How did Google take over from Yahoo so fast and whats the next big search engine?

IvaBigWun

Inspired by this thread:

So there we were for years, putting everything into Yahoo.co.uk, then all of a sudden it was Google this and Google that. How did they do that?! One minute Im using Yahoo the next a friend tells me about Google and thats that. Im converted. Its not faster than Yahoo, the searches dont seem overly different. Yet its now even part of our vernacular.

We "google" stuff, we tell friends "google it", we never said "Yahoo it" before now did we? How did this happen?! Was there some sort of crazy subliminal marketing or does 'Google" just sound better for word of mouth advertising?

Whats the next Google?

ntlbell

it was a lot quicker iirc it has a bigger index yahoo might have slowly caught back up over time but when it was first about it was the lightening speed that made it my default.

Rb

Booble.

Also, Google don't like their company name being used as a verb iirc.

Mena

Google won by re-inventing and focusing, at that time, on the search aspect, while players like Yahoo, Excite and the rest ballooned into self described "portals", focusing on everything BUT searching.

And to think, the Google search algorithm was offered to Excite (anyone even remember them?) for a cool million Dollars. Look at them now.

What's next? If I knew I sure wouldn't tell ya :pac:

4zn76tysfajdxp

IvaBigWun wrote: »

How did Google take over from Yahoo so fast and whats the next big search engine?

I don't know, I'll Google it.

Gloom

I'm hoping for an Ask Jeeves 2.0!

Adam

gotta be honest, I don't think i ever used yahoo.

giggsy664

No ads on Google

javaboy

Google was and still is clean and simple and straightforward. Some of the other major search engines turned into cluttered "portals".

Also the Google page rank algorithm was revolutionary.

Rb

Mena wrote: »

Excite (anyone even remember them?)

Woow that's some blast from the past.

Mena

Mr.S wrote: »

Theres adds all over the gaff. How do you think they make money?

Google never allowed any ads on their main page, unlike the other players that looked like Vegas at 2am. The google ads were/are to the right of the page, not interfering with your search, once it's been conducted. You're free to look/not look at the ads if you like.

With Google, you're also actually getting relevant information, for the most part, thanks to their rather simple algorithm, whereas a lot of the others were, initially, indexing manually.

Adam

lads. i fount it

admiralofthefleet

rarnes1 wrote: »

Yore Ma's engine is big and fast

Rb

Mr.S wrote: »

Theres adds all over the gaff. How do you think they make money?

Indeed. The amount of ads on Google is quickly becoming a problem imo, at least whenever I've searched for specific information on a product recently, the first three pages have been "Buy X here!!" basically.

Going downhill quite quickly, unfortunately.

Adam

Rb wrote: »

Indeed. The amount of ads on Google is quickly becoming a problem imo, at least whenever I've searched for specific information on a product recently, the first three pages have been "Buy X here!!" basically.

Going downhill quite quickly, unfortunately.

it's as simple as 'product x review'...

Mena

Rb wrote: »

Indeed. The amount of ads on Google is quickly becoming a problem imo, at least whenever I've searched for specific information on a product recently, the first three pages have been "Buy X here!!" basically.

Going downhill quite quickly, unfortunately.

Inevitable I guess. The only way to actually make money from this monster called the Internet is porn and advertising, or advertising porn.

IvaBigWun

Ah good ol' Ask Jeeves, that was meant to be like the fantasy search engine of the future. Our very own Skynet.

"Jeeves, what is the meaning of life?"

Answer:

"Here's a list of cool phrases from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Mena

Mr.S wrote: »

Well just do a simple search, youll get "sponsored" links at the top, and on the right with a description, its not image adds, but adds all the same..

Yeah, I'm old so I remember how it "used" to be... things they are a changing though.

ScumLord

Mena wrote: »

And to think, the Google search algorithm was offered to Excite (anyone even remember them?)

Jesus ya, didn't they have some fancy chatroom where you could use sound clips and all you'd hear was spock saying 'have a coke and a smile and shut the **** up', over and over again. Twas the height of technology at the time.

