God, Google & Our Changing World…
Jun 12th, 2009 | 4 responses
Can we live without Google? asks James Harkin in The Times. A reader taunts Harkin: “Can we live without GOD? YES. Can we live without GOOGLE? Silly Question. Of course, We can, if we want.”
Harkins reminds us that eight out of ten people prefer Google, a search engine that is now worth roughly £100 billion. “In the space of a single decade, internet search has changed the way we look at the world beyond recognition. Google has become our binoculars and our window on to the net.”
But, reminds Harkins in the same breath, that the power of the website is under threat from rival search engines and firms that manipulate its results.
“At the austere end of the search business came WolframAlpha, launched last month and named after the British physicist Stephen Wolfram. It promises to be an ‘answer engine’ for researchers, returning rock-solid data in response to statistical or factual queries by scanning only authoritative databases.
“Last month Larry Page, one of the Google’s founders, admitted that his company was falling behind in the race to publish immediate and ‘real-time’ information to Twitter, the latest online social networking craze.
“And then there is “Bing”. Bing is designed to replace its MSN Live Search…and boasts intuitive new technology, which claims to stand a better chance of finding what its users really want rather than bogging them down in links.
“So can Bing, WolframApha and Twitter loosen Google’s iron hold on the search business?” Read the full article here…
4 Responses to “God, Google & Our Changing World…”
Google, a darling in particular of the childish PC-tech liberals, is overrated. It's a tool and a means to an end, that's all. We can do without their smug leftism like “Don't be evil” when they are hypocrites who at the same time fly an energy-guzzling modified airliner for their personal transportation. (I wonder if they have ever flown that out to visit Al Gore in the Gores' enormous energy-guzzling mansion, so they can all enjoy their fake-superiority illusion together. Hmmm.)
Where Google made interesting news recently was with what its chief (a darling of the left) had to say about what's in the future. It's actually nothing other than a real-world money-making opportunity, which is, for example, also at the heart of T. Boone Pickens's “benevolent” alternative-energy (and water supply delivery) project. (The money's in the water.) Google's chief had said something interesting, which was that he wanted to make Google smarter about identifying characteristics about the users, so as to replace the old-fashioned (guess-right-hopefully-and-) broadcast model for advertising with advertising that was specifically intended for individual users, based on their on-line behavior, purchases, other indications of preferences, hobbies, et cetera. This would mean the right kind of advertising, for the right kind of products, could be aimed specifically at each user. This would of course revolutionize advertising and greatly increase its effectiveness, in theory — and of course, “revolutionize” the ad-charge revenues Google could (and would) reap.
DLS you're just spittin mad today and full of piss and vinegar. Get some rest.
Google is a remarkable company that has revolutionized the internet search. Their success is not surprising. Having used just about every search engine, the ability of Google to bring relevant results to the top just crushed the competition. Too bad they got all police state on us and track everything we do, sell us out to advertisers and kowtow to repressive regimes like China. They'd be wise to rethink those things, which are enabling their competitors.
“Manipulating their results” is one way to put it, but there's a business in giving Google-style search capabilities without the big brother aspects. This has spawned several “Google scrapers” that use Google for searching, but protect searchers from Google-eye. My favorite is Scroogle at http://www.scroogle.org
“DLS you're just spittin mad today and full of piss and vinegar. Get some rest.”
I'm only annoyed at the idiocy I encounter in a all-too-frequently-ever-more-dumbed-down society, when I stop to think about the ways in which it can be, and is, so often dumbed-down.
The “revolution in advertising” is simple and logical (though it adds another concern you may have about Big Brother; after all, knowing what you buy, implying _learning_ what you buy, is one item the chief mentioned specifically), and I wonder what kind of progress he and they (at Google) will make on this.
“Too bad they got all police state on us and track everything we do, sell us out to advertisers and kowtow to repressive regimes like China.”
Their silly leftism was also accompanied by this and other hypocrisies — it's annoying _and_ laughable.
DLS……get a life will you?
The Big G is the best. Period. And they will get bigger and better and will make moe a more money.
That`s why I invest with them.