Posts Tagged
Search
Search = Google.com
For most of the world’s internet users, that’s just about it. There’s Google, and nothing else. People even enter Google into the Google search bar in browsers to bring up the Google.com homepage. It’s a mess.
But then, it’s not surprising that Google is so popular, simply because it works great for search. If you need to find something online, you’re almost guaranteed to find it with Google. And when it just works, and is blazing fast, why fix it? There are alternatives, most notably Microsoft’s Bing, which now powers Yahoo! Search as well. There’s also the underdog DuckDuckGo, which has somewhat of a geek following, but doesn’t seem to be that widely used.
I personally still use Google search, after periods of using both Bing, its predecessor, Live Search, and DuckDuckGo. I always end up coming back to Google. That apparently makes me like most of our search visitors, of which 96% use Google to find our articles.
How about you, our faithful readers? What search engine do you use by default? We’d love to hear your thoughts on why you use – or don’t use – Google.
Google.
For many people, Google is the internet. It is one of a handful of companies that have become part of everyday language of the young and old. I’ve grown up with Google, and recently realized just how many of the company’s tools I use on a daily basis. I’m not a fanboy, but I’m living in a Google world, and loving it.
It could be argued that Google has gained something of a monopoly, but even still, Google is a company that has earned a place in many people’s hearts. It is generally looked on rather affectionately, rather than with the suspicion that is reserved for Microsoft. That may be changing, but for me – and many others – it’d be hard to imagine life without many of the tools the company has produced.
Yahoo! hasn’t had a ton of good press in recent times, but yesterday, they introduced something pretty interesting: Yahoo! Axis. Axis is a browser “platform” that builds upon your existing app with new search tools on desktop, and a brand new app on iOS (both iPhone and iPad). Yahoo! claims Axis redefines “what it means to search and browse the web”, while its actually providing some similar tools to what Google’s offered in the search engine for some time. With Axis, you can access trending searches (through Yahoo!, of course), as well as start your own in an Google-style instant search.
In the iOS app, Yahoo! brings a completely independent browser app that features similar tools to Axis on the desktop, as well as all the standard functions of any browser app. While that exists, we’ll, of course, be focusing on the desktop browser extension today.
Most of you that read Web.AppStorm read it because you love all of the cool apps that are being used on the internet. The internet is full of great information and great things to read. I am always looking for the next best thing on the web or reading great articles from other tech blogs that are out there.
Sometimes as we are searching the net, we can get overwhelmed with the information and saving it for later reading. There are some great services out there that help you save articles for later, but a new web app called Save & Search takes a little different approach. It takes all the things that you search for today and makes them searchable and easy to find when you need the articles later. Let me show you what I am talking about.
Even with a small, tightly knit group, it might often be overwhelming to catch up will all the tweets and updates across popular social networks lke Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc. A lot of information go missing through the cracks and even if you are paying attention, it is hard to retain everything of use.
Three things that could benefit immensely from a tinge of social magic are search, discovery and ecommerce. A wave of startups have started working on this problem and a solution to this chaotic mess is on the way.With Wajam you can find what your friends share, when you need it. After the break let us learn how exactly to do that.
Twitter is a much loved social network. But it is one of those very few uber popular crowd favorites that sees hardly any new feature additions. Twitter team isn’t known for pushing updates and new features at the appropriate time. Unlike Facebook where something exciting is introduced every other week, Twitter updates usually show up once in a blue moon.
That’s exactly why I was surprised to a see a whole lot of new features roll in these past few days, one after another. From an in depth search option to photo uploading and a new follow button for websites, there is a feature targeting every user group. Let’s check them out!
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We used to expect less from our computers. Files were meant to be static, storage was expensive, and sharing meant burning a CD or printing out a document. Software was bought in a box, browsers were slow, and we still watched TV on a TV. No one expected more than that; you could only expect so much from computers.
Adding larger hard drivers, faster processors, and clearer flat screens changed our computers, but it didn’t change the way we think about computing. That change came from the cloud. Let’s look at some of the ways web apps and cloud computing have changed the ways we think about data and computing.
Back in the day, we all used AltaVista or Yahoo! to find everything we needed on the Internet. It was slow and often didn’t find what we were looking for, but hey, it was all we had. Then Google came along, and blew us away at how much faster and better search could really be. We switched, and never looked back.
So isn’t Google good enough? Do we really need another search engine, let alone one named after a game? Let’s take a closer look at today’s search market and what DuckDuckGo has to offer that might make you want to switch. (more…)
Google hasn’t been on the kind of slippery slope it has been in the past few months. A loud and wide spread condemnation of their poor search results has been resonating loud and clear in the blogosphere like never before. There are way too many spammy results when you perform a Google Search and it’s also evident that Google is hardly doing anything to make it better, primarily due to the fear of losing AdWords revenue — their lifeline.
With the advent of curated search engines like Blekko and the rising influence of Facebook and Twitter, Google is in a rather uncomfortable spot. Google is now trying to get you the most relevant results as quickly as possible. One recent attempt at achieving that goal is Google +1.
Our lives are increasingly dependent on the cloud to get things done, collaborate, communicate, share stuff with peers and much more. Internet in fast becoming an operating system by itself with all the web apps replacing the desktop counterparts. One major thing missing out of this pretty picture is the absence of a comprehensive search feature.
Am not referring to web in general – the ability to search our own data stored in the cloud, distributed across a lot of third party datacenters. Greplin is a personal search engine that allows you to search all your online data from one easy place. Curious as to how Greplin can help autocomplete your life?
