Thursday, June 21, 2007

Google has made me the man I am today...

About 18 months ago I stopped trying to remember things. What a time saver! Instead of thinking - I just "google". The results were a greatly improved grasp of the trivial, and slightly higher electric bills.

And an even sadder social life.

Well, imagine my shock and awe when I discovered your choice of search engine really affects your search results.
For instance, the study compared the first-page searches from major engines and found that on average:

* 69.6% of Google’s [first page results] were unique to Google.
* 79.4% of Yahoo’s were unique to Yahoo.
* 80.1% of Live’s were unique to Live.
* 75.0% Ask’s were unique to Ask.


All in all, according to the survey, only 1% of results appeared on the front page of all four search engines. [More]

Are we being insidiously massaged into perfect clients of these on-line entities? Are our attitudes and beliefs at risk of being subtly shaped by which icon we click?

Not according to my search results.

[Bonus: James Fallows (the post source) also added a link to a post he did in 2004 about why Google was a bad investment. I have calculated how many acres $1000 invested in AOL or Microsoft or Google at the right moment could buy on several occasions. It seems so obvious now.]

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