The PC Informant » Search

Videos about Google services

Vic Laurie — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:01:42 +0000

Google has made some videos to explain a little bit about how its services work. The videos are pretty elementary but they are short so you might take a look.

How search works:

How search ads work:

How Google Apps work:

Does Google’s search algorithm rule the Web?

Vic Laurie — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:56:43 +0000

That’s the thesis of a Wired Magazine article by Steven Levy. Before Google, there were many search engines. But the search algorithms of Google made a difference. Somehow Google searches were faster and more accurate. And Google grew and grew. The search algorithms also change constantly. As Google amassed greater and greater databases, it kept tweaking its algorithms to match the way people search. In fact, the average searcher does not formulate a search query with any great skill and Google’s forte is figuring out what the searcher actually wants. Misspelled words, mistaken syntax, Google takes it all in and does a remarkable job of interpreting what you really meant. One thing that has come out of the mountains of data that Google has accumulated is the power of really large databases, something that researchers in science and other disciplines are beginning to appreciate.

Levy’s article discusses how Google works. Here is an example excerpt:

And Google keeps improving. Recently, search engineer Maureen Heymans discovered a problem with “Cindy Louise Greenslade.” The algorithm figured out that it should look for a person — in this case a psychologist in Garden Grove, California — but it failed to place Greenslade’s homepage in the top 10 results. Heymans found that, in essence, Google had downgraded the relevance of her homepage because Greenslade used only her middle initial, not her full middle name as in the query. “We needed to be smarter than that,” Heymans says. So she added a signal that looks for middle initials. Now Greenslade’s homepage is the fifth result.

At any moment, dozens of these changes are going through a well-oiled testing process. Google employs hundreds of people around the world to sit at their home computer and judge results for various queries, marking whether the tweaks return better or worse results than before. But Google also has a larger army of testers — its billions of users, virtually all of whom are unwittingly participating in its constant quality experiments. Every time engineers want to test a tweak, they run the new algorithm on a tiny percentage of random users, letting the rest of the site’s searchers serve as a massive control group. There are so many changes to measure that Google has discarded the traditional scientific nostrum that only one experiment should be conducted at a time. “On most Google queries, you’re actually in multiple control or experimental groups simultaneously,” says search quality engineer Patrick Riley. Then he corrects himself. “Essentially,” he says, “all the queries are involved in some test.” In other words, just about every time you search on Google, you’re a lab rat.

Google everywhere

Vic Laurie — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:06:02 +0000

No longer just a search engine, Google seems to be everywhere. In fact, the word “empire” is an apt description. Just how apt is described by the following video clip. It shows how Google has expanded into omnipresence:

Good50- an easier to read Google search facility

Vic Laurie — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:13:01 +0000

My eyes are far from what they used to be so I was interested to read about a new search page aimed at people with less than perfect eyesight. A interesting side note is that it was first created by a 16-year-old girl for her grandfather. The Washington Post has written about it and Steve Bass mentioned it in his newsletter. The site is called Good50. It uses Google but has a larger search field and zoom capabilities. There is also a high-contrast option with a black background and light-colored type.

Why your search results may differ from someone else’s

Vic Laurie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:26:17 +0000

That search engines want to tailor your search results according to personal preferences is not news. They’ve been doing that through cookies for some time. But you may be surprised by the extent that searches are personalized. According to a post at the Register, Google says that it is using a combination of things to personalize about 20% of searches:

Speaking this afternoon at the search-obsessed SMX West conference in Santa Clara, Horling – a developer with Google’s personalized search team – said that up to one in five searches are tailored to the user’s particular location, web history, or online contacts. “As it stands today,” Horling explained, “between these three techniques, just about every user who’s engaging with Google search today is affected.”

All about Google

Vic Laurie — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:41:57 +0000

Google is so often in the news that I could write about the company and nothing else. Here is a list of some of the latest about Google:

Does Google Make Us Stupid?
Majority answering Pew Research survey say “no” but vocal minority (21%) says “yes”.
Top ten Google settings you should know about
Lifehacker selection.
Introducing Google Maps Labs, your passport to a world of new features
Experimental features for Google Maps.
How Google Buzz for mobile will change your life
In his Computerworld column, Mike Elgan writes,”For people with the latest iPhone or Android phone, Google Buzz will soon become an amazing, indispensable app — and a glimpse into the future for all of us.”
Google Buzz Isn’t Exactly Humming Along
Katherine Boehret talks about Google Buzz at All Things Digital.
Google gets go-ahead to buy, sell energy
FERC approves Google application to be an energy company.

Microsoft-Yahoo search deal approved

Vic Laurie — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:51:57 +0000

MarketWatch reports:

The U.S. Justice Department and the European Union have approved a deal in which Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. would combine their Web search operations, the companies said Thursday.

In a joint statement, the two companies said they expect to complete the transitioning of Yahoo’s search activities to Microsoft by the end of 2010, but some advertising partners may not be moved over until the following year. All customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012.

Helping computers understand language

Vic Laurie — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:58:50 +0000

One of the things that sets humans apart from other animals is our unique ability with language. Even small children seem to have built-in abilities to understand fairly complex linguistic constructions. Understanding how to program computers to understand even the rudiments of a human language is a major problem. It is an area where Google has a natural interest and the Google Blog recently posted about it:

An irony of computer science is that tasks humans struggle with can be performed easily by computer programs, but tasks humans can perform effortlessly remain difficult for computers. We can write a computer program to beat the very best human chess players, but we can’t write a program to identify objects in a photo or understand a sentence with anywhere near the precision of even a child.

Enabling computers to understand language remains one of the hardest problems in artificial intelligence. The goal of a search engine is to return the best results for your search, and understanding language is crucial to returning the best results.

The post goes on to explain some aspects of its search algorithms for dealing with the complexity of words.

Google vs. China

Vic Laurie — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:58:28 +0000

Ever since Google’s announcement about ending Chinese censorship on its search engine and about the hacking attempts on its database, the Internet has been awash in news and posts. Ars Technica has posted a summary of stories to help us all keep up with the ongoing saga.

Added later: A new story from John Markoff at the New York Times reports that evidence has been found that the attacks on Google used Chinese software:

An American computer security researcher has found what he says he believes is strong evidence of the digital fingerprints of Chinese authors in the software programs used in attacks against Google.

Google and China

Vic Laurie — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:51:03 +0000

Clearly, China is too important for any search company to ignore. Like other companies, Google has tried to develop a Chinese presence while balancing the Chinese government’s censorship. Google has been criticized for bowing to government censorship demands but now Google says it won’t censor and may leave China. The company has even posted an announcement, A New Approach to China, at the Official Google Blog. It’s worth reading and begins:

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

Danny Sullivan’s analysis at Search Engine Land is also worth reading. He gives some examples of Google’s censorship of items deemed sensitive by the Chinese government.