[Lilug] The Elephant in the Room: Google Monoculture

[Lewis G Rosenthal]

(Bottom posted.)

On 02/10/09 11:06 am, Peter Capazzi thus wrote :
> IMHO - Google is the best one-stop shop for just about 
> everything. Page searches is one thing... I like to do price 
> comparisons with Google Shopping... Maps is great and I get a kick out 
> of using the API. I used to be big fan of searching newsgroups through 
> them, but I think web pages now turn up more relevant information.
>  
> However, if I come across one site that beats one of the facets of 
> Google I'd probably use it primarily. Like if I'm aware of a site that 
> I can do comparison shopping with that is simpler or farther reaching 
> than Google Shopping I'd use it exclusively.
>
> I don't see how... but if some site did web page searches better than 
> Google I would use both until I was sure I was getting better results. 
> I would sacrifice some ease of use... but not much.
>  
> I thought there was a woman out there (ex-Google employee?) that was 
> going to start her own search engine. Funny that if you put in Search 
> Engine as a search term the first entry from Google is Dogpile Web Search.
>
>         I personally wonder who will be the first to volunteer to stop
>         using Google.  In my experience, it's the only search engine
>         that finds exactly what I'm looking for almost every time. 
>
>     Its not about volunteering to stop using google, at least not in
>     the way you seem to be thinking. I'm not suggesting taking the GNU
>     approach of we will rewrite a perfectly good system so we can
>     control it. Something will come along that is better than google,
>     and it probably won't be a search engine like we think of them
>     today. People will "volunteer" to stop using google the way they
>     "volunteer" to use google today. Not as some sort of sacrifice,
>     but because its in their best immediate interest.
>
>     We already have plenty of websites that copy wikipedia (where
>     google often takes you) verbatim. and plenty of websites like
>     answers.com <http://answers.com> and stackoverflow that use
>     crowdsourcing in different ways. No one seems to have the magic
>     formula yet, but it will happen. Somewhere between google and
>     Stephen Baxter's scenario, will be a search engine thats different
>     from google and somehow better.
>
>   
Indeed, back in the day, I started using Alta Vista. Someone introduced 
me to Google, and the sheer lightness of the page made it attractive (I 
was on dialup with a LAN modem at the time).

The free market system works: Google just happens to do what it does 
(for me, at least) better than any other. I'm not married to Google, and 
should a better mousetrap come along, I'll gladly try it, but for now, 
it seems to be the best thing going.

Just another couple cents to throw into the mix...

-- 
Lewis
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Lewis G Rosenthal, CNA, CLP, CLE
Rosenthal & Rosenthal, LLC                www.2rosenthals.com
Need a managed Wi-Fi hotspot?                www.hautspot.com
Treasurer, Warpstock Corporation            www.warpstock.org
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