[Lilug] The Elephant in the Room: Google Monoculture

[M Spizzirri]

Hello all;

If you like the relevance and efficiency of google, but not their questionable tracking and privacy issues, you can use http://www.scroogle.org/ .

--Mark



----- Original Message ----
From: Lewis G Rosenthal <lgrosenthal at 2rosenthals.com>
To: LILUG Mailing List <lilug at lilug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 11:42:24 AM
Subject: Re: [Lilug] The Elephant in the Room: Google Monoculture

(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
-------------------------------------------------------------
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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