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  Google surpasses Microsoft as world's most-visited site
Time: 00:16 EST/05:16 GMT | News Source: *Linked Within Post* | Posted By: Kenneth van Surksum

The Mountain View search engine has outstripped Microsoft on two fronts, becoming both the most visited Web site and the most valuable global brand.

The events are major milestones for Google, which has grown into a business juggernaut. Torrid growth and outsized profits have quickly propelled the company past many established blue clip giants while generating a host of complaints that it has become too powerful.

"These are really significant events," said Geoffrey Bowker, executive director of the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Santa Clara University. "At the moment, everything that Google is touching turns to gold."

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#1 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at Thursday, April 26, 2007 07:06:24 PM
Shucks, Google is the new Microsoft.

#2 By 23275 (24.179.4.158) at Thursday, April 26, 2007 09:49:57 PM
Google is a bubble in and of itself. It has the potential to do as much harm to the tech sector as the Internet bubble of 1999/2000.
Before I get into it, let me say that I don't like Google and I stay away from them. I personally do not trust them.

I've worked around organizations with enormous power and access to information and an almost infinite ability to process it and correlate every Bit contextually - power so awesome, that it should have caused fear. It didn't. All that power was moderated and tempered by the strongest sense of right and wrong I have ever seen - parallel to an implicit set of rules and behaviors designed to error on the side of respect for individual privacy and the rule of law. I don't have the same sense about Google and I don't think their interests are consistent with my own. Subjective? You bet, but this is just an opinion.

I don't know much about Google - except that they don't ask - they don't ask for permission to use my or any other person's IP. The crawl it, aggregate it and sell it for huge profits they do not automatically share with the owners of that content.

I suspect that specialization of information into focused silos is going to be their undoing. Context is very important and when one considers that the opportunities in and frankly the need for specialization, is growing - it is likely to canalize how different types of information is stored, searched and accessed. Simply, powerful organizations are going to catch on and wish to benefit from "their" content - every medical discipline has very powerful lobbies and a keen interest in preserving the integrity of the information produced by their members. That's just one example. Every form of engineering is similar.

I think the Internet is in transition - where it will evolve and become more like a library where specialization will be key - not all technologies apply equally well in identical ways across all forms of information and the Internet is no different.

The desktop and the server will be more important than ever in what will emerge as a more effective Internet - it will still expand, but there will be more structure and more focus with specific tools and means of leveraging that information.

To share what I mean, I look back on a time when machine processing became widely available in government information gathering. It was a mess. Decision makers were inundated with data - some of it looked great, but it was all too much. Worse, despite an enormous amount of collection, too few people had access to information that was already available and re-tasking for yet more collection was common. It was so wasteful.

I was fortunate to have had a hand in reversing that and devised a means that was agnostic as to system, or network type and built solutions that produced information as products - most simply, information that one could use to make a decision. The Internet itself has to evolve in perhaps similar ways - where as Microsoft says, it is about finding and not searching.

Well, they're right, but it is more about what one finds and how it affects things that matters even more. Probably most of us that read and write things share a similar opportunity - the people that come to us, hire us and trust us are not looking for a menu of options - they are not looking for a waiter, and a cook [using an analogy I have used before], they are looking for answers and solutions - they need a chef that is also a nutritionist. The Internet will evolve exactly like this - all other professions have and so will ours. Search will consist of specialized, focused tools for interacting with information by discipline. In that world, Google has less of a role.

#3 By 12071 (203.120.110.98) at Friday, April 27, 2007 05:36:16 AM
#2 Never fear, your IP (i.e. "imaginary property") is safely being "crawled, aggregated and sold [sic]" by Microsoft, Yahoo and countless others. But all those companies doing it is just fine, just as long as it's not Google right? So you stay away from all the search engines then I gather, unless of course you're a hypocrite and you're just here to spread FUD about Microsoft's competitors (the few they have left that haven't been eliminated or bought out). And then don't forget about all the really nasty guys out there who REALLY want your information who don't care in the slightest if you have a robots.txt file or not! I mean... you better switch off the internet right now... otherwise they'll have it, they'll have it all, all of your imaginary property!

#4 By 28801 (65.90.202.10) at Friday, April 27, 2007 07:01:32 AM
#2: Google is the worst search engine out there except for all of the others.
Maybe it's what I am accustomed to, but for me, Google brings back the most relevant results the fastest. I’ve tried Yahoo, Live, A9, About, and others but I still come back to Google. I agree with you, I don’t entirely trust them, but sometimes you have to deal with the devil to get what you want.
If in fact this specialty of searching/finding does come about, what makes you thing Google won’t adapt? They have proved remarkably nimble for such a large company.

#5 By 32132 (142.32.208.234) at Friday, April 27, 2007 12:48:11 PM
#3 Do you actually believe anything you spew to justify your hatred?

#6 By 12071 (203.206.255.125) at Sunday, April 29, 2007 05:39:32 AM
#5 No hatred at all Parkkker. I'm quite honestly just fed up with all the bullshit that gets thrown around, especially as of late, regarding "IP" to the point where the majority of "IP" is exactly what I described... imaginary property. Perhaps we have different definitions but things like one-click and numerous other things should be classified as IP. Then to top it off we have people like lketchum whinging about just 1 of the many search engines that grabs data off his site, data which he calls his "IP" - prior to this year, that data used to be referred to by copyright, but now it seems that the word of the day is IP and people love to abuse it in the same way Microsoft has abused the word "innovation".

So, read the comments above once again. I have no hatred for anyone, not like the person who wrote an essay on his hatred of Google!

Do you have anything valuable to add to this thread or are you all out of your hatred towards everything non-Microsoft?



 

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