having a nice massage at the old computer...! (well maybe there are a few better things) anyway Google rocks!


    -Red
  • It seems like the New York Times is monitoring their free logins a little better now...

    First they disabled cypherpunks/cyberpunks/whatever.

    Then, after the last slashdot post, when someone noted the availability of test_user, they disabled that as well.

    If they're just looking at multiple IPs simultaneously loging in, that's one thing... it's more interesting if it turns out that they're monitoring /.
    --

  • And some of the job offers are really extravagant, especially for a startup firm. It really makes me wonder what they're doing over there. I've seen a few highly sucessfull startup firms, hi-tech firms at that, and they'd never consider hiring a cook or massuese
    Or maybe they don't actually intend to hire a cook and massuese, but just want us to think they do.
  • Google Problems : 1) no boolean expressions, 2) seems to ignore more than three words and 3) can't find esoteric stuff, only "popular" stuff.
  • if you enter the best operating system, it comes up with, you guessed it, Linux Home Page at Linux Online [www.linux.orgtargetblank]
  • Most of my searches are general in nature. I don't want to wade through zillions of links that don't relate to what I'm looking for, like on Altavista. With Google!, I can find good general resources fast and with a minimum of fuss.

    I've never understood why so many people swear by Altavista. I've never found it to be even remotely useful, it is just like all of the other bloated portal sites. I use Fast Search instead. It seems to have better results than Altavista (I've compared them side by side) and doesn't have any stupid graphical ad banners (at least for the time being).
  • "In practice, for each Web page Google basically sums the scores of other locations pointing to it. So, when presented with a specific query, Google can respond by quickly retrieving all pages containing the search text and listing them according to their preordained ranks."

    http://www.sciam.com/1999/0699issue/0699raghavan .html

    It's a good article on the new wave of search techniques.

    L.
  • So, I guess fair is fair. #2 links takes you
    an old askslashdot on, of all things, banner ads.

    garyr
  • Imagine using your same argument to the recording industry lawyers when your local record shop started selling CD copies of music as well as offering the "real thing". Your theory that they are simply providing a "historical record" would be laughed out of court.

    Also, simply because an item is available to the public DOES NOT MEAN you lose your rights to protect it or manage it's distribution. Look at all the open source code out there, if we applied YOUR theory, the GPL would not be enforceable since the person made their code PUBLIC hence they lose their rights to protect it.

    Your argument is full of holes.
  • Bad comparison. Try saying Radio acts like a proxy server for CDs ... does that mean the music has no copyright and the artists cannot control how the radio plays it? No way.
  • I'll tell ya what, you tell me when your company starts giving public access to my content and I'll have my lawyers give 'em a call.

    There is such a thing as private use exclusions, look 'em up.
  • You show me another search engine that offers up my ENTIRE CONTENT without my consent and I'll be after them too.

    You are blurring the lines between indexing content for search results and SERVING CONTENT without permission.

    I don't think I'm the one needing a bash over the head with the clue-by-four if you ask me.
  • No, I'm quite sure that google does not respect cache-control. There is no way they could keep up with the "internet refresh rate" if that were the case.
  • The issue with Google caching pages is rather odd, I think... I mean, *why* does Google cache pages like this? It can't provide more than a marginal benefit over *not* caching pages, and must cost a good bit of money if it's used with any frequency. So I doubt it's doing Google much good.

    And of course, it isn't doing commercial sites any big favor. I'm sure they love to have user statistics, and Google will blind them to a lot of hits if the engine ever goes mainstream in a big way. Caching pages *may* also have some effect on ad revenue, which would be a more serious issue, but I'm probably wrong on that.

    Sure, Google is all fine and dandy for caching pages when it's casual web community sites that probably could care less who visits them. But sites that actually have to pay for themselves will be hurt by it, and it doesn't seem to be much in Google's interests to do that.

  • last I tried 'cypherpunks' wasn't working at NYTIMES, and it wouldn't let me register it. I tried registering variations like 'cypherp' (for login & passwd) and it said it was already registered... so i tried logged in as that and it worked.

    most free reg sites out there have a cypherpunks/cypherpunks login/password; if they don't, well, just create one, and if it doesn't work, try obvious variations.

