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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>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. I often wind up using something like
Live Search first because it’s the default in my browser, but too often I find
the first page of results is either mostly spam, or completely unrelated to
what I’m looking for. As long as Google is one of the few engines that is as
up-to-date with search results and reliably finds what I’m looking for, I feel
it will in my book always remain my first choice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>I’m not saying a better search tool will never come along, but
for today there are few truly good generic alternatives.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>Rob<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> lilug-bounces@lilug.org
[mailto:lilug-bounces@lilug.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Justin Dearing<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, February 09, 2009 5:21 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> LILUG Mailing List<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Lilug] The Elephant in the Room: Google Monoculture<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
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<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'>Some interesting points.
Although, I think eventually google will collapse under its own weight like
most monopolies do if left to their own devices. Rome fell to the barbarians.
Ironically, the barbarians eventually called themselves the Holy Roman empire
even though they were neither very Roman nor very Holy. <br>
<br>
Eventually google will fat and lazy that we will all run a completely
decentralized search engine running through freenet on virtualbox instances of
the hurd or something else no one else could have predicted.<o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='background:#C3D9FF'> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='background:#C3D9FF'> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<h3 style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:2.25pt;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:2.25pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:#C3D9FF'><span
style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Sent to you by Justin Dearing via
Google Reader:<o:p></o:p></span></h3>
</div>
<div style='margin-left:.75pt;margin-right:.75pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:#C3D9FF'> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<div style='margin-left:1.5pt;margin-right:1.5pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:#C3D9FF'> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<h2 style='mso-margin-top-alt:3.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><a
href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001224.html">The Elephant in
the Room: Google Monoculture</a><o:p></o:p></span></h2>
</div>
<div style='margin-bottom:6.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>via <a
href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/">Coding Horror</a> by Jeff Atwood on 2/9/09<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>I was browsing the sessions
at an upcoming <a href="http://en.oreilly.com/found">Search Conference</a>,
which describes itself thusly: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The way to
online success is through being easily found in search engines such as Google,
Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search. While developers have historically thought
of search as a marketing activity, technical architecture has now become
critical for search success. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Anyone else see the <b>elephant
in the room</b>, there? No? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";border:solid windowtext 1.0pt;
padding:0in'><img border=0 width=646 height=404 id="_x0000_i1025"
src="cid:image001.jpg@01C98B61.B79147D0"
alt="Image removed by sender. Banksy: elephant in room"></span><span
style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Just two weeks after we
launched Stack Overflow, I mentioned that <a
href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001174.html">search engines
already made up 50% of our traffic</a>. Well, not so much search engine<b><u>s</u></b>
as search engin<b><u>e</u></b>: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>I try to be
politically correct in discussing web search, avoiding the g-word whenever
possible, desperately attempting to preserve the illusion that web search is
actually a competitive market. But it's becoming a transparent and cruel joke
at this point. <b>When we say "web search" we mean one thing, and one
thing only: Google</b>. <a
href="http://www.skrenta.com/2006/12/googles_true_search_market_sha.html">Rich
Skrenta explains</a>: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>I'm not a
professional analyst, and my approach here is pretty back-of-the-napkin. Still,
it confirms what those of us in the search industry have known for a long time.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>The New York Times, for
instance, gets nearly 6 times as much traffic from Google as it does from
Yahoo. Tripadvisor gets 8 times as much traffic from Google vs. Yahoo. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Even Yahoo's own sites are no
different. While it receives a greater fraction of Yahoo search traffic than
average, Yahoo's own flickr service gets 2.4 times as much traffic from Google
as it does from Yahoo. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>My favorite example:
According to Hitwise, [ex] Yahoo blogger Jeremy Zawodny gets 92% of his inbound
search traffic from Google, and only 2.7% from Yahoo. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>That was written almost two
years ago. Guess which way those numbers have gone since then? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Now that <a
href="http://stackoverflow.com/">Stack Overflow</a> has been chugging right
along for almost six months, allow me to share the last month of our own data. <b>Currently,
83% of our total traffic is from search engines</b>, or rather, one <i>particular</i>
search engine: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<table class=MsoNormalTable border=0 cellspacing=4 cellpadding=0 width=300
style='width:225.0pt'>
<tr>
<td style='border:none;border-bottom:dotted black 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>Search Engine<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='border:none;border-bottom:dotted black 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>Visits<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>Google<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>3,417,919<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>Yahoo<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>9,779<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>Live<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>5,638<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>Search<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>2,961<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>AOL<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>1,274<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>Ask<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>1,186<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>MSN<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>1,177<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>Altavista<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>202<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>Yandex<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>191<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal>Seznam<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style='padding:3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt 3.0pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right'>103<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Those 6x and 8x numbers that
Rich quoted two years ago seem awfully quaint now. Google delivers <b>350x</b>
the traffic to Stack Overflow that the next best so-called "search
engine" does. <i>Three hundred and fifty times!</i> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Now, I don't claim that Stack
Overflow is representative of every site on the internet -- obviously it isn't.
It's a site for programmers. And let me be absolutely crystal clear that I have
no problem at all with Google. That said, I find it profoundly disturbing that <b>if
every other search engine in the world shut down <i>tomorrow</i>, our website's
traffic would be effectively unchanged</b>. That's downright <i>scary</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Yes, I like Google. Yes,
Google works great and has been my homepage for about eight years now. Google
nailed search, and they deserve the leadership position they've earned. But
where's the healthy competition? Where's the incentive for Google to improve?
All I see is a large and growing monoculture that acts as the <a
href="http://www.skrenta.com/2007/01/winnertakeall_google_and_the_t.html">start
page for the internet</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>I'm a little surprised all
the people who were so <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft">up in arms about
the Microsoft "monopoly" ten years ago</a> aren't out in the streets
today lighting torches and sharpening their pitchforks to go after Google. Does
the fact that Google's products are mostly free and ad-supported somehow exempt
it from the same scrutiny? Isn't anyone else concerned that Google, even with
the best of "don't be evil" intentions, has become <a
href="http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2008/03/mr-googles-guid.html">more
master than servant</a>? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Calling the current state of
search engine competition a horse race is an insult to horse races. No, what we
have here is a one horse race where all the other horses were shipped off to
glue factories years ago. <b>Forget "search conference", you should
be throwing a "Google conference", because there's no difference.</b>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>I don't know. Maybe that's
OK. But it does mean that if Google, for whatever reason, decided to remove you
from its search results, <a
href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000767.html">your website no
longer exists</a>. At least not as a viable business, anyway. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<table class=MsoNormalTable border=0 cellpadding=0>
<tr>
<td style='padding:.75pt .75pt .75pt .75pt'>
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<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<div style='margin-left:1.5pt;margin-right:1.5pt'>
<p class=MsoNormal style='background:#C3D9FF'> <o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='background:#C3D9FF'> <o:p></o:p></p>
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<h3 style='mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:2.25pt;margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:2.25pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;background:#C3D9FF'><span
style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Things you can do from here:<o:p></o:p></span></h3>
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