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Google Turns 5 368

Posted by CmdrTaco from the make-a-wish dept.
Gantic writes "The BBC has an article on Google's 5th birthday. The popular search engine now handles over 200 million queries a day and the word "Google" is now a noun, adjective and verb. Lets see how long the most popular search engine in the world can last, here's to another 5 years and more Google!"
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Google Turns 5 More

Google Turns 5

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  • I was using dogpile, and other engines that searched other engines.

  • Why..? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why another five years? Do we not want a better search engine to come along? Google is nice and all, but if someone can come up with something better... Well, I'd prefer that.

  • a correction (Score:5, Informative)

    by madcoder47 ( 541409 ) <development.madcoder@net> on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:45AM (#6892735) Homepage Journal
    the article states 200 million queries a day, not 200,000 million (200 billion) queries as the slashdot post says.

  • Adjective? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Phantasmo ( 586700 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:45AM (#6892738)
    Well, that's just about the Google-ist thing I've ever heard!
    • I think it's about googling time we googlified this googlostrous googleosity.

      Great googling googlefats! That babe is googlicious! [I hear she gets plenty of hits.]

  • Do you use another? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:45AM (#6892739) Homepage
    What OTHER search engine do you still use, and why?

    • Re:Do you use another? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Organized Konfusion ( 700770 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:49AM (#6892774) Journal
      alltheweb. [alltheweb.com] why? because they still have kazaa lite, anti-scientology and DeCSS links.
      Because they are European
      Because they have the biggest index of pages on the web.

      • something i'm still missing at google are 'file searches'. lets say i know a name of the file and would like to find some ftp servers that still have it. how i do that with google?

      • Re:Do you use another? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mindriot ( 96208 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @12:43PM (#6893636)

        Alltheweb is quite good. But even there do you see the effects of Google. Just look at the page design and layout [alltheweb.com]. Same thing goes for Altavista [altavista.com] and even Yahoo! search [yahoo.com].

        And I'm really, really glad that Google has this influence. Before Google, most search engines were getting cluttered with advertisements and nasty, slowly-loading designs (yes, that was when modems were prevalent). Google did the one right thing and focused on the important stuff, building a good and fast search engine with a pragmatic, to-the-point, minimalist design and about every function you'd need to find what you're looking for.

        That's why I love Google. And also, I for one never really had censoring problems with my searches. And what can Google do when others threaten them with lawsuits? It's those others that we should criticize, not Google itself... I'm rather glad when Google makes a small adjustment (though I don't like it either) that at least allows them to continue to exist instead of being driven out of money.

        But bringing up Alltheweb is also interesting in this regard; it shows that nobody can really stop the spread of information, whatever kind it is... if Google is sued, somebody else will link to KaZaA Lite. In this regard, the Web is like a Hydra for free information.

      • alltheweb. why?

        Even better... "Why not?"

        For one, the fourth search result returned for "slashdot" happens to be goatse.cx... WOAH! If it can't get "slashdot" right, I don't want to even think about how terribly awful searches for rare/hard-to-find subjects are going to be. That's one of the reasons I love google so much... All search engines were that bad before it came along. Even if you don't like it, you have to love how it improved the quality of other search engines!

    • Copernic (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Reaper9889 ( 602058 )
      It got about 350 different search engiernes (like alltheweb.com (the second largest...)), divide into categories like Newsgroups (The only one I know there isn't where is Google :))
    • Google's ability to list up all the pages which a linking to my site [presroi.de] (not that there is a reason to link to this page anyway) seems to be sub-optimal.

      usually, a link:presroi.de [google.com] gives me some 30 results.

      compared to some 90 results [altavista.com] from altavista.

      Judging from the referer-Information in my logfile, there are many more links out there.

      Google-Watch has already made up its mind about this.

    • Re:Do you use another? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Kneo24 ( 688412 )

      Any search engine I feel like using at the moment, and this [indymedia.org] is why.

      The only time I ever use google is if I absolutely can not find what I want on other search engines.

