MetaFilter posts tagged with search and technology

Two Google searches use as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea

nthdegx — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:39:25 -0800

Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches - "Physicist Alex Wissner-Gross says that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea."

Google blacklists journalists for Googling?

mediareport — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 22:36:19 -0800

Google blacklists CNET reporters? An article about privacy issues that highlighted the potential for abuse if logs of search terms linked with IP addresses are combined by search companies with address and phone data, angered Google CEO Eric Schmidt enough to blacklist CNET reporters for a year, at least according to the bottom of this CNET story. The article begins with information about Schmidt found via Google searches, and goes on to "question Google's ability to adequately balance the heavy burden of safeguarding consumer privacy rights with the pull toward intermingling and mining data for ever more lucrative targeted advertising."

Yahoo's search slider interface for weeding out commercial stuff.

Tlogmer — Sun, 29 May 2005 17:48:24 -0800

Yahoo doesn't get enough credit.

Hydra

AlexReynolds — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:17:02 -0800

It's not Yahoo, it's not Google... it's Yagoohoogle! Quickly prove or disprove your favorite search engine conspiracy theories!

Pupna Fetch Engine

Metauser — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 02:40:01 -0800

Pupna is "the search engine puppy that retrieves EXACTLY what you are searching for (and absolutely nothing else!)" ;-)

This is a simple yet rather humorous search engine parody - are there any other good ones out there?

Hackers == Terrorists?

mrgrimm — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 11:00:42 -0800

Google, Yahoo, Alta Vista, others under attack? Despite all the big IPO news about Google, the bigger news today is that it doesn't work. Slap on an age-discrimination suit while we're at it, and potential trouble for the IPO. Have Larry and Sergei finally pissed off the wrong people?

I thought Grub was a bootloader?

Eloquence — Wed, 23 Apr 2003 10:32:05 -0800

Is Grub out of control? Barely more than a week old, the distributed search engine is already causing headaches. It does not properly follow the Robot Exclusion Standard and thus spiders sites against their owners' wishes. Because it is a distributed client run by thousands of volunteers (and therefore connects from many different IP addresses), it is non-trivial to block. The Wikipedia project, for example, is experiencing slowdowns because of it. Let's hope they can solve these problems, as the idea seems to be quite cool.

jakd — Sun, 04 Nov 2001 14:19:51 -0800

Dave's Quick Search Deskbar: A cool little utility to make searches on the Windows desktop easy and (POW!) fast!

fbeach — Thu, 28 Sep 2000 15:46:32 -0800

What happened to the Open Directory? Does anyone know why this site has gone down?

owillis — Mon, 31 Jul 2000 16:55:04 -0800

Do the time warp Surf with the browsers of yesteryear...

mathowie — Sun, 16 Jan 2000 13:50:37 -0800

MovieFone (or 777film.com, or AOL/Moviefone if you want to be official) has long been my favorite place to look up movie showtimes, but lately I've been running into problems. The biggest one is this: if you search for movies by theater, then hit "more" a couple times, it reaches a limit of about 12 theaters. Here in LA, that limit corresponds to a 4-5 mile radius. The theater I want to look up movie times at is maybe 7-8 miles away, but no where in the interface is a real "search." It's all just lists and lists. Eventually, I found a list of local theaters (covering about a 20 mile radius) in the theater codes section, but it's not a real search engine, so looking up times at out of town theaters requires you to know the zip code of the place you're going to. I know they're trying to simplify their site by taking out a search engine, but what about the people that know exactly what they want? I use moviefone on the web because using it on a telephone requires you to navigate convoluted menu systems, but they've transferred the phone experience to the web quite well.