Web Search--Google
Source: Fortune "Can Google Grow Up?"
I think this quote from the article says it best, "Google is one of the best things to happen to the Net. So will its IPO, expected this spring, be a must-buy? A look inside reveals a talented company facing trouble." Perhaps an article like this one will alert the info profession to what ResourceShelf has been saying since we started, Google is wonderful but it's not the end all to be all. In other words, don't get bogged down in all of the hype and remember that other web resources and fee-based resources remain important and useful. One service that Google has brought about is making its competition better. This article focuses on the business aspect of Google but is still a must read. The problems that this article points out might also be the reason that many of us have noticed that Google results aren't as good as they once were. All sorts of odd things happen. This simple search for returns a number one result having nothing to do with the search. I'm noticing more and more of this type of thing happening.
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Some key quotes from the article.
+ Google has grown arrogant, making some of its executives as frustrating to deal with in negotiations as AOL's cowboy salesmen during the bubble. It has grown so fast that employees and business partners are often confused about who does what. A rise of stock- and option-stoked greed is creating rifts within the company. Employees carp that Google is morphing in strange and nerve-racking ways. And talk swirls over the question of who's really in charge: CEO Schmidt or co-founders Brin and Page?
+ Brin and Page figured that more important was the relevance of a site and how many other web pages linked to it.
While Brin and Page were the first ones to use link analysis in a publicly available web engine the concept was first developed by Jon Kleinberg and the team that worked on the CLEVER project for IBM. Link analysis has its
foundation in citation analysis and the work of Eugene Garfield. Btw, all of the other major web engines use link analysis as part of their relevancy algorithms. Don't forget, it's not only link analysis that determines what you see on a results page. Many other factors are part of the algorithm. One final thought, one of the biggest challenges in using link analysis arises because some people try to beat the system. In other words, with traditional citation analysis the only way to get a citation was by someone referencing your work in their paper. For the most part it's closed system that includes peer review. However, because the "open web" is open and with many commercial interests (and others) having an all out desire to be at the top of results list link analysis can run into problems. A paper by Google's technology director and research director shed light on some of these and other problems that ALL web engines face.
+ Those close to Google say that the company has begun to more closely resemble a madhouse than any kind of serene dot-com dream. It's a tough place to work, and a tough place to do business with.
+ Brin and Page still keep a hand in all the hiring, from executives to administrative assistants. And to them, work experience counts far less than where you went to school, how you did on your SATs, and your grade-point average. "If you've been at Cisco for 20 years, they don't want you," says an employee.
+ He [Brin] points to Google News, where users can sign up to be e-mailed whenever a story appears that contains a word or phrase they're interested in.
Yes, I know Google News Alerts are still in "beta" but to this point I've been less than impressed.
Let's also not forget that while Google and other web engines have tremendous research and reference value (in the libary sense) they're not in the business of meeting all of the specific wants, needs, and desires of the information and library communities. Google is now a premiere marketing and advertising vehicle. Maximizing revenue from these services is what keeps the company (and other web engines) moving forward. This does not mean bad things for the searcher. It's just a reality to remember when using these tools. It's also points out that for many queries specialized or niche tools can be worthwhile and big timesavers. See Also: A quote from a May, 2003 Forbes article "Google will need to quell the hubris that is much in abundance at the jubilant company these days." This article also contains the following sentence, "Even Google's engineers admit Fast and Teoma deliver results comparable to theirs." See Also: Seth Finkelstein has published a new paper, "Google Bayesian Spam Filtering Problem?"
From the abstract, This report describes a possible explanation for recent changes in Google search results, where long-time high-ranking sites have disappeared. It is hypothesized that the changes are a result of the implementation of a "Bayesian spam filtering" algorithm, which is producing unintended consequences.
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