Web Search–Google
Source: San Jose Mercury News
Google chief coy on IPO rumors
From the article, “Search engine Google’s Chief Executive Eric Schmidt shook his head in wonderment. Almost like clockwork, he noted, the U.S. economy always expands rapidly when headed into a presidential election year. Schmidt was responding to the buzz circling Silicon Valley about an imminent return to strong economic growth — and what it means for Google and other start-ups. Schmidt, wearing his habitual quirky grin, declined to say what it meant for Google’s allegedly pending initial public offering. The IPO is widely expected to take place next year, and guesstimates have the value of the company at more than $15 billion.”
See Also: Is Google good for you? (via BBC News)
BBC Commentator Bill Thompson writes, “In my opinion, Google today is far from the great search engine it was in those far-off days, yet I still use it. Even knowing that it indexes only a small proportion of the web using a technique that too often gives precedence to pages that lack authority or coherence, that it is skewed by multiple blog links and can be manipulated by unscrupulous advertisers, doesn’t stop me typing search terms into my toolbar and feasting on the results. What’s worse, I’ve let both of my children believe that ’search the web’ and ‘Google’ are roughly synonymous, even though I teach my journalism students at City University that they should never rely on a single source, online or off. How has it come to this? Perhaps it is simply that Google has become the Coke of the web. Sweet, available everywhere, and the first choice of the consumer. Well part of the reason, obviously, is that I’m as lazy as most other web users, and having found something that sort of works, at a URL that I can easily remember, I stick with it.” I agree with just about everything Mr. Thompson has to say in the column about except his point that Google needs to be regulated by the government. If you don’t like Google, it doesn’t work for you, or you want to see what else is available, plenty of other good general web engines and many wonderful specialized database resources exist. Also, taking a little time time to learn how to fully exploit a few key resources (including Google) can make your online research much more productive. Of course, it’s also important to remember that it’s not all on the open web. Bottom Line? A little education goes a long way.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2003 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.