    • OTHER search engines? Stop talking nonsense, boy!

  • Hello, editors??! (Score:4, Funny)

    by henriksh ( 683138 ) <hsh@freecode.dk> on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:46AM (#6892740) Homepage
    What about a fscking link??

    Where can I find this Google company?

  • What's left for it to do? (Score:3, Funny)

    by chrisgeleven ( 514645 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:46AM (#6892747) Homepage
    To be used as a pronoun!

  • Hah! (Score:3, Funny)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:48AM (#6892759)
    At last, my sig is relevant to a story!

    Let's see, today's total is:

    Results 1 - 10 of about 344,000,000. Search took 0.10 seconds.

    Not bad.

  • Not the same (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:48AM (#6892762) Journal
    It may be 5 years old, but it's not the same as it was back in the day (say 2-3 years ago)... when it truely did 'google' the internet... Now it has all sorts of filters and junk.

    Do you remember when you could do a search for a file and it would return hidden ftp sites? Now I do a search for something and all I get are the top sponsored sites. I can't find anything useful using google anymore... all the darned links point to mainstream sites. At the first sign of a potential lawsuit google removes references to potentially offensive material... what good is a search engine that doesn't do a good search?

    At this time I can't find anything better than google, but I really hope something comes out that is, cuz I miss the good ol' days when I could actually find stuff on the net...

    • Re:Not the same (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Now I do a search for something and all I get are the top sponsored sites.

      Sponsored link which is clearly highlighted as a sponsored link, and is easy to ignore as a sponsored link. If you truely think this is a problem then I do not know what to suggest; how else are Google to stay afloat? Its not like they inject paid links into the relevent search results in an effort to trick you into clicking on it.

      I do agree that Google should not be removing links just because some jumped up lawyer coughed up
    • Now Mr. Gates, I thought that we told you not to post on Slashdot anymore....You're not welcome here :(

      • Ha Ha!! (Score:2, Funny)

        by recursiv ( 324497 )
        You made a funny joke! You called him Mr. Gates! From Micro$oft!! (they're evil) because he doesn't agree with the Slashdot groupthink!!!! LOLOLOLz0r0s
    • Now it has all sorts of filters and junk.

      Care to eludicate? I still seem to be able to find what I need.

      At this time I can't find anything better than google,

      Or to be more precise, anything other than Google. As I said, for me Google is dandy, but competition, as we've said over and over, is always a good thing. Microsoft is preparing to enter the search engine arena, and whatever else may be true about them, they are certainly not a company to be dismissed. Grab your popcorn, folks.

  • google censorship (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:48AM (#6892763)
    While I normally have nothing but praise for google, there have been a number of recent censorship issues which one should be mindful of. Google is a privately own company, based on profit, don't forget it.

    That said, thankfully you can still type "google censorship" into google itself and get a heap of results. The force may be strong with this one.... but it was strong with Vader also.

    • Re:google censorship (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sphere1952 ( 231666 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @11:00AM (#6892853) Journal
      I'm very impressed with the way google is handling the whole DMCA crap. They are adhering strictly to the law in order that they not be the butt of a lawsuit, but they are also making a mockery of the law.

      It is google policy to: "...document all notices of alleged infringement on which we act. A copy of the notice will be sent to a third party who will make it available to the public."

      The third party is the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, and Google puts up a statement at the bottom of the page pointing at this notice. Since the notice has to list the specific sites to be removed, there is a nice list of all the removed sites -- and who wanted them removed.

      If this isn't giving the DMCA the finger then what is?

      • Re:google censorship (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jesterzog ( 189797 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @05:34PM (#6895278) Journal

        The third party is the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, and Google puts up a statement at the bottom of the page pointing at this notice.

        I agree entirely, but I'd prefer it if google put the notice at the top of the results instead of the bottom. How frequently do you scroll to the end of a page of search results?

