Webword Statistics - Recent Comments

last updated:16 Aug 2002 13: 32 Webword time, or 16 Aug 2002 18:32 UK time

Webword Statistics - Recent Comments
(Comments added for week ending Sun 10 Feb 2002) | View Other Weeks

It seems that everyone loves Google. I love Google and I bet that you love Google. Here is the problem. Im afraid that Google is going to screw up. Im afraid that they will go away or that they will do something terrible. Are they secretly grabbing information from my hard drive in an attempt to gather information on everything? The issue is that we all have very high expectations of Google. We use it because it is fast, simple, and fun to use. But will they become evil over time? I realize that they are user focused and user driven today, but what about the future? And yes, everyone loves the Google toolbar right now, but are they collecting too much information about us all? What do you think about Google? Will they continue to be the best search engine? Do you think they are going to screw up? How much do you trust Google as a company?

Wed 06 Feb 06:39 | Eric van der Linden | Most comments so far are not on your original posting, and that is a pity. Perhaps you could summarize this forum at the top of this page, with links to the corresponding contributions. Thus distinguising between the main subject and sidelines in the discussion. Triggered by your Newsletter #65 I went for a look and I was a bit disappointed by the lots of messages that were not of relevance to your original question. People start reacting to postings, and not to the original posting, and of course, this is what they should not stop doing and which should never be prevented. But the consequence is that a lot of interesting information remains buried inside and will never be found by outsiders, UNLESS something like Google uncovers them. Google is a business, which also whishes to go public, as far as I know. That means that, no doubt, they will over the years change and that they shall commercialize as much as possible their products. But what is against that? When they forsake their 'duty' to serve our searching needs, no doubt another initiative will come to the surface. When I started searching the internet, I used mainly AltaVista, and we know what has become of them! I think that the research people of Google are very smart by incorporating the newsgroups in their main navigation. Newsgroups play an important role in 'self help', whether that is for technical, therapeutical, medical or general questions. There lies a whole new service for the main stream users, when made useful for others than 'nerds' or 'creeps' (thinking of some adult content groups). We all know that help desks of many companies are very much open for improvement. Hence I am envisioning Google coming in, with a fully automated help desk and FAQ serving (surfing) facility. No doubt Google, or some of its (future?)competitors, will come up with an automated solution to filter useful from less useful postings and navigate through all of the chains following a posting. Yes, there are some childish aspects in the lay-out of Google, but unless these aspects, Google is by now the most used search engine in my home country, the Netherlands. Think of that! No advertising ever done that I know of and yet millions of visits! BTW, as long as Jacob Nielsen is a member of Google's Technical Advisory Council, I don't feel worried about there future. Keep a close watch on who their execs are(http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html), is my advice.

Wed 06 Feb 11:38 | Laurie Gray | Back to Google, I find their catalog search feature to be helpful. I have to wonder how they came up with the idea - did they ask their users, or did they create it internally? Also, the image search has been useful as well. Did we ever have any success in getting someone from Google in to visit us? Laurie

Thu 07 Feb 09:02 | René | They're already beginning to screw up: Now that Google returns ads, they try to double their clicks on these - so although they tell you it's an ad (different background color), they handle these links different in another way. Instead of being a regular link (as the other non-ad results are), these have the onClick event opening the respective location. So if you're trying to open an ad link in a new window (cause you're a multi-window type-of-person, right?), you'll end up with the same page in both the new and the original results window. That's because when the click occurs, the browser opens the link in the new window (as you told it to), and the script attached to the link's onClick event opens it in the current window. Sorry, but that is a nuisance, I would have never expected such crap from Google. For now, I can live with it, I'm just not clicking on ads anymore (not that I fell for any of those before that much, but still..) So let's all sit back and watch Google go down the drain, the evil already lurks 'in site'...

Thu 07 Feb 09:24 | René | They're already beginning to screw up: Now that Google returns ads, they try to double their clicks on these - so although they tell you it's an ad (different background color), they handle these links different in another way. Instead of being a regular link (as the other non-ad results are), these have the onClick event opening the respective location. So if you're trying to open an ad link in a new window (cause you're a multi-window type-of-person, right?), you'll end up with the same page in both the new and the original results window. That's because when the click occurs, the browser opens the link in the new window (as you told it to), and the script attached to the link's onClick event opens it in the current window. Sorry, but that is a nuisance, I would have never expected such crap from Google. For now, I can live with it, I'm just not clicking on ads anymore (not that I fell for any of those before that much, but still..) So let's all sit back and watch Google go down the drain, the evil already lurks 'in site'...