  • nope, it's 'cypherpunks'
    --
  • Advertising is what brings us these sites.

    You mean you go to search engines because of the advertising? Bizarre. One of the reasons I use Google is because it doesn't have any advertising (and because of it's nice, clean interface and decent results; though I'm now starting to use alltheweb a lot). If they start cluttering things up with advertising, I'll probably look elsewhere, despite the fact that I'll mostly edit it out with Junkbuster.
  • And just how well would your IT job be paying right now if previous technology companies HAD NOT protected any of their IP smart guy?

    You'd be making LESS than me flipping burgers if anyone could come along and steal what your company spent millions developing and then give it away.

    It always amazes me how the same people who RELY on these sorts of protections for their pay check, bash those who voice their concerns about losing these rights in this forum.

    Truly sad.
  • God, when will people start READING what people post here instead of reading what they want to rant about?

    When did I EVER say you were wrong for having Netscape cache my page? Never.

    The whole point of this discussion is that Google is taking a COPY of my entire content and serving it up without my permission and/or knowledge. It's that simple.

    This type of "service" does NOT fall under any fair use or private use exclusion of US copyright law, it is STEALING plain and simple.

    Ever wonder why you can make a few copies of pages in a book without a problem, yet if you copy the WHOLE BOOK, you are infringing on their copyright? The SAME EXACT premise is in use in this discussion.

    So as my subject line says, try READING what I write before you go off half-cocked asking what the hell is wrong with me ... it will make you look a little less ignorant in the long run.

  • Thoughts on the consequences (Score:3)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Thursday October 07, 1999 @07:10AM (#1633687) Homepage Journal

    You know, if everyone covers this story (and it looks like just about everyone has) and they keep providing links to Google [google.com] in reference to the "more evil than Satan himself" phrase, then pretty soon Google will find itself as often referenced in connection to evil, and they'll appear as one of the results to the search...


    ---
  • Its not a right. Its a kludge to make information look like a limited good. At best its a government enforced monopoly, at worst its outright welfare for the rich.

    Its a bad kludge because:

    It doesn't encourage innovation anymore, it stifles it. This trend is going to continue to get worse. It may have worked in the 1800s but its not working anymore. IP is a total joke, trademark law is becoming mildly humorous (e.g. the PEZ meta tag fiasco), and copyrights are next. It can't possibly sustain itself for much longer and unless the rocket scientists in the amazingly astute US legislature come up with a solution that doesn't suck we are all screwed.

    If you happen to be fortunate enough to not live in the US, your still screwed because your government no doubt will do anything the UN says.

    Finally you have no clue where my paycheck comes from. Hint: it doesn't depend on IP (ours or anyone elses) and it doesn't depend on copyrights (ours or anyone elses) and it doesn't depend on trademarks (ours or anyone elses).
  • DAMN! I just cached your entire website with netscape. The whole thing. Its all here! I can read it w/o wasting my netconnection's bandwidth (and yours, btw). Now what?
  • The point is, the people making policy have no idea how any of this technology works. They have this picture in their pea-brains of a guy copying a book with a photocopier.

    Also, what is "entirety"? 1 byte short? 2 bytes short? 50%? 50%-1 byte? 50%-epsilon?

    What if I have a photographic memory?
  • It just plain wins. I've been using it for almost a year, and I have very seldomly needed to go elsewhere.

    Though it does seem to have a techie bias.

    -awc

  • A better search engine than everyone thinks! (Score:4)

    by MrAl ( 21859 ) on Wednesday October 06, 1999 @08:57AM (#1633692)
    search for the following phrase:
    "more evil than Satan himself"

    You'll see that Google is actually more accurate and intuitive than many people think.

    Cheers to BeDope (www.bedope.com) for pointing this out...
  • Not that I'm against banner ads, but let's not get crazy. They do plan on adding advertising. Read this little piece of doublespeak ...

    http://www.google.com/advertisement.html
  • You can get the same result from asking "Is Bill Gates the spawn of Satan ?" or "What is more evil than Satan Himself ?"
  • Although I'm sure Google is getting money from the netscape portal (they use it as their search engine after MS bought excite), google really does need to make money in some way or another. I'm wondering what that way is going to be.