  • Google Fan Boys (Score:5, Informative)

    by digitaltraveller ( 167469 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:50AM (#6892777) Homepage
    I think google's great, but just to counter the usual fan boy posts here is a link to some people who don't think so:google-watch [google-watch.org]

    • Then Don't Forget (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kozz ( 7764 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @11:14AM (#6892924)
      google-watch-watch [google-watch-watch.org]
    • That really is quite interesting. That made me see google in a slightly different light, especially the whole google toolbar/alexa connection, and the "immortal" cookie; Anyone know if France or Germany are creating an alternative to Google? (Hey, I like France's Linux distro, Mandrake...So maybe they could make a search engine I would like too =)
    • If you can start a large company, and the most prominent voice opposing you (in this case, a guy with a completely witless personal grievance) does not make a single convincing point -- I'd say you're doing a pretty good job of being ethical.
    • I think google's great, but just to counter the usual fan boy posts here is a link to some people who don't think so:google-watch [google-watch.org]

      "some people"? It's one guy, and the guy is a nutcase. He's upset that his own site namebase.org [namebase.org] isn't ranked as well as he wants, so he came up with a list of conspiratorial complaints. I read his complaints against google, and frankly they sound like tin-foil hat ravings. Then I looked at namebase.org and found that tin-foil hat ravings are not unusual from him. He's a loon.

    • Re:Google Fan Boys (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )
      Let's cover the objections shall we?

      1. Google's immortal cookie:

      Fair point, but cookies are well-known and expected by now. Mozilla allows you to set an expiration date for all cookies, proxies like Privoxy allow you to selectively allow cookies from sites, and block all others. Most importantly, none of these privacy-increasing measures hinder the functionality of Google, which is unusual. Lots of sites give you the brush-off when you don't allow cookies and/or javascript, even though they don't hav

  • Tech beats marketing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by j_dot_bomb ( 560211 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:50AM (#6892778)
    The thing that makes feel good about google is that it is a company that is so driven by what tech people think would be useful to people rather than by MBA marketer types who seem to want popups and cluttered image filled pages. Employees spend 1/3 of their time just creating new wild ideas. I wish I was good enough to work there.

  • Copyrights .. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jest3r ( 458429 )
    I would guess that living under the law of the DMCA will eventually be the downfall of Google.

  • Google in the future (Score:2, Interesting)

    by overbyj ( 696078 )
    I hope Google can keep it up. This search engine is by far the best one out there. I use many, many times a day. My only fear for Google is what dooms many of the other search engines, that is, they sell out to the man. They become an advertising whore and make their searches completely worthless. A prime example of this is Microsoft. I know they are in the process of revamping their engine, but let's be honest, if they keep up the advertising whoring, nobody except the ignorant masses that use MSN as their
  • Google is great, but most of my searches are linux devolpment related and it would be great to have some sort of quality filter and an intelligent handling of mailing list based results...

  • Google is good but dangerous as well (Score:3, Insightful)

    by acegik ( 698112 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:52AM (#6892791) Homepage
    Since google is the most popular search engine out there, they have the power to "remove" you from the internet. If someone at google headquarters decides to remove you from the search results, you don't exist. I know this debate is old but maybe some restrictions should be enforced since they hold much power, some would say too much.

    • Re:Google is good but dangerous as well (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smart.id ( 264791 ) <jbd@jd8[ ]om ['7.c' in gap]> on Sunday September 07, 2003 @11:02AM (#6892862) Homepage
      They don't just remove people for no reason, and they certainly wouldn't do it for their own vendettas. Google has shown that they believe in free speech. In the past, the only reason they've censored their results is because of cease and desist letters claiming DMCA violations (usually from big companies). Besides, you could always use MSN, with their Fair and Balaced(TM) results!
    • Let's think about this carefully, shall we? If google starts removing sites left and right then Google's effectiveness as a search engine decreases in proportion. Suddenly, there is now a market for a search engine that doesn't censor like Google does. Every entrepreneur in the world would want to create the Search Engine That Beat Google(tm).
  • What toolbars and other tools do you use with Google?
    • You say that like they want you to.
      You can either sign up for their SDK and be tracked by a key and arbitrarily limited to 100 uses/day (really not much for some applications), or you can write something to try to pretend to be a browser.
      But they're activly trying to break that. You'll note anything with an LWP(popular header from a perl module) header gets a 403 forbidden. Why would a company who is based on bot use suddenly not like bots so much?
      It is of course easy as all hell to get around this, but we

