I noticed that the Google share price bounced up just after the IPO, which makes one wonder is Google worth it? I can certainly imagine a better search engine. Consider how much the commercial websites try to manipulate what shows up in Google. When you search for something specific, you usually don't get a decent set of interesting sites about that item. Most of the entries are commercial sites trying to sell something. Is there anything better on the horizon?
let's just look at it this way: as soon as a search engine becomes popular, it will have to deal with spam. effect of capitalism and no, IMHO there is still no better search engine than google. if there was one, I'd use it myself. but just having a look at MSN results gives me a bad headache sometimes... I receive some results that are completely irrelevant on the first page of the SERPS a lot!
Yes. I agree with mxlabs. I still believe Google is the best. The teremendous amount of spam is there because of the teremendous growth of the Internet. Life always gets this way. With so many sites appearing everyday, webmasters have to invent new techniques to get them to the top no matter what the techniques are! Even if a new SE appears. The problem will remain the same. I love Google!
Joel, Google has a lot of competition in the search engine business. http://www.searchenginesinternational.com/wst_page2.html But they stand alone in delivering ads through the Google syndication network as you well know, you use their program on your blog ASP. No one can match Google in delivering real time relevant ads, just look at how quick the spider provides relevant ads at Digital Point. Sometimes I am amazed, a thread is put up and within 2 min. they are already showing relevant ads to the content of the thread. Many times it will also change from page to page within the thread. So no one comes close to the Google syndication Ad network. Many companies can provide search, but Google income is generated (95%) by producing advertising using search as a tool to generate this income. Reading text and delivering ads related to that text is their business, what platform they use to do it does not matter. They can perform the same function on Email, Blogs, Search results, Orkut, forums, outside websites and who knows what in the future, will we see Google extend this to television?
I agree, Google is still king of the hill. (not to be confused with the stupid cartoon) I've looked at the results from other se's and G's almost always seems to have the most relevant serps. However, they are not perfect and I really like the Jux2 SE as I can easily see the difference between what G has and what Y has.