By Rachel Chalmers Cult search engine Google has emerged from its long beta test to take the stage as a commercial portal. Google differs from rival search engines like AltaVista in that it ranks search results according to how many other sites link to a particular reference. The theory is that the more secondary sources […]
By Rachel Chalmers
Cult search engine Google has emerged from its long beta test to take the stage as a commercial portal. Google differs from rival search engines like AltaVista in that it ranks search results according to how many other sites link to a particular reference. The theory is that the more secondary sources link to a given primary source, the more authoritative that primary source can be held to be. A particular advantage of Google’s model is scalability. We recognized years ago that existing search engines would be unable to keep pace with the massive growth of the web, explained co-founder and CEO Larry Page. Now the company has added a new tool, GoogleScout, which lists groups of resources.
It’s a good idea, even if it doesn’t seem to work especially well. However, Google Inc says it can expect to ride on its excellent reputation for another year at least. In its beta phase, Google has developed a loyal following with its users because it’s easy to use and delivers remarkably relevant results, observed president Sergey Brin. Google also prides itself on its interface and sophisticated text-matching. Its cache serves pages even when the originating server is down. Most strikingly: Google is objective and unbiased, company sources aver. Google is resistant to manipulation of returned results and does not alter the rank of search results based on payment, they claim.
The company offers two services to portals and commercial web sites: SiteSearch, designed to index a particular web site, and WebSearch, a web-wide search engine. Customers for the first service include Red Hat Inc; for the second, the Netscape division of America Online Inc. Founded in 1998 by Page and Brin, who were Stanford PhD candidates at the time, Google remains privately held, though Kleiner Perkins Caulfied & Byers and Sequoia Capital are among those to have taken equity stakes.