  • Re:Plans to remain free of banner ads? Not! (Score:3)

    by IanO ( 21302 ) on Wednesday October 06, 1999 @09:09AM (#1633697) Homepage
    Google is also working toward generating money through advertising, but does not plan to run banner advertisements.

    "It's going to be highly targeted text ads that are fast-loading and not a distraction," Brin said. "It will be relevant to searches."

    They are not planning banner ads at the moment but they are planning on adding advertising. Advertising is what brings us these sites.

    ------
    IanO
  • they're also looking for a corporate massage therapist. i think i'm going to have to stuff idea into the local suggestion box.
  • Its amazing how Google does great searches and if it doesn't go the bloat route like dejanews [deja.com] did, the good life will never end.

    The clean Google interface and great results seems to be one of the greatest gifts of the internet. Its gives me great hope that services such as this are given to the community.

  • Free login... (Score:3)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Wednesday October 06, 1999 @09:03AM (#1633702)
    User: slashdotlogin
    Pass: malda

    --

  • see google's [google.com] own way of doing it :)
  • I guess it's just habit. I use NT at work and I have Excite set as the search engine to use when I type "go foo". I'll have to see if there's a way I can use Google for that.
  • http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/99/oct/1004/feat.h tm
  • A simple "more evil" works, as well.

  • actually, memepool gets the credit (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    as i stated in the article [bedope.com], memepool was the source of this amusing tidbit

    - Be Dope guy

  • *bow* I am impressed.
    Thanks. I didn't know it had appeared before then. You definately have better memory than I.
    -cpd
  • Oh-no! I maybe log into the New York times once per month to read the occasional article and I never liked the idea of signing up for the free account.

    As many slashdotters probably remember, the default free log/pass was cypherpunks/cypherpunks.
    Can you tell it's been awhile since I tried to log in? heh.
  • Re: more than 100 hits per page:
    1. According to the FAQ [google.com] you can't officialy do more than 10 as a default. But you can do up to a hundred for any subsequent search (number 1-100 can be plugged into the URL if you don't want to search in units of 10,30, or 100. You can always create your own local search form page if you want to start with number other than 10 (but still less than 101)

    RE: more than 20 pages of hits
    1. if you need more than 2,000 (20x100) results, you may want to try MetaFind [metafind.com] As far as I know they don't limit their results, though they may be limited by the search engines they themselves use.
    RE:Alternate to Deja.com
    1. I use AltaVista [altavista.com] or DogPile [dogpile.com], which does a metasearch of both the Altavista and Deja (old & current) Usenet databases.

  • The ranking capability is nice, but what's missing is more sophisticated pattern searching and a way to combine boolean expressions. There are times when I simply can't specify what I want to Google, so I'm forced to go to clunky old Altavista's advanced text search.

    The ability to rank pages is good when you are doing broad searching that comes up with many hits. When you are searching for something specific, the ranking is next to useless---who needs ranking for a half dozen results?

    Or am I just ignorant? Someone will undoubtedly now point me to some piece of RTFM.
  • Actually, it's "cipherpunks", and it still works.
    For the (rare) uninformed /. rader, the cipherpunks/cipherpunks login/password combo is often set up to provide anonymity on sites that provide/require free logins (such as NYT)

  • It would appear that "we have no pants" produces the same result as well.

  • Where do you think the search string "crappy software" [google.com] will take you? :-)

  • It doesn't handle phrase searches properly, like most search engines.

    First, when a word in Initial Caps is typed in, it should default to a phrase search. For example, any three words typed in (Hillary Rodham Clinton) should be assumed to be a phrase first, and all results with this phrase should show up at the top of the page. Then the results in which the three words are not contiguous should appear.

    Try searching for "World New York." Do you see any pages with "World New York"? No.

    Now try searching for "related:www.worldnewyork.com" The "World New York" pages are in there. Why don't they come up in the phrase search?

    I use phrase searching equally as much as majority-word results, so this is a real shortcoming to me.