  • Remember when they bought the Dejanews archive? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mfarah ( 231411 ) <`miguel' `at' `farah.cl'> on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:55AM (#6892812) Homepage
    Man, we've come a long way. Back when they bought the Dejanews Usenet archive, all comments I saw were of the "Who are these guys?"-"What do they want with our beloved archive?"-"Will they keep it public or they'll make it a paid service?"-"Is their search engine any good?" kind.

    Now we take its groups search feature for granted, we think nothing of other search engines (Yahoo!, anyone?) and we use Google to search for images (back in MY day, those were the hardest to search, having to search and download lots of stuff from ftp sites and then discard the junk).

    I love Google.
  • What are the best web sites that give information about Google?

  • Innovation keeps them up . . . (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shamitbagchi ( 641092 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:56AM (#6892823) Homepage
    When Teoma etc came in I thought Google would be in for some tough competition - but everything has blown away in front of them - a case in study for technology and services analysts for years to come.

    Their PageRank technology is something that they have leveraged on . . . [google.co.in]


    [PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

    Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query]
    Their continuing language translation initiative and innovative Google Labs keep up the momentum in their favour - searching now is heading for Google thats it, nothing else comes to mind !

    Also there have been amazingly few outages too on their side; as they add more and more pages to their cache and more services !

  • Google is still a baby (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Space Coyote ( 413320 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @10:59AM (#6892844) Homepage
    Wow, five years and it's still only been around for less than half the time I've been on the Internet. Before that we had webcrawler, which we thought was the shit. Anybody remember webcrawler's old URL? I believe it was http://webcrawler.cs.washington.edu. It was kick ass when it came out, like a version of Archie for teh web.

  • More Google ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by crumbz ( 41803 ) <[moc.liamg>maps ... uj>maps_evomer> on Sunday September 07, 2003 @11:04AM (#6892872) Homepage
    Google has added a calculator function to it's primary search page. Simply type in 4*6 or (9+13)/7 into the search box and out pops the answer. Unit conversions (i.e. "how many inches in a lightyear") are performed as well. And if that wasn't enough, simply type in "the answer to life, the universe and everything" for a calculation that takes significantly less time than seven and a half million years. A nice plug for Google's computing power being equivalent to Deep Thought of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

    • Re:More Google ... (Score:2, Informative)

      by rokzy ( 687636 )
      this is even more useful if you use Firebird browser - it has a google bar in the top right hand corner next to url bar.

      it acts as a shortcut to the 1st link of a search ("feeling lucky").

    • Re:More Google ... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 07, 2003 @11:14AM (#6892922)
      jeeze, all this censorship stuff and chilling effects of DMCA..... and now a calculator.

      I guess that makes google cold AND calculating.

    • A calculator!!

      I didn't know until I read this post!

      That is such a mind-bogglingly useful addition. I have literally a drawer full of calculators, and Scientific Workplace on my computer, and all that (I am a math professor) but when I'm writing a document and need, say, 365.25 * 21, it is always a break in my flow to open said drawer or to boot up said software. Now - type on the Google toolbar, and I'm off!

      Woo woo woo!

      Thank you, poster.

    • Re:More Google ... (Score:3, Informative)

      by WCityMike ( 579094 )
      One thing that shouldn't be ignored is that it also does conversions. For instance, the other day, I wanted to know what 19,000 liters were in gallons. I typed "19000 liters in gallons," and it promptly converted it for me.
  • Searched the web for 5.
    Results 1 - 10 of about 820,000,000. Search took 0.25 seconds.

