~article~ Google to stay focused on search [yeah right]

from : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5140066.stm

Online search is not a "solved problem", a senior executive for net
giant Google has told BBC News.
"Our position is that search is a very hard problem. We have still a
lot of work to do," said Douglas Merrill, who looks after internal
engineering.

Google remains the world's most popular search engine but in recent
years has expanded activities to include e-mail, instant messaging and
online mapping.

Mr Merrill said 70% of the company's activities remained focused on
search.

"It is not enough to have the information, the information should be
right," said Mr Merrill.

"Sometimes the problem is figuring out what the users mean not what
the user said," he added.

Mr Merrill said Google's search focus for the future included better
search for mobiles, personalised search, language translation,
accessing offline information and defeating web spam.

"Spam is an arms race," said Mr Merrill, adding it was a multi-million
dollar industry which was trying to fool search engines.

Unlike spam e-mail, web spam tries to trick search engines into
featuring websites selling products such as drugs high up on a list of
search results.

The spammers exploit the way search engines work by bombarding blogs
and comments pages with links to their websites.

Google prioritises websites in their search results if a particular
page is linked to by other sites.

Mr Merrill said: "Spammers are highly motivated. There is a lot of
money at stake."

'World's information'

The Google executive said online language translation was important
because the company's philosophy was to provide access to "all the
world's information".

"We are doing a lot of work in our labs on mechanised translation," he
said.

"It (search) should not be stuff in languages we just happen to speak
right now."

Mr Merrill said the company pledged never to intermingle search
results adverts without clear signposting.

"You should never mix search results and ads because it is dishonest
to the user," he explained.

He also defended the company's policy of releasing new services and
tools to users before they were finished products.

Tools such as Google Chat and Google Mail are beta products, requiring
users to give feedback on problems and suggestions.

"In general we think it is better for our users if we post things in
the cloud," he said.

"We launch things and then hear back from the users."

But according to a recent report on the company's track record of new
services, Google had yet to attain market leadership in any of its
product areas outside search.


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__/ [ Paul ] on Monday 03 July 2006 10:51 \__

from : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5140066.stm

Online search is not a "solved problem", a senior executive for net
giant Google has told BBC News.
"Our position is that search is a very hard problem. We have still a
lot of work to do," said Douglas Merrill, who looks after internal
engineering.

Subject line modified. *smile*

Google is in a tough position. Even with the world's top search engine,
another company can play dirty tricks to subvert the rules and channel user
though search bars and disinformation. Google is liaising with companies
(Mozilla, Dell, etc.) and expanding its product range to make it harder for
that other company to cheat.

Best wishes,

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "The speed of time is one second per second"
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
11:20am up 66 days 16:23, 11 users, load average: 0.81, 0.68, 0.79
http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project

On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 11:27:44 +0100, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

Subject line modified. *smile*

May be it should be :
~article~ Google should have stayed focused on search.
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__/ [ Paul ] on Monday 03 July 2006 11:33 \__

On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 11:27:44 +0100, Roy Schestowitz
newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

Subject line modified. *smile*

May be it should be :
~article~ Google should have stayed focused on search.

They have enough people on that project. They merely expand through hiring
and creation of new departments. That can strengthen/compelement search, so
I think they are doing the right thing. That recent negligence ('normality'
not restored yet) has cost them in reputation though. Maybe the employees
are too complacement, so they have forgotten all about spam. Those fake
sites could not have been targetted solely at Google (other engines could be
lured in too), but they contained AdSense, which shatters Google as an
advertiser, as well as a search engine.

Best wishes,

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU is Not UNIX ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
11:35am up 66 days 16:38, 11 users, load average: 0.58, 0.83, 0.82
http://iuron.com - proposing a non-profit search engine

On Mon, 03 Jul 2006 11:42:09 +0100, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups (AT) schestowitz (DOT) com> wrote:

They have enough people on that project.

That doesn't mean anything.

do they have enough people on that project with the correct skills and
determination ?

I remember when I worked for a large finance company. It was once
stated by them that they did not have a problem with fraud.

The reason was, they never had a fraud dept.

plh
Paul

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