    [Majority-word results are when you type in a bunch of words that you'd like to appear in the results and the pages returned for your search are ranked with those having the majority of the search terms you entered at the top.]
  • Well, to create their index they have to create a cache (compressed) of the internet. I think they thought - hey, we have this data.. why not let other people access it. (Which is how many people feel about their MP3 collections!)

    I don't think this feature is very useful for the average user and they will probably drop it when threatened by numerous lawsuits. The one time it comes in handy is when a search result returns a page that no longer contains the content you were looking for - because the server is down, or the page is frequently updated.
  • Login: dapslash
    password: slapdash

    Yes, I am a 70 year old woman from Antartica making over 150,000 US$ a year, really!
  • ... and it has NOTHING to do with your ability to comprehend the English language.

    I'll respond to all 3 of your posts here to further the cause of letting this flamewar die.

    #1- You don't rely on any IP for your paycheck.

    Hah, does your job/school have a name, well it's trademarked/copyrighted and people do business/attend due to their reputation attached to that trademarked/copyrighted name. I'm sure your parents also rely on such protections for THEIR livelihood.

    #2- You have my site in Netscape's cache.

    How many times to I have to say that since you're not REPUBLISHING my site without my permission, that I don't have a problem with the contents of your cache?!? Please for the love of god get a clue about your private use rights and how they relate to copyright law.

    #3- Also, what is "entirety"?

    Look up "Fair Use" and then maybe you'll have a clue what "entirety" means in regards to copyright law.

    This is my last response to you on this since after caching YOUR site, I've realized that rational thought just may very well be impossible for you.

    Good day.
  • on google, try the queries:
    i want sex [google.com]
    f*ck me hard [google.com]
    blow me [google.com]
    ... really shouldn't return those results.

    but on yahoo:
    i want sex [yahoo.com]
    f*ck me hard [yahoo.com]
    blow me [yahoo.com]
    ...inktomi also does link analysis and their results are much more relevant.

  • Re:Help (Score:1)

    by Zurk ( 37028 )
    you cant. pl files are executed on the server and results returned as a webpage.
  • The "fair use" garbage in copyright law is just that. Garbage. It's a loophole that ultimately means nothing, least of all in an IP context. It is vague, imprecise, ill-defined, and wrought with legal wrangling if you try to use it in court (to back either side, I may add).

    And yes, I am "republishing" your website to everybody who cares to come into my house and use my browser, or anybody who cares to copy off my netscape cache folder onto a zip disk. If I was lazy and didn't give a crap about security, I might even NFS export it without the proper permissions. Now what? Who's responsible now? Somebody who deep links my NFS exported drive, or me? And what does fair use have to do with any of it?

    As far as depending on IP goes.. your only arguments seem to be that of my "companies" trademark, and their "reputations". That has nothing to do with the technology we create to use in our products, or other peoples technology we use when we farm out work. That load of legal dung is part of the whole "trademark" "branding" scam, which is basically to give free reign to our marketing droids to delude the public into thinking a name means something.

    The only reason any of this IP/copyright junk exists at all is to prevent them from copyrighting it themselves and reselling it (which implies they are preventing OTHERS from reselling it).

    And while we're on the subject, how do you feel about software patents?

  • The number one site as disney.com here is probably because most porn sites have a thing on the first page: if you are 21 click here to enter, if you are not 21 click here (or something similar). If someone clicks "if you are not" the webmaster has it link to disney.com as a sort of joke. This is done a lot. Not that I'd know.
  • Again, again, again, this does NO good for those behind cookie-filtering proxies, or who choose to disallow cookies for personal (and diverse) reasons. NYT sites are highly undesireable for /., IMO.
  • Well, I took a lot of heat for my comments about Google.com's practice of caching complete pages and re-serving them without the site owner's permissions.

    Well, I emailed Google.com telling them to STOP caching the pages on my site and I gave them 3 days to respond. Their FAQ has a very arrogant "answer" for the question "how to I stop Goggle from caching my pages" so I expected a similar email response. I was pleasantly surprised when I got the response. Maybe it was my posts here or my threat of legal action ... or maybe both, but within 24 hours, Goggle.com no longer listed a cached version of ANY of my pages that showed up in their search.

