5 replies to this topic

[Ruud]

Interesting video (2'46) by Austrlia's ABC TV program "The Hungry Beast"

See the video

For the record, I don't think Google has plans to dominate the world, take over world leadership etc. They're a huge company making lots of money and they plan/hope to keep it that way.

Google is Microsoft, in other words. And I'm fine with that. I didn't like Microsoft's unfair competition crushing tactics and I don't like Google's ways of removing competition either.

I live with Microsoft because I find it a really nice operating system to work with with tons and tons of things to do and find for it. I like WIndows Live Writer, Office, Messenger...

In the same way I live with Google. Years later still nothing can come close to the smooth, smart presentation and interaction with email the way Gmail does. I use it all the time. Docs? Nuhuh... Street view? Awesome! I can be home away from home!

Search was starting to bug me, the way they were cluttering their SERP's. But you know what? No need to pretend Google's the only option: that was true 10 years ago, not today. I use Bing all the time -- you might prefer Yahoo. You'll soon notice how whichever it is, the main results are always more than sufficient ("good enough") while the stuff you have to dig for... is stuff you would have to dig for elsewhere anyway.

[Brad]

I hate that with Yahoo teetering it is all coming down to a choice between Google and Microsoft for search and portal type services. I liked having a few more choices for services like email, search, news etc.

No matter how good Bing and Google are, I think it is dangerous to only have two large, comprehensive indexes of the web. I hope Bing can expand and grow because the current monopoly Google has is not healthy - it doesn't matter that it's Google - monopolies are not healthy.

With that said, maybe Yahoo's quitting the field will make some room for new search players.

[Ruud]

I don't know if it's that bad. When I think back to pre-Google I was using HotBot. AltaVista was already on the way out. Yahoo .. not really a player. AllTheWeb/FAST (see Fravia's site)was good and could have become what Google is now.

Maybe 2-3 is all that it takes or all there's place for.

[jackbency]

This is very nice video but I don't believe that Google is a hungry beast . I believe that they want to harvest the world's information and return it to us in a useful form. It shows us how broad Google's ambition is and a few of the areas they're getting into areas the average person would never consider them of getting into to.

[bwelford]

I think many of us forget just how staggering is the structure Google has put together. It may have more than 2% of all the servers in the world and the number is certainly over a million. That's an immense amount of computing power and an immense store of data.

However yesterday I was searching for a local individual who was unknown to me. As I typed in his name, suddenly Google suggest offered 'Joe Doe Vancouver' and 'Joe Doe Consultant'. Either search would have produced web pages relevant to the individual I was interested in. I found that mind-blowing.

By coicidence I blogged about the sheer size of Google and the problems that creates only today.

[Brad]

Right now, under the current management of Google, I'm not so concerned about what Google will do with the info. (They will try to sell me stuff.) What worried me is what governments and potential bad actors might do with Google's data. Think about what Sen. Joe McCarthy would have done with all of Google's data. Even well meaning, democratic governments can abuse their power.

At some point, somebody more powerful than Google will move to seize their data, by legal or extra-legal means. It will happen.