OpenIDLearn to search!
Slate: Digging for Googleholes:
Type in the make and model of a new DVD player, and you’ll get dozens of online electronic stores in the top results, all of them eager to sell you the item. But you have to burrow through the results to find an impartial product review that doesn’t appear in an online catalog.
sony DVP-S550D—shopping sites come out top
sony DVP-S550D review—review sites come out top
Search for “apple” on Google, and you have to troll through a couple pages of results before you get anything not directly related to Apple Computer—and it’s a page promoting a public TV show called Newton’s Apple. After that it’s all Mac-related links until Fiona Apple’s home page. You have to sift through 50 results before you reach a link that deals with apples that grow on trees: the home page for the Washington State Apple Growers Association.
apple—lots of stuff about Apple computers
apple fruit—lots of stuff about Apples, the fruit
These are not even advanced search techniques. It’s a basic rule of searching: if your first set of results aren’t what you are looking for, enter more specific terms and try again.
So, when you’re doing research online, Google is implicitly pushing you toward information stored in articles and away from information stored in books. Assuming this practice continues, and assuming that Google continues to grow in influence, we may find ourselves in a world where, if you want to get an idea into circulation, you’re better off publishing a PDF file on the Web than landing a book deal.
I’d say that day has already come (but replace PDF with HTML), but I’m not sure I understand how this is a bad thing. Surely information is more valuable if it is searchable? Books are not going to die out because of the internet (how many people prefer reading from a screen?) but if you have an idea to share the internet is obviously a better medium—you reach millions more people for a fraction of the cost of traditional publishing.
There are a lot of legitimate concerns about Google relating to its size and massive influence over the web’s traffic, but concerns about skewed results are often the fault of the user rather than the tool. Learn to search!
You don't even need "apple fruit" - "apples" is enough. The issue isn't learn to search, it's "don't come up with examples that give skewed results" ;)
anode - 24th July 2003 16:34 - #
So far all I can see is a user registration system and a complicated method of validating - please tell me how this is any better than a login - and instant auth if you save cookies etc.
So, I admit, if there was a central auth system it would work well, but at the moment this is doing nothing than complicating an already tried and tested method of 'signing'
Smiler - 24th July 2003 16:42 - #
Paul Scrivens - 24th July 2003 20:45 - #
Yes I saw this article at the start of the week (although on MSNBC) and thought exactly the same as you. The first two criticisms of Google are actually the same point - put a vague search term in and you get broad results. Shock horror - Google isn't psychic. If you were doing research on tulips you don't just search for "flowers". It's not rocket science.
Tim Fountain - 24th July 2003 22:22 - #
Simon - 25th July 2003 09:27 - #
I agree that google rocks, and all that jazz.
However, I think the point to be made was more subtle. That is, things that show up well in Google are things that are popular. I will have trouble finding something esoteric, especially if there is not a good combination of search terms.
Google is hugely good, but it's not "god-like". I will have significant trouble finding something that's an unpopular subject, and not just because it's unpopular, but because that unpopularity is reinforced by the PageRank system. This contributes to the power-law distribution that meritocratic bloggers lamented recently.
I do agree that MSNBC running this piece is a little underhanded WRT M$'s positioning against Google. Embracing and extending the media, I'd say.
Jeremy Dunck - 26th July 2003 17:07 - #