    I still do not like the practice of violating people's copyrights before the fact and forcing site owners to "ask" to stop having their content stolen.

    I'm not sure if I'm finished with this issue or the larger issue of the rights of site owners versus the big corporations. We'll see I guess.
  • Exactly. I can't even find the bloody newsgroups on Dejanews anymore!!!!! Isn't that the whole point of DejaNEWS after all?? sheesh.
  • http://www.google.com/search?q=dumb+television+sta tion&num=10
  • I would like to have google spit out search requests without limit for perhaps a first page or something more than 100 can this be done? Also is it perhaps possible to see all matches seen and not just the first 20 pages or so? That would make it rock even more. For now I alternate between google and alltheweb (stinking lousy altavista!). Also is there a suitable replacement for deja.com perhaps something that is lynx friendly?
  • I just thought I'd point out that we also covered Google in the Last Page column of the Oct 1 issue of Mindjack Magazine. http://www.mindjack.com/lastpage/ lastpage.html [mindjack.com]
  • now now. Its nice to see all these readers of UserFriendly passing off stuff as there own. www.userfriendly.org has a link of the day. Today's was the search about Satan, Gates, etc. Now if someone else can explain where they saw it before then I'll start being impressed....
    -cpd
  • The no banner ad policy is also a bit hypocritical in that:
    1. They get a lot of their traffic from being a preferred search-engine on Netscape's search page which is banner supported;
    2. Google places banner ads themselves to increase traffic. (I just saw one a minute ago while using a different search engine from Netscape's search page)
  • I don't think that they are going back on their promise. Basically they promised a clean ad free page for their searches. It cannot be said that there is any ads on their own page are there?
  • It's going to be highly targeted text ads


    How is this doublespeak? The link you provided says nothing about banner ads.

  • Actually I am very much against such things for a couple of technical reasons:

    1. They slow down page views to the main page and supporting pages thereby increasing time to view (as well as print) possible searches

    2. They are anoying when taken in large quantities. Anyone who uses things like this in excess should evaluate why they need that much spare income and what their user base thinks about having a 3k page take 10 minutes to load due to banner ad traffic.
  • For a while the default Netscape search has been a combo of their Open Directory project [dmoz.org] (formerly NewHoo) and Google [google.com]. Which is probably how Google make their money as Netscape will have to pay Google for use of their content (FWIW Google also provides search services for others such as RedHat and they probably get money off them too).

    Anyway, you're wondering why I'm posting this under here, it's because all you have to do is to type 'more evil than satan himself' in a Netscape URL bar (if you're running a recent version) and you get the same search results [netscape.com], so I guess that's what Netscape mean by 'Smart Browsing'! What's funnier is that if you download the Netscape Tuneup for IE (available from http://home.netscape.com/smartupdate/ [netscape.com] if you're running IE). This'll make the same search result appear by typing in the search query in an IE browser! I haven't tried the IE one however as I'm running Linux.
    --

  • text only Alta Vista (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Have any of you tried the text only version of Alta Vista. It's results aren't that bad and it's ultra fast even on those slow connections. No banner ads; just beautiful, plain text like a search engine should be. There used to be a link to it off their main page, but they removed it when Compaq took over, but the URL and search engine still work. The URL is http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?text
  • I did some testing and the minimal search string is "More Satan". If you delete either word or try "Satan More", you won't get the same number one hit.

    So clearly Google has some mechanism for filtering specific search strings and defining the number one hit (aka. the "I'm feeling lucky" button). Perhaps they will fund themselves by selling out the "I'm feeling lucky" button responses. I'm sure the "Pr0N" search string would sell quickly.

    This raises the lesser evil question. Would you rather have banner ads or corrupted searches? Clearly this depends on the scope of the ads (check out this anagram website [anagramfun.com]) and how many search slots they sell (ever use Yahoo [yahoo.com]?).

    -Ted
  • ... and I use it frequently. When I know exactly which terms to search on, the page(s) I need almost always shows up first. And I also really like their minimalist style. (I use an ad filter, and don't see most banner ads.)