Rb

Mirror wrote: »

it's as simple as 'product x review'...

I wasn't looking for reviews.

You're as simple as "a brick"...

robinph

I seem to remember needing to use a different site depending on what kind of search you wanted to do as they each did different things better. Then Google came along and did it all better.

IvaBigWun

robinph wrote: »

I seem to remember needing to use a different site depending on what kind of search you wanted to do as they each did different things better. Then Google came along and did it all better.

I think you may be right. Wasnt AltaVista best for images before Google?

And then there was Lycos :pac:

How many are them are still in use actually, and does anyone use a different engine than Google?

Adam

Rb wrote: »

I wasn't looking for reviews.

You're as simple as "a brick"...

enlighten me.

robinph

I do seem to recall that Yahoo was rubbish if you were searching for a specific term, but if you wanted a list of everything under some catergory then it was the place to go.

Overheal

Yahoo front page subjects you to piles of crap.

That was it for me.

spurious

I liked the fact that Google's front page was very 'clean' looking, basically just a search box, plus their searches were fast.
I remember Webferret, which used to find lots of things that Yahoo and Alta Vista didn't.

Doctor DooM

javaboy wrote: »

Also the Google page rank algorithm was revolutionary.

We have our winner.

I was recently at an event which one of the directors of Google Ireland gave a talk, and basically said the above was it.

Google was using versions of their algorithmic searches and bots when the others were still using rooms of people.

To this day, R n D in Google are expected to spend at least 25% of their time on improving searches no matter what their jobs.

AlmightyCushion

Rb wrote: »

You're as simple as "a brick"...

Banned.

Mena

SDooM wrote: »

We have our winner.

I was recently at an event which one of the directors of Google Ireland gave a talk, and basically said the above was it.

Google was using versions of their algorithmic searches and bots when the others were still using rooms of people.

To this day, R n D in Google are expected to spend at least 25% of their time on improving searches no matter what their jobs.

And the idea behind it was so simple: Pages were ranked based upon how many times other pages had linked to them. Turned out to be a solid winner.

giggsy664

Mena wrote: »

Yeah, I'm old so I remember how it "used" to be... things they are a changing though.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/google.com

Terry

Rb wrote: »

Indeed. The amount of ads on Google is quickly becoming a problem imo, at least whenever I've searched for specific information on a product recently, the first three pages have been "Buy X here!!" basically.

Going downhill quite quickly, unfortunately.

At least there's no .gif or flash ads.

newmills

Lads google are just in their infancy. Missus does a lot of work for them as an external account manager. She is going out to san francisco next week to meet a few of the head honchos. Believe it or not google is on it's way to becoming one of the largest companies in the world with a huge portfolio of products.

Mark200

Yeah it was the Google page rank. Aswell as that, the Google home page is plain except for the search box and a few useful links. Yahoo's page is full with flashing images and links. Big difference.

I don't think there will ever (in the foreseeable future) be a new popular search engine that will take-over from Google. They're not just a search engine now. They're a brand.

Google maps, Google Chrome and Google owned Youtube will keep them firmly ahead of any competitors for quite some time.

AlmightyCushion

Mark200 wrote: »

Yeah it was the Google page rank. Aswell as that, the Google home page is plain except for the search box and a few useful links. Yahoo's page is full with flashing images and links. Big difference.

I don't think there will ever (in the foreseeable future) be a new popular search engine that will take-over from Google. They're not just a search engine now. They're a brand.

Google maps, Google Chrome and Google owned Youtube will keep them firmly ahead of any competitors for quite some time.

A lot of people said the same thing about yahoo. Saying that yahoo didn't have the likes of youtube or maps at the time but they were still a household name. Their ads still stick in my mind. YYYaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhoooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooo ooooooooo

Terry

Rb wrote: »

Indeed. The amount of ads on Google is quickly becoming a problem imo, at least whenever I've searched for specific information on a product recently, the first three pages have been "Buy X here!!" basically.

Going downhill quite quickly, unfortunately.

At least there's no .gif or flash ads.

