#66 - Trolling the Internet

I have been addicted to google since it started. In 1998 I read a PC Magazine article about a new beta Internet search engine. I had been using Yahoo search or Alta vista and found both unsatisfactory. They hardly ever gave me the web info I was looking for. Google in beta was so much better then the existing search programs. I wasn't the last to notice. I remember telling many of my customers the advantages of Google in newsletter after newsletter. Its like we were disciples of a new religion!

Google was founded by two Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Starting literally in a garage in 1998. The technology of using the number of back links to sort searches was unique and worked remarkably well. Google just pointed to the right pages search after search. The rest of course is history and now Google has had the ultimate compliment and been placed in Websters as a verb as in to Google a topic!

S0 almost 10 years later Google is indeed the search tool of choice. Over 1/2 of all the Web queries were done through Google. Google has not stood still either. They have added many features including searches for Videos, Images, News, Maps and Shopping. The wonderful Google Earth tool lets you see the world from the satellites perspective. Google also owns Picasa, the picture organizing program, the wonderful GMail email client and Google Desktop, PC search program. If you haven't tried these tools please do. They are all well designed and do exactly what they say they are to do with minimum frills.

We still love the sleak utilitarian interface. No frill here, just the most powerful search engine. I know some have questioned the commercialization of Google, but you can always ignore the paid for search results items that Google clearly puts in a different color and location.

So how are the other search engines doing? Yahoo and Alta vista still exist and do OK. In fact in a recent study the Alta Vista (altavista.com) search engine proved slightly more relevant searches then Google (key word is slightly). There are several limited aspect search engines the get you info that Google can't We like Congoo, which looks at private pay sites and organizes their info. You can actually see some of this info for no charge, but if you need a whole article then you must pay.

If you have a different favorite search engine, let us know about it and we'll check it out!