    However, when I'm unsure of the exact terms to use for a search, or have to experiment to find the right search terms, I still get better results using a ranked metasearch - the best I've found is MetaCrawler. [go2net.com]

  • Google violates site owners copyrights (Score:3)

    by |DaBuzz| ( 33869 ) on Wednesday October 06, 1999 @11:35AM (#1633748)
    I know people here hate Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks, etc. ... but where does Google get off caching my site and then SERVING MY COPYRIGHTED CONTENT without my permission?

    Their arrogant FAQ answer says a lot about how they feel about this:

    Q: How do I request that Google not returned cached material from my site?

    A: Google stores many web pages in its cache to retrieve for users as a back-up in case the page's server temporarily fails. If requested to do so by a site owner, Google may remove certain cached content from the Google Search Services. We evaluate requests for removal of cached content on a case-by-case basis and do not guarantee that every request will be granted.

    Remove content on a case-by-case basis ... uhmmm no. I OWN my content and you will remove it when I say, that's what Copyrights are all about. Much of our legal system is based on the individual rights of property owners, I find it appalling that people would try to throw these rights away for the sake of a search engine.

    Needless to say I will NOT be using Google and they will prompty be placed in the deny section of my robots.txt.
  • Well the word 'Microsoft' in your search was spoiling the results a bit. If you modify your query to just 'satan email [google.com]' or 'email satan [google.com]' then you'll see Hotmail as number one. Remember MS fans this is just a laugh so don't get offended by it. I don't think Gates is satan and I doubt the people at Google do either.
    --
  • I searched for 'more evil than satan' http://www.google.com/search?q=more+evil+than+sata n and found disney.com listed.
  • They don't have a brand yet."

    And yahoo didn't mean anything other than yippee until three years ago. A lot of the tech press seems to have this feeling that if something isn't "instantly" popular, it won't stick. I remember things that were instantly popular, we called 'em fads and they disappeared after a month.
    Google gets my eyeballs 'cause it does what it does the best, period. I would much rather they go the "embedded tech" route vs. the "me2portal", which isn't working for most of them, and definitely won't work for new players.
  • What's happened to comments past 200 on the busy stories?

    "Princeton Prof Advocates Euthanizing Handicapped Babies", "Microsoft Clarifies Linux Myths","Congressman Advocates Breaking-Up a Guilty MS", and "New iMac Rolled Out" all have EXACTLY 200 messages, and don't save new comments.

  • "Now if someone else can explain where they saw it before then I'll start being impressed.."

    1) Look at this old article on Slashdot from *February*.
    2) Scroll all the way down to the end.
    3) Notice part about "more evil than the devil".
    4) Be impressed.

    http://slashdot.org/articles/99 /02/19/0833230.shtml [slashdot.org]
  • What like merchandise? Hats, mugs, tee shirts? I really don't think this is necessary to have a good site or service.
  • A little repetition is the price we pay for a great site. What I think is that even if this is the case we must use discretion when we cast blame with anything. Is there a logical algorithm for the ordering of content so that repetition is not encountered.

  • I LOVE google, but..... (Score:3)

    by FallLine ( 12211 ) on Wednesday October 06, 1999 @09:52AM (#1633759)

    As a user, I love google's search engine. However, I noticed their 'jobs' page a couple weeks ago. And some of the job offers are really extravagant, especially for a startup firm. It really makes me wonder what they're doing over there. I've seen a few highly sucessfull startup firms, hi-tech firms at that, and they'd never consider hiring a cook or massuese (ph.) If they're willing to hire with such abandon, I wonder how sound their business plan really is....

    On another note, I find google's belief that they can create sufficient revenue without banner ads intriguing. Does anyone know how they're doing thus far? They profitable yet...how many years/months away?

    I'm working on a project, an internet site, and i'm curious if anyone has any other alternative ways to generate revenues w/o the use of banner ads. Unfortunately, I can't disclose the concept behind the project at this point, but it would be of much help. It is not necessarily going to be commercial, ...so just covering costs (eg: hosting/bw) is enough for a proposition. I personally find that banners detract from websites a great deal (although /. does a decent job); I'd love to avoid them. Please respond here or email me, tnx!

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