Two weeks ago, Google disabled the + operator for searches, requiring quotation marks to force inclusion of a word.
Today, Google Plus rolled out a new feature -
Pages for companies and brands, so you can "build relationships with all the things you care about".
Included is Direct Connect - go straight to Pepsi's Google+ page by searching for +Pepsi.
posted by dragoon
on Nov 7, 2011 -
205 comments
Google set up a sting operation to prove that rival Microsoft search engine Bing is cheating, using Internet Explorer to track users' Google search results and mining that data to improve Bing.
Here's the proof.
posted by 2bucksplus
on Feb 1, 2011 -
166 comments
Google's sheer size and power is staggering - and of course a little disconcerting. But ultimately are they ensuring the internet remains open and user friendly? CBC Radio had a great piece on the
Algorithm That Changed World on how Google has helped keep the internet useful and spammers at bay. As a user, I have not found any other search engine that come close in giving me useful results. Intelligent Life's take on
Apple vs Google, shows how this open system vs closed system philosophical differences plays itself out with product strategy. Of course, Google's user-centric world can suck if you have ever written a
book.
posted by helmutdog
on Dec 28, 2010 -
106 comments
Google has released an experimental search tool,
Google Squared, that presents search results in the form of a table. Each column represents some attribute or dimension of the things returned - for example, searching for
US presidents yields a column for date of birth, and rows for Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, etc.
[more inside]
posted by Zarkonnen
on Jun 5, 2009 -
70 comments
Cuil is a new search engine developed by former Google employees, and claims to index 3x more pages than Google.
CNN Money story has the basics. My attempts were met with timeouts.
[more inside]
posted by Ynoxas
on Jul 28, 2008 -
189 comments
According to ComScore, Google takes 59.8% of search traffic in the US, leaving Yahoo, MSN and smaller players to fight for the scraps.
Pretty pie-chart here. Slightly different numbers are available from
Compete and
Hitwise, but Google still rules the roost.
posted by SharQ
on Apr 17, 2008 -
25 comments
Google Checkout is officially unveiled today; the latest service to join the Google
arsenal in their race to control the entire www. It has been suggested
in the news that the Google payment service was also a big factor in the recent Yahoo and eBay partnership, since eBay's Paypal service might finally have some real competition. More info on the service
here.
posted by p3t3
on Jun 29, 2006 -
32 comments
Google Images Censored in China A picture says 1000 words, and Google.cn is censoring them all. Check out the side-by-side screens of a search for "tiananmen+square" in Google.com and Google.cn images. Looks like a nice place, with little historical significance. You can try the search
yourself. The text on the bottom left is the censorship disclaimer. Very different than our
results. A far cry from Google's
claim that they do not censor results. Nice to know that they stand up to the government here but not abroad.
A good
spoof of the whole thing.
posted by FeldBum
on Jan 30, 2006 -
57 comments
Mining the Deep Web. Google indexes 4 billion pages, but there are hundreds of billions of documents out there in
the Deep Web that are effectively unreachable by search engines because they are locked in databases or are unsearchable media. It looks like Yahoo is going to start giving us a peek by providing unified access to a wide variety of sites that are ordinarily only searchable by their own custom search engines.
posted by badstone
on Mar 2, 2004 -
12 comments
Who gives, who gets... and surprise, Google is on top. I always figured that the search engines had a symbiotic relationship, but playing with this
Search Engine Decoder to actually
see it is far more entertaining. And, I'd never heard of
Overture, but it seems like all the big boys pay them for content. The Decoder is hosted by
Search This, which "[provides] search engine optimization and web marketing strategies for the everyday web designer." I guess that's a few of us...
posted by pineapple
on Nov 16, 2003 -
12 comments
Grub: The seti@home of search engines? According to the
New Scientist:
"A distributed computing project called
Grub, which harnesses individual users' spare computing power and internet bandwidth, began cataloguing millions of web pages this week."
Grub
has thus launched before
HyperBee, a similar distributed search project.
This link was
previously posted on MeFi when it was still in the conceptual stage.
The project is being run by
LookSmart (along with its own open directory project called
zeal) but as the New Scientist article notes: "Website information collected by Grub is already being fed into one of LookSmart's search services, called
WiseNut. But the collected data are also freely accessible to the public, so they can be incorporated into any web site or desktop application."
Possible Google competition or doomed from the start?
posted by talos
on Apr 21, 2003 -
10 comments
A warning shot in the dark: For connoisseurs of clever turns of phrase: The phrase "a warning shot in the dark" popped out at me from a Google News preview panel as being a mixed metaphor. Indeed, a
Google search reveals that the phrase has
never before been used on the entire Web, which is rather amazing. Delving into the story, it appears by paragraph three that the mixed metaphors are appropriate, in this case.
posted by beagle
on Nov 27, 2002 -
35 comments
Is Google's use of cookies unnecessarily invasive? Daniel Brandt, described by Salon yesterday as
Mr. Anti-Google, says Google "has inadequate justification for planting a cookie that expires in 2038 on every user, and also recording that user's search terms, IP number, and time-date." Brandt is the man behind the
NameBase conspiracy database (previously discussed
here), and also uncovered the
CIA's illegal use of cookies last March. He insists that Google's use of cookies, combined with the Patriot Act, allows U.S. authorities to "do a 'sneak and peek' search of a Google user's hard drive when he isn't home, retrieve a Google cookie id, and then get a keyword search history" specific to the user's computer. Oh yeah, he also thinks
PageRank is undemocratic.
posted by mediareport
on Aug 30, 2002 -
39 comments
Google makes another killer app? Rackmounted servers devoted to googling your own intranet or website. Just look at those
specs and features. Google is selling 1 server, retail $28,000, and they are marketing especially for corporate intranets. But imagine the power that would be at the fingertips of archivists, students, and researchers everywhere with a dedicated,
customized Google for their own website. Imagine being able to do a detailed search that would literally comb the
content of every page published by
Project Gutenberg. In seconds, you could call upon thousands of years of writing for any and all information on any specific subject. What kind of implications will this technology have long-term for students, researchers, and archivists?
posted by insomnyuk
on Aug 21, 2002 -
21 comments
Google Catalog Search uses Google technology to search thousands of scanned mail-order catalogs, from industrial adhesives to designer clothing and gourmet food.
posted by danec
on Dec 14, 2001 -
33 comments
For Sale. Pre-owned Search Engine $250,000,000 o.n.o
Google is hinting at an end of year IPO for a measley $250 million. Is this the beginning of the end of the dot-com crash?.
Via The Register.
posted by fullerine
on Jun 25, 2001 -
22 comments
Has Google finally sold out? You may have already seen this via
Robot Wisdom - evidence that Google has monkeyed with their search engine to give preference to partner Yahoo!'s pages.
I guess it had to happen sooner or later, but I'm sad. Anyone know of a better search engine on the horizon that still has integrity?
posted by straight
on Sep 13, 2000 -
8 comments
Google appears to be
telling a story with their logo. Is this a fun and creative way to "extend their brand" (as the marcom kids like to say) or do they need to stop letting their engineers handle their logo design?
posted by jkottke
on May 2, 2000 -
22 comments
