Tag: Search Engines

The Google Empire: Why we need more search engines other than Google

The usage of “network” effect to basically dismiss calls for other search engines or any other institution is a common phrase. The people who use it to say there is something transhistorical about Google and that people should be just accept Google. The thing that Google has is the ability to just control the access to information and also installing their search services on every Android device here. Microsoft got in trouble for the same thing, but now they are basically the underdogs here in the search space with Bing, which is good but is basically unable to gain traction because Google keeps people within their systems. This means that people only see Google and not other competitors.

I use Google’s products as they are not incompetent at making email services such as Gmail. However, they are often used as the only service and the “nerds” or power” users are trying to use other products. For example, think about DuckDuckGo or other search engines such as Bing as I mentioned earlier. However, Bing is the only one that is capable of challenging Google. In the early 2010s, its market share was higher than it is now but it is unable to get beyond a small percentage.

We need more search engine choices.

Why is that we allow people to congregate in the “best”

This best is being propped up with all sorts of trickery and manipulations. The most important thing that can happen now is that we need to break up the app stores of both Google and Apple. This duopoly has allowed for the ossification of many aspects of the internet. It has led to the decline in the quality of desktop sites. Previously, desktop sites had all their charm and qualities. Now it the same throughout and it is not interesting now. Even the corporate sites, the front page of a company’s brand have become little more than portals to their social media sites.

We need competition and while we may have alternatives, we do not currently have competition.

Search engines should be an area of competition and growth and not beholden to only one company. The internet is a space without any limit in space only bandwidth. We should have many choices.

Google’s Preferred Sources feature goes live: Is it the change the search engine needs?

Google has launched a change on their search engine which will change the way in which you interact with the news.

Google choose your preferred sources.

Google now allows you to choose your preferred sources. According to Android Authority, this is a response to the AI spam sites that have been clogging up the news feeds on Google.

Is this better?

I believe that Google should have put such a feature many years ago on their site. The inability to filter out specific websites without using advanced search shows that they were just riding on advertising revenue. They did not care to actually improve the search engine and were just making patches here and there just to keep people content.

There are many problems with Google News even with the changes. For many years, Google has not even bothered to curate. Many times I will come across a site which has a paywall preventing me from even reading it.

Another issue is that the quality of the writing is much worse than what you will see on social media. Google’s inability to integrate with social media is going to bite them in the back here.

It’s a pretty small change which will have a big impact. However, they will need to do more to get the search engine back on track and more reliable.