I've never understood the draw of Google, it's actually not that good of a search engine. I have been using Bing ever since it premiered
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I've never understood the draw of Google, it's actually not that good of a search engine. I have been using Bing ever since it premiered
It's not that good? lol
Bing and Google give nearly the same search results, as has been compared multiple times throughout the interwebs. There is a difference, but it's minute. The primary difference is Bings awesome video search features and that it just looks different.
Basically, people were tired of Yahoo and it's cramped mash of linkage, advertisements, etc. It's the same thing with whats been happening to Myspace. People like simplicity. So people use Google and Facebook.
For me, it's part that and also that I love Gmail. It's a great basic email service, which is all that most people need, including me. And the Gmail link is right there on my homepage when I open my browser. Although I also have the addon for Chrome and Firefox.
But let's be honest here, Google is a great search engine. Bing is too, considering it's almost exactly the same once you strip it of it's eyecandy.
I think you just like to say overly controversial things. Having a preference, sure okay, but saying it's not that good? Compared to what? Bing and only Bing? I guess it's just widely used and has had some of the best people in the world work on it, costing a ridiculous amount of money, for no actual reason. :/
They don't track you... yet. If they ever catch on I'm willing to bet they'll sell out.
I'm still not used to the instant results yet. I habitually hit enter after typing a request and it reloads it all anyway. :facepalm:
The endless pic page has helped me out quite a bit though. There have been quite a few times I was searching for something I didn't know the name of but knew what it looked like. While searching for obscure terms, the endless page made it a LOT easier on me.:)
As long as I'm on a fast connection I don't really have a problem with the instant results...except that sometimes it decides that I meant to type a word that I didn't actually type... -_^ On a slow connection (like my phone) I turn it off.
The new images search, I love. I find it a lot easier to navigate than the old style, and it actually performs decently on a slow connection as well. The overlay on click-through is a bit annoying though.
I was surprised at how fast images load even when the connection was being bogged down.
I think I'd probably like it more if it was side scrolling with like a little timeline with notches in it to help kind if keep a general reference to where things are/were. That'd be cool.
I'm not saying it isn't popular, just that it doesn't always do the best job. I also tend to not be a bandwagon kind of person (I use opera as a web browser). More often than not when I use google no matter how carefully worded the search I get 1-2 pages of useless or sponsored links.:( Most of the reason for this is the way the search engines work and the way people are wording and coding their sites. Or paying to be higher on the listings.
I used Opera for a while after I got pissed at FF for constantly bugging out, but I missed the plugins that I was used to and fell back in love with FF. But not wanting to jump on the Google bandwagon is a terrible reason not to use the most accurate search engine to date. I google various topics (very likely) over a hundred times a day on average and I haven't had to scroll to page two in months. Generally the first 3 results are adds...they are are in a light blue box that says "Ads" in the corner. After that it should be exactly what you're looking for...if not, you could try searching on Bing (the #2 engine) but it if Google didn't find it chances are nothing else will either. For example, I was recently searching for a rare aquatic fern by its latin genus and species...there were 6 results total in google. None of them were relevant but bing and yahoo returned nothing either, so it just means that if relevant info on the topic exists on the net, the crawlers haven't found it yet.
Depending on what you're looking for you could try WolframAlpha, but I think that is still experimental.
As for companies paying to be listed higher in search results, that simply isn't true. You or a company can buy an add in that blue box, but you can't buy your way to the #1 result. Google rankings have never been for sale, and likely never will be. The algorithms they use to determine those rankings are one of their closely guarded secrets.
I distrusted google over 10 years ago when it was still new. They didn't offer a whole lot and I wasn't a fan of their minimalistic site. I thought it was cheap and would eventually fizzle out. A few friends liked it though and got me to try it. After I had there was just no going back to the dumb altavista or yahoo searches that were practically useless. Plus, I much prefer the simple layout these days as the news feeds and other clutter on yahoo and similar sites is just garbage. If something comes along that works and feels better than google, I will likely switch to that engine as I'm not a narrow minded fanboi. But until that day, it's hard to deny that google is on top of the game.