Google & MS issues

[Tom]

I think Google is going downhill as a search engine: (1) all the returns it gives which are just links to other directories (2) it frequently returns a page for a particular word which does not appear on the page it returns. The forthcoming Google IPO price seems way-way-way to high (estimated at between 150 and 300). A normal p/e ratio for a normal company is 15. All the additional value is speculation.


Its making me wonder if Bill will do better. As a 'chief software architect' his chief skill seems to be taking the best of other people's ideas. I certainly like the idea of a search enging running on my own computer.

Bill has received wide praise in the business press for returning all those billions to shareholders. One also has to praise him for giving so much cash to a charitable foundation. Perhaps is near-monopoly is a bad thing after all. Incidentally, MS has just agreed to pay Lindows $20m, MS aknowledging that it does not own 'windows' as a tradename. So maybe MS is losing its grip on the OS monopoly.

[francis]

I guess we'll wait and see. I've been interested in Google's IPO - it's hype gone crazy, and will probably end in tears.

MS have just started showing off their new web, PC search tool (http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/07/30/HNmsdemossearch_1.html) to the world. If this is introduced soon as opposed to waiting until Longhorn, Google may well start to lose out. We've already seen the massive use of IE in comparison to other, better (IMHO), products and maybe when the new MS search facility ships with Windows:

1: Other search engines will really suffer
2: There'll be another huge round of anti-trust lawsuits, a la Netscape vs MS

++++

Rather fantastic Moz/FF extension: CopyURL+ (http://copyurlplus.mozdev.org/)

[Phil]

slightly off-track gripe about google, but i'm getting sick of all the price comparison results i get from google whenever i search for something. For example, looking for info about replacing bulbs in a sanyo projector, google throws up pages of "compare prices on projector bulbs" type links. yes, i could tailor the search string better, but...
Have recently started flirting with Teoma. Maybe it will soon be time to go all the way

[Tom]

Like everyone who gets too much of it, Google has been corrupted by cash.

[francis]

You wait until the shareholders are in. Then it'll get worse - all bow and scrape to the almighty shareholder, the person more important than even the customer.

Until Google annoys people enough, anyone working on the Web will consider Google as the holy grail of search engine - if only because it's the one that everyone knows and therefore it'll be the one that the client cares about over and above anyone else.

Can other search engines do Boolean AND combined with OR searches (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=floppy+%28disc%7Cdisk%29&btnG=Search)? If so, I'm prepared to dabble.

[francis]

And here's another MS kick at Google: they've just unveiled their Newsbot (http://newsbot.msnbc.msn.com/) as competition to Google's automated news service. I much prefer Google's UI to MSN's, which I don't suspect will change unless they rebrand MSN.