I found the New Yorker article "Searching for Trouble" by Ken Auletta extremely interesting and the title extremely fitting. Google has undoubtedly revolutioned the world. The site makes finding information easier than ever before. As a user anyone can quickly look up people, places, businesses, directions, etc. This task perviously took a phone book, good spelling skills, a geography minor and a postive attitude. As a reporter I can check facts a lot
Over the next couple years I don't see Google being overtaken. However, nothing lasts forever in this world and especially with regards to business. It is inevitable that something new will come along. The web saw the explosion of MySpace abd YouTube, thinking these were virtually foolproof. However, site such as Hulu, Facebook and Twitter quickly emerged. Google currently has the search engine world monopolized, but I don't think this can last forever. What that will be, now isn't that the million dollar question?
As for a monopoly, this is the hardest part. There are other options but people simply are using Google more. People can you Ask.com, Yahoo.com, Bing.com and others search engine sites. Also, Google has to face the prospective of its competition teaming up. The article mentioned Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos combining forces with the likes of Microsoft. Its a competative world and I think that the monopoly of Google has been created by the users.
One question I was thinking about is what, if anything at all, makes Google so much better than these other search engines?
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You pose a very interesting question. One that I'm not sure I can answer. I'm not certain as to what makes Google so much "better" than say, Ask.com, Yahoo.com, or Bing.com. Immediately, however, I think of the interfaces involved. Perhaps this could play some role in this equation? Google's homepage is very clean, full of white space, and easy-to-read navigation. Yahoo.com is pretty much the complete opposite. Similarly, last summer I participated in a short study to determine the ease of using Bing.com. It took me a good amount of time to completely figure it out.
ReplyDeleteGoogle is better than other search engines because saying "I'm going to Google that" is more fun to say than "I'm going to Yahoo this" or "I'm going to Bing that", which kind of sounds dirty.
ReplyDeleteGoogle still has the "cool thing" going for them that other search engines don't have. Until someone else is able to come up with a cool new way to search for sites I think that Google will remain the dominant search engine.
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