Freedman in Newsweek, looks at the competition currently facing Google. He starts with a history of Google – commenting
in 1998 word started getting around about a new search engine from a tiny company with a goofy name that sometimes returned more-useful results
It was in Summer of 1999 that I was doing my MSc project – looking at search engines – most of my classmates saw me as really rather odd using Google rather than AltaVista. Now, when I ask students to use different search engines, they look at me as if I’m a bit odd…
Freedman goes on to look at several different search engines; the difference between the position of Google now, and Altavista then is of course a much bigger user base – and far more at stake financially.
Hi Emma – language/terminology is a great indicator of market dominance, as witnessed by the many people now using the verb ‘to Google’ in place of ‘to search’.
And now that Google are opening up social networking… http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7070815.stm
Yes, I’ve been reading about Google’s ventures into Social Networking…
Will be interesting to see where it all ends up.