Web Search--Google
Source: Wired Google vs. Evil
We haven't seen too much of this before. From the article, "Google has succeeded by adhering to one, pure principle: Do good by users. Now, for the first time in its history, Google is facing rifts between what's good for users and what's good for Google. And Sergey Brin is finding that purity just doesn't scale." More importantly this is the first major news article in quite some time that has very positive things to say about ANOTHER search engine, in this case, AllTheWeb. Reader's of this site will know how impressed we've been with AtW for the past year or so. As regularly said in this space, it's important for info pros and web researchers to be aware of a variety of resources, tools, and products. It's seems to me that over the past one to two years many people have (particularly end users) have started to rely on a single resource for everything. Re: Google. Google is a wonderful and important tool. It's also home to many innovative examples of search technology (e.g. Google Catalogs, Froogle) and some very smart and helpful people. Only time will tell what will become of Google. Evil? I think not. Regardless, Google has done/is doing MASSIVE amounts to move all web search forward. It's also a case study on how to succesfully market a new product and take it from a viral marketing phenom into a product and verb that has for many people become a synonym for web search. I also think Google has done much to illustrate to the info profession that how we market our products, services, and skills needs improvement. The question is, are we listening?
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