SPONSORED BY:

Searching For The Best Engine

 

Email To A Friend

Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.

Separate multiple addresses with commas

SPONSORED BY
 

Even $12 billion and the billions more Google could borrow wouldn't buy all the world's search competition. The performance gap won't be hard to narrow for a hot new company freshly fueled by investors. In the end, Google has to have a better search to stay on top. Thus its army of software engineers is looking at every wrinkle in search, insists Google's research director, Peter Norvig. "I guess we're paranoid," he says. They've already injected several new technologies into its search—for example, results take into account results you've clicked on in the past, provided you've signed up to have your searches tracked. You can type in your query in plain English, get suggestions for search-term refinements, or do any of more than 40 specialized searches, including movies, government Web sites, patents, airline flights and human faces. Google just doesn't advertise any of these features, or make them plain. Although it's clear Google is capable of plenty of search innovation, there's a reason the company sometimes acts as if its hands are tied when it comes to implementing next-generation techniques. "People don't want radical change from us," says Matt Cutts, head of search quality at Google. "Our biggest task is ensuring simplicity."

It's true, most mainstream searchers do tend to value the stripped-down, no-brainer elegance of a thin box that takes a few words and delivers straightforward results. Given that a growing number of queries are being funneled to alternative engines, there are clearly plenty of power searchers willing to accept a little complexity in return for better results. It wouldn't take a smash-hit new search engine to steal Google's thunder; the damage could take the form of a slow leak of searchers to a variety of engines that each have some special appeal. Another threat to Google may be online social networking sites such as MySpace and LinkedIn. "We'll likely see dozens or hundreds of specialized search engines that collectively chip away at Google's dominance," says Brant Bukowsky, founder of Plus1 Marketing, a search consultancy.

Last quarter, Google raked in $925 million in profit, 28 percent more than the same quarter last year. The game is still Google's to lose. Even Stark, who resorted to Quintura to find her snorkeling beach, still makes Google her first stop when she needs to track down a Web site. What, after all, would Google have to fear from a tiny company with a goofy name that sometimes returns more-useful results?

© 2007

Label

Newsweek Top Stories
Visions of a Decade
Visions of a Decade

From 2000-2009, one photo per month.

The Failure of Copenhagen
The Failure of Copenhagen

Why there could be a silver lining in a failed climate treaty.

Sex Scandals of the 2000s
Sex Scandals of the 2000s

From John Edwards to Mark Sanford, the decade's memorable affairs.

118 Days in Hell
118 Days in Hell

A NEWSWEEK journalist recounts his captivity in Iran.

Discuss

Sponsored by

Member Comments

  • Posted By: monalami @ 11/19/2008 8:26:25 AM

    choose the best search for your information need :
    Yahoo, Google, Lycos,Aol Search, Altavista, Hotbot,

    All the words, ask, gigablast, Teoma, Exite, The

    Exacte Phrase, The Words, Sports Search Engines,

    Search AardvarkSport, Any Word, Find a Hockey

    Arena, Prov Code, State, Find a Stadium, Snow

    Search, Ski Resort, Find a Golf Course, Daypop,

    WeblogsNews, WeblogsRSS, Headlines, New York

    Times, WebMultimedia, NYC, Events NYC Venues,

    Science Search Engines, Scirus, Google cholar, New

    Scientist, Biome, Citeseer, Encylopedia Search

    Engines, About.com, Wikipedia, Encyclopedia.com,

    Encarta, Bartleby, Full Text Entry , World Book,

    InfoPlease, All Infoplease, Almanacs, Sports

    Biographies,Dictionary, Encyclopedia, Government

    Search Engines, FDA, US Department of Education,

    EPA, US Gov, Federal, All States, One State, Library of

    Congress, Education Search Engines, InfoMine, BUBL,

    Internet Public Library, KidsClick, RDN, Financial

    Search Engines, Yahoo Finance, MSN Money, Jayde,

    Business By Domain, Adult Content, Fool, Market

    Watch, Meta Search Engines, Ixquick Metasearch,

    Mamma, Metacrawler, Vivismo, Search,

    MonsterCrawler, The Web News, Mp3, Ftp, Kartoo,

    Zapmeta, DogPile, The Web ImagesAudio, Auctions

    News, FTP Discussion, Multimedia, Meta Eureka, Web

    Weblogs, News Software, Directories Human

    Maintained, Zeal, Directory members, DMOZ, JoeAnt,

    Yahoo Directory, Gimpsy, Web World Index, All Info,

    Family Friendly, Search All Words, Search Any Words.

    choose all you need here :

    www.allthebestsearchengines.blogspot.com

  • Posted By: joycebenik @ 01/03/2008 6:19:05 PM

    try
    www.sortfix.com

    its the best new search engine at least i think so
    at least i think so
    for me

  • Posted By: Josef617 @ 11/05/2007 11:42:26 AM

    One word for anyone that thinks Google will dominate forever: PointCast.

Reply

Report Abuse

Enter comments if any for reporting abuse

My Take

Customize the NEWSWEEK homepage
to feature your favorite columnists.

Customize Now
 
 
TECHNOLOGY
See how much you know about Google and search engines like it. No Googling allowed.