Posts tagged as:

Google

The New York Post on Bing vs. Google? Really?

by Joey deVilla on June 15, 2009

New York Post logo The New York Post is a “scandal sheet” tabloid newspaper that’s best known for its sensationalistic, hilarious headlines. A few examples:

  • When beer magnate Freddy Heineken was kidnapped, they ran a story titled No Deposit, No Return.
  • When New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was linked to a prostitution ring: Ho No.
  • On the possibility of a “Deep Impact”-style collision of a cosmic object with Earth: Kiss Your Asteroid Goodbye.
  • When Newsweek retracted its story about the interrogation tactic of flushing copies of the Qu’ran down the toilet: Holy Shiite.
  • A famous one from 1982: Headless Body in Topless Bar.

There’s even a book that features the best (worst?) of their wacky headlines.

So when you read the Fear Grips Google story in the Post, you should remember that tech really isn;t their forte and that you might want to take it with a grain of salt. I think Search Engine Land sums it up best:

Bing is probably better than Google anticipated and early indications are favorable in terms of user adoption; however not on any scale to threaten Google’s position. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google is taking Bing seriously and trying to carefully assess its algorithm.

Still, the graphic accompanying the Post’s article, Fear Grips Google, is amusing:

"The Searchers" Bing vs. Google infographic from the New York Post

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“Why They Quit Google”, the Quick Version

by Joey deVilla on January 18, 2009

The big TechCrunch article of the day is about a private discussion group in which Google’s HR department asked former employees to post messages explaining reasons why they left the company. TechCrunch published posts from the thread; in case you didn’t feel like reading them all, I took a tally of the complaints in the thread and gathered them up in the table and chart below. Enjoy!

Complaint Count
Unhappy with the hiring process, especially how long it took 10
Low relative pay, benefits or relocation package 9
Management: either micro or not at all 8
Workaholic culture 3
Lost in the shuffle 3

 

why_they_left_google

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Universal Zoom Levels for Google Maps, Live Search Maps and Yahoo! Maps

by Joey deVilla on November 9, 2008

Google Maps, Live Search (a.k.a. Microsoft Virtual Earth) Maps and Yahoo! Maps are all based on Navteq’s mapping technologies. As a result, the tiles used in rendering the maps are the same size, and if you set the zoom to equivalent levels in each, you can seamlessly switch between the three. Take a look at the map below, which shows a map of Toronto as rendered by Google Maps, Live Search Maps and Yahoo! Maps:

Seamless stitched-together map of Toronto, with the left third rendered by Google Maps, the middle third rendered by Live Search Maps and the right third rendered by Yahoo! Maps

The article Switching Between Mapping APIs and Universal Zoom Levels at David Janes’ Code Weblog explains that the mapping systems differ in their zoom levels:

  • Google Maps has 20 levels of zoom, ranging from 0 (out in space) to 19 (pretty close to ground level).
  • Live Search Maps has 19 levels of zoom, ranging from 1 (out in space, but not as far out as Google Maps’ 0) to 19 (pretty close to ground level). Live Search Maps’ zoom levels are equivalent to Google Maps’; for example, zoom level 5 mean the same level of zoom in both Google Maps and Live Search Maps.
  • Yahoo! Maps provides the fewest level of zoom – a mere seventeen. Their counting system is the opposite of Google Maps’ and Live Search Maps; in the Yahoo! system, larger numbers mean farther away from the ground, not closer. The closest you can zoom in with Yahoo! Maps is zoom level 1 (street block level, equivalent to Google’s and Live Searh’s zoom level 17) and the farthest you can zoom out is zoom level 17 (equivalent to Google’s and Live Search’s zoom level 1).

David proposes a universal zoom level and provides code to do conversions between it and Google’s, Live Search’s and Yahoo!’s systems.

Links

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Most Google Users Ignore Everything After the First Three Results

by Joey deVilla on June 16, 2008

I would’ve thought that they ignore everything after the first page, but ReputationDefender says that according to a Cornell University Study [PDF], most Google users ignore everything after the first three results.

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The Real Threat to Google

by Joey deVilla on April 28, 2008

According to a BusinessWeek article, the real threat to Google isn’t Microsoft or Yahoo!, but cell phones:. “As more people use cell phones and their tiny glass screens to gain access to the Internet, Google and its fellow online advertisers will have less space, or what’s called ad inventory, to place marketing messages for customers. Google makes money selling ad inventory. And its ad inventory is diminished on a cell phone.”

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Filter Google Results by Date with a URL Trick

April 28, 2008

Filter Google Results by Date with a URL Trick: “Google can reorder search and news results from the last day, week, a few months, or entire year by adding a small string to the end of the search URL. Just add this string — &as_qdr=d — to the address bar and hit enter. You’ll get [...]

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Google Translate’s Strange Results

October 23, 2007

Here’s something pointed out by a guy on Reddit, who took his cue from an entry in the French blog Zorgloob: take a look what happens when you enter sarkozy sarkozy sarkozy (as in French president Nicolas Sarkozy) into Google Translate and select a French-to-English translation:

Here’s some other input that yields interesting output:

sarkozy is chirac [...]

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Google Tidbits

October 21, 2007

For your lazy (or perhaps not-so-lazy…maybe you’re hitting that Erlang book — and good for you if you are!) Sunday reading, here are some Google stories for your enjoyment.

The Google Way: Give Engineers Room – A New York Times article in which Google software engineer Bharat Mediratta talks about the “Google 20%” — the portion [...]

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Shipping Container Geekery

October 19, 2007

Enterprise Computing in a Shipping Container
The idea of setting up a computing center in a shipping container isn’t new. Sun has Project Blackbox, “a prototype of the world’s first virtualized datacenter–built into a shipping container and optimized to deliver extreme energy, space, and performance efficiencies”. The idea is create a computing center that you could [...]

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Did a Blabby Google Employee Spill the Beans About the gPhone?

September 25, 2007

Michael Bazely writes that a loose-lipped Google employee at the Apple Store in Emeryville confirmed the existence of the fabled gPhone:

So I’m standing in the Emeryville Apple store today trying to troubleshoot a problem with a sales rep when a young woman bolts up to us saying she wants an iPhone. Like, now. After some [...]

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Google Maps: Now Embeddable, Just Like YouTube Videos

August 21, 2007

Expect to see more maps embedded in blog entries shortly: Google Maps are now embeddable, YouTube-style. No longer do you need an API key or JavaScript know-how to add a Google Map to your blog entries and web pages — if you know how to embed a YouTube video, you also know how to embed [...]

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Google Directions Now Include a Rush