June 25, 2007

What I hate about Google !



Why will you visit Blogger, Orkut, or even Google Adsense? The obvious answers would be , to write a post, check scraps, or account status etc. And for all these activities, you are required to login by entering your username & password.

But why do Google thinks that we visit Blogger to find out the new features launched or Orkut, to look at the Pics of those bunch morons because that is what they load first. I mean to say, if you are on a slow connection and want to access Orkut, they will first show the header, then some text followed by the group picture and in the end the box to enter your username & password.



So you have to wait for the entire page to download before you can login, which can be easily avoided if they set the order by the priority of the activity on the page.


I hope someone from their team can hear this.

June 15, 2007

Best Website for Search

Which is the best web search engine...... Google or Yahoo or ...... ?

I did a small experiment to find out that which is the best search engine and who could tell us better than these sites themselves. So I took votes from Google, MSN (live), Yahoo, Altavista, Ask and Lycos. You must be thinking, what waste of time, everyone one will say that I am the best but the results were surprising.

Methodology:
To take the votes, I asked each of them by typing the word “search” in their keyword boxes. And the first result they that they throw will be the best site that can be associated by this word (as per them) or their recommendation.

And the results were:

Site --------- Recommendation
Google ------ search.live.com
Live (MSN) --- search.com
Yahoo -------- search.yahoo.com
Altavista------ search.yahoo.com
Ask ----------- ask.com
Lycos --------- ask.com

So there is a tie between Yahoo & Ask.

I don’t say that these two are the best sites for searching web, others sincerely need to work on their own search engine optimisation :)

June 13, 2007

Google is getting CREEPY

If you get a call from your HR manager that he has seen you in a cafe during work hours, or your wife catches you with your secretary outside a Multiplex. Don't be surprised, because the next level of Google Maps is here.

The new Google Maps offers a 360-degree view of many streets in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami, with other cities to roll out later, John Hanke, director of Google Maps and Google Earth, said in a session at the 2.0 Conference.



It may have many repercussions, but to me it sounds really creepy. I may have exaggerated it a bit but at some point of time we have to decide, till what level can we allow Google or anyone else to intrude our privacy. Whether it’s putting up of cameras on Traffic Signals or Satellites, we have to say NO at some level. At least I can not live my life like “ The Trueman Show”
.

June 12, 2007

Google's shopping list

Google thinks big these days. Here are the top 50 web properties according to ComScore, in order of importance (comscore.com/press/release.asp):

  1. Yahoo (probably too expensive)
  2. Time Warner
  3. Google [x]
  4. Microsoft (may lead to monopoly issues)
  5. Fox
  6. eBay (expensive but can be considered)
  7. Wikipedia [Wikipedia founder says "no" to this deal)
  8. Amazon (can be considered)
  9. Ask Network (not interested)
  10. New York Times (Nice option, though news has always been a neglected child)
  11. Weather Channel (can be clubbed with news)
  12. Viacom
  13. Apple
  14. CNET (same as NYT above)
  15. Adobe (why not)
  16. Gorilla Nation
  17. Wal-Mart
  18. AT&T
  19. Target Corporation
  20. Expedia
  21. United Online, Inc.
  22. Facebook (extension to orkut)
  23. Lycos
  24. Monster Worldwide (may make a sense)
  25. CBS Corporation
  26. Verizon Communications Corporation
  27. Bank of America
  28. CareerBuilder
  29. Gannett Sites
  30. Idearc Media
  31. Disney Online
  32. Shopzilla.com Sites
  33. Photobucket.com
  34. CraigsList.org
  35. Real.com Network
  36. Travelport
  37. Comcast Corporation
  38. Yellowpages.com Network
  39. ESPN (already bought cricinfo)
  40. iVillage.com women's network
  41. ArtistDirect network
  42. WebMD Health
  43. WhitePages
  44. Cox Enterprises Inc.
  45. Weatherbug Property
  46. Citysearch
  47. NBC Universal
  48. USPS.com
  49. JPMorgan Chase Property
  50. Ticketmaster

So what’s next in the shopping list for Google?

My picks will be NYT, Amazon, Monster.com (instead of simplyhired) and i would love to see a Gaming Site in the list too.

What Say??

June 6, 2007

Search for "Search Engine"


Knowing what you want to search in not enough now days, you should also know where to search. And that does not restricts only to the website but also to the different search engines available there. Because if your are searching for some information, you have a choice of searching through Book Search or Scholars or Blog Search or Product Search or Image Search or Video Search or News Search or Code Search or **??? Search or you can create your own search engine using Google Co-op. Still not satisfied, try the new Voice Search, Accessible Search or the latest Experimental Search. And if that to is not enough try Google Suggest, Google Set or Know more about trends through Google Trends. With so many option available, i think Google itself might also get confused one day :-).

I don't how many of the users are aware of all such option but for those who know, it may sound like a nightmare. It is good that Google has created so many specialized search engines but it would be better that if it gives one search box (like the original Google) and then clusters the results found in specialized search engines. Though it has already started working on the same (because i can see images, videos etc on the same page) but a lot of work needs to be done on the clustering end. They should get some inspiration from Ask.com, they have done some cool UI stuff for clustering search results.

Hope i haven't hurt
Google's sentiments yet again ;-)