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There are a fair number of reputable people making a lot of noise right now about the fact that the Google search engine is broken. The main complaint is that Google’s search results are “poisoned by spam”. Here are several examples of the complaints: Dishwashers, and How Google Eats Its Own Tail Google has become [...]
Blekko – a new search engine that hopes to take on Google
by Marshall Brain | November 1, 2010
People try creating new search engines every day. But it’s been awhile since one of them got much attention. Blekko is a new search engine that seems to be exciting people. Here’s a quick review filmed this summer during the early beta: A more in-depth piece. According to the CEO, 21 people are working on [...]
Back in 2008, a new search engine called Cuil launched. Some of the people involved in Cuil were former Google employees. The idea behind the search engine was simple, yet grandiose: It would dominate the search engine market by serving up the most relevant Web pages for any given query. As it turns out, this is easier said than done.
It’s pretty clear that Google doesn’t subscribe to the philosophy of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The company is currently working on a massive, yet subtle, overhaul of its search engine technology. The code name for the project is Google Caffeine, and you can start using a preview version of it right now.
If you click that link, you’ll see a search engine page that looks amazingly similar to the current Google page. In fact, it will look identical apart from the URL. That’s because the Google Caffeine project isn’t about updating Google’s user interface. Instead, the company is trying out new ways to index Web sites and organize them for searches.
Google developer Matt Cutts blogged about the project on Monday. Cutts explains that casual users won’t really notice a difference in their search results and even power users may find differences to be hard to spot. Cutts points out that search results will change but it may take an eagle eye to notice it.
Last week I posted about a potential deal between Microsoft and Yahoo. Today, that partnership has become an official arrangement. Microsoft has posted a press release about the deal.
Under this arrangement, Microsoft will power Yahoo searches using its Bing search engine. In return, Microsoft will be allowed to incorporate Yahoo search technologies into its own technologies. Yahoo brings its expertise in search ad revenue to the table. These pieces will come together and allow the companies to compete against the big dog in the search engine game: Google.
This is a smart deal for both companies. Yahoo’s search technology has lagged behind Google for a while now. Microsoft’s Bing search engine is a genuinely useful and innovative tool. But Yahoo has become more than a search engine. It also acts as a portal, hosting links to trendy news stories or articles as well as other tools. And the recent redesign of Yahoo’s homepage allows users to customize their experience.
Here we go again. It seems that executives from Microsoft and Yahoo are trying to work out a partnership deal. You may be feeling a sense of deja vu right about now — that’s to be expected. The two companies were said to be in serious talks last year before Jerry Yang (who was then CEO of Yahoo) decided that Microsoft’s offer of $33 per share of Yahoo stock wasn’t good enough. At the time, Yahoo stock sold for around $14 a share. Yang’s refusal to play ball angered investors and board members. A few months later, Yang stepped down as CEO. The barrage of criticism from investors may have played a role in his decision.
Microsoft executives decided they didn’t want to pay more than their offer, and so the deal faded away. But for several months the technology industry watched as Yahoo and Microsoft seemed to pull a Ross-and-Rachel routine — will these two lovebirds work out their differences and get together? At the time, it appeared the answer to this question was “no.” In November 2008, Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, told investors he had lost interest in the deal.
And yet, here we are with another story about Microsoft and Yahoo looking at a partnership. Michael Liedtke, a technology writer for AP, reports that the two companies may enter into a search advertising partnership.
Wanna get paid for answering questions? Join Mahalo and start typing.
Peter Kafka wrote a post about it the All Things Digital blog yesterday, in which he explained how Jason Calacanis’s search site is changing. Unlike most search engines, Mahalo provides search results compiled by people, rather than from computer algorithms. Until now, Mahalo employees and other people online working as volunteers have been writing up search results pages. Now, however, Mahalo will let civilians take responsibility for results pages and split whatever money the page makes through advertising.
As Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch points out, you can go to Mahalo and claim pages for yourself. But don’t expect to get paid just like a regular employee — you’ll be paid in Mahalo Bucks, which can be traded in for American dollars, or you can spend your Mahalo Bucks on the site later. The exchange rate for American currency is 75 cents to the dollar.
Tech news is always a little slow coming off a holiday, but I saw something that caught my eye late last week that I just didn’t have time to write about until today. Microsoft’s next-generation search tool, Kumo, may be unveiled at the D: All Things Digital conference this week, as CNET’s Ina Fried said in an article on CNN.com last Thursday. It was hyped a while back because it’s supposed to be totally revamped. For instance, you can search on a topic and break down the results by category. It’s a neat idea (or I think it is, I’d like to see it in action. It sounds useful).
But Yahoo and Google are already incorporating some of the ideas from Kumo into their own search engine – and they’ve already shown their hands to the public, so any hope Microsoft might’ve had in making a splash with their new search engine may be over.
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