  • Google (Score:5, Funny)

    by ReTay ( 164994 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @11:06AM (#6892882)
    A boss at work has observed that if WW III were to hit and Google survived they would probibly worship the thing. heh

  • FIVE YEARS?!? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mraymer ( 516227 ) <mraymer&centurytel,net> on Sunday September 07, 2003 @11:09AM (#6892897) Homepage Journal
    So, why hell didn't anyone tell me about Google in 1998?! God damn... back then I was using HotBot... oh the pain... the horror.

  • Just in case... (Score:5, Funny)

    by evil-osm ( 203438 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @11:21AM (#6892967)
    Here is the cache for it [google.ca]

    ;)

  • Regular Expression Searches (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jbs0902 ( 566885 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @11:22AM (#6892970)
    I've now used Google for so long that I can't remember what I used before.

    However, when is Google going to let me use full Perl-style regular expression searching?
    • you have to mine the results yourself.. googleapi makes this somewhat possible and feasible(filtering out linkfarms for example.. if you're looking for really spesific stuff), but prepare for long delays waiting for the results.

  • In the news media, I've often come across the assertion that "to google" is now common usage, but to date, the only place I've seen the usage of the mythical verb "to google" was in the dialog in William Gibson's recent novel "Pattern Recognition" -- has anyone run into this verb in real life?

  • Penguin Computing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cpopin ( 671433 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @12:18PM (#6893384) Homepage
    I watched an article on the CBS "Sunday Morning" show where they interviewed Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page while sitting at the breakfast table absorbing my first cup of coffee when noticed stackes of boxes in their office labeled "Penguin Computing" [penguincomputing.com]. That put a smile on my face!

  • Indexing count (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KoolDude ( 614134 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @12:28PM (#6893497)

    3.1 billion web pages indexed

    A search for 'the' [google.com] on Google gives 5,140,000,000 results, indicating their index is above 5 billion. The results are very interesting. Strangely, the first result is theonion.com [theonion.com], America's finest news service, indeed!

  • Google toolbar (Score:5, Informative)

    by myov ( 177946 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:16PM (#6893881)
    Their new toolbar is great (when I'm stuck on IE). Forms autofill, popup blocking, and even the ability to vote a site up or down. Hmm... site to vote down... of course, sco.com!

  • Long Life... (Score:5, Funny)

    by willll ( 635932 ) <yakgoatcamel AT myrealbox DOT com> on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:16PM (#6893882)
    Lets hope that they can live to be a googol (10^100)

  • Favorite google logos (Score:3, Interesting)

    by d0n quix0te ( 304783 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:43PM (#6894034)
    Logos Celebrating the birthdays of Piet Mondrian [google.com] and Claude Monet [google.com] and earthday [google.com]

    BTW, here the first goolge logo [google.com]. Prior to that it was called Project Backrub [google.com] back in the Stanford days.

    Looking forward to the launch of Froogle [google.com] Cool!

  • Google Toolbar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FsG ( 648587 ) on Sunday September 07, 2003 @01:58PM (#6894134)
    I've often wondered why, in all of the attempts to mimic google's toolbar, no one has ever reproduced the handy pagerank indicator; I began hacking at it, wondering if I'll be the first, only to run into a brick wall.

    Here's the request it sends; if you duplicate it with telnet or whatever, it really will spit out slashdot's pagerank:
    GET /search?client=navclient-auto&googleip=O;216.239.5 3.104;131&ch=53856195705&freshness_check=3f1eAVUrj Mj2meFfx-IZI&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&features=Rank&q=inf o:http%3A%2F%2Fslashdot%2Eorg%2F HTTP/1.1
    User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; GoogleToolbar 1.1.70-big; Windows XP 5.1)
    Host: 216.239.53.104
    Pragma: no-cache
    Connection: keep-alive

    But there's a little program, the ch= field. That's a special hash of "http://slashdot.org," and if you don't send it, it doesn't work.

    So as I continue attempting to work out the algorithm for this mysterious hash, I wonder: why has Google gone to such great lengths to make sure nobody duplicates the toolbar's pagerank indicator? Would a copy of that feature for Mozilla's google toolbar really be so awful?

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