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Posts tagged Google
Cuil: A Google Competitor
Jul 28th
A new search engine called Cuil (formerly Cuill, they dropped one ‘l’) launched this weekend. They claim to have built the largest index with a fraction of Google’s cost. My initial simple testing shows me that they still have to improve quite a bit in relevancy. A search for ‘Pradeep Padala’ doesn’t even turn up my home page, and an image of some one else is shown along with my publications. Ouch! The blogosphere people are already testing it out. See some test results on TechCrunch and Search Engine land.
I got interested because of their claim that they can handle this massive data analysis with commodity machines and by spending only a fraction of what it cost to Google. I met with some of the folks working there a month ago, and despite my prodding, they didn’t reveal much about how exactly they built the system. Fair enough.
It will be exciting to see a good search engine that can compare to Google. We are so accustomed to taking Google results as the “search truth”, that we need some one to show us the “real web”.
Firefox + Google = Evil ?
Jun 6th
Firefox released a 3.0 sneak peek version, and I was happy to get the latest incarnation. I see quite a few UI improvements, and I believe they improved the performance as well. But, I have a big gripe: Why does Firefox come with Google as the default search provider? Second problem: Why doesn’t the list of search providers include Microsoft’s Live search? (see left Figure). 80% of FF money comes from Google. No wonder, FF loves Google!
Google prides on the “Do no evil” motto, and I find it peculiar for Firefox to not include Live search in the first 5 search providers. On the other hand, MS finally left its monopoly practices and allows you to pick your search provider. Live search is not the default search btw! You have to pick one, when you install XP/Vista. Also, Google is one of the top options.
Come on FF, you guys are open source and do the right thing
- Let the user select the search provider
- Add Live search as one of the options along with other popular search providers like AOL search and Ask.
This actually shows a growing problem in high profile open source projects. Gone are the days when Linux kernel was developed by people who were never paid for the work they were doing. Today, all the high profile open source projects, Linux kernel, KDE, Gnome, Firefox, OpenOffice are funded by many companies. I wonder how many decisions in the kernel are influenced by IBM and Redhat!