Sucking Diesel

If home pages were removed from internet stats for popular websites, it would be intersting to see what the most popular sites were after that. First visted after home page.

Surely google being a home page for a lot of people bucks those stats.

/ponders

zAbbo

newmills wrote: »

Lads google are just in their infancy. Missus does a lot of work for them as an external account manager. She is going out to san francisco next week to meet a few of the head honchos. Believe it or not google is on it's way to becoming one of the largest companies in the world with a huge portfolio of products.

What you've said above could equally apply 5 years ago

tech77

IvaBigWun wrote: »

Inspired by this thread:

So there we were for years, putting everything into Yahoo.co.uk, then all of a sudden it was Google this and Google that. How did they do that?! One minute Im using Yahoo the next a friend tells me about Google and thats that. Im converted. Its not faster than Yahoo, the searches dont seem overly different. Yet its now even part of our vernacular.

Probably its clean, uncluttered, ad-free, minimalist design.

musicmonky

about 10 years ago hotbot was a great search engine
yahoo wasnt a search engine it was a directory . thats what it always was.
inktomi and later google did the search engine database for yahoo.

what google did which was a game changer was monetize the web
few people where making big money on the web until google arrived.
they invented putting a price on search words and not using pop ups.

Google are first and foremost an advertising company that just so happens to make its money via technology means.

But what about ex Google employees and irish guys who done the farce that was http://www.cuil.com/. total epic fail. they said they had the bigger database than google. who cares if you cant find anything.

Mark200

Interesting fact:

Google is actually a mis-spelling of the word Googol: the number 10 to the power of 100 (1 followed by 100 zeros). When they realised they had spelt it wrong, they just decided to not change it.

AlmightyCushion

musicmonky wrote: »

But what about ex Google employees and irish guys who done the farce that was http://www.cuil.com/. total epic fail. they said they had the bigger database than google. who cares if you cant find anything.

Give them time they might actually make it good. Hopefully they do, competition is always a good thing.

Linku

Yahoo! used Google Search for a while, people checked out Google and realised it was quicker, cleaner and didn't have the crap all over it that Yahoo! did and started using that.

There's always the what seems to be little known http://search.yahoo.com that's basically the cleaner version of Yahoo!

Edit: What's the point in these "Irish" versions of websites, it's like Nimble, the whole point of a social networking site is to be as global and big as possible, why just target yourself at an Irish audience? Fail please

AlmightyCushion

Linku wrote: »

Edit: What's the point in these "Irish" versions of websites, it's like Nimble, the whole point of a social networking site is to be as global and big as possible, why just target yourself at an Irish audience? Fail please

It's not an irish version. It just has some irish guys working on it. If I remember correctly the big selling point was that it had a bigger index and it used a different method to rank the results. Unfortunately it was pretty shíte.

Adam

julep wrote: »

At least there's no .gif or flash ads.

three times?? the AC man banned him...

tiger325

Google is here to stay:pac:

shane86

tbh Google has been replaced by wikipedia for me, handy one stop shop on pretty much anything.

And as for porn, all those youtube like sites, much handier than google


You do wonder how many people use the ones that were vying for space when we first got the net around 2000. Lycos, Jeeves, Excite, one or two others.

IvaBigWun

tiger325 wrote: »

Google is here to stay:pac:

But they're getting greedier with Ad space. Eventually one will come along that doesnt want to make any money whatsoever. Like Wikipedia. Except a search engine.

Firetrap

Thing that made me change was its user-friendliness, speed and the quality of the search results. I remember having to manually submit web sites to Yahoo! and it took them ages to show up in their searches. Also, there's too much clutter/those floaty ads on Yahoo, not to mention broken links.

Ads by Google on every webpage you goto helped the whole Google taking over from Yahoo. like seriously, they're everywhere.

Húrin

I think Google won by inventing some sort of unique evolving algorhythm.

Queen-Mise

I use google all time, i love the completely clean homepage. No clutter, or junk on it. although have to agree more and more adds are creeping into the search pages.

Was walking past some computers in a shopping centre this week, and altavista was the search engine on them, didn't even know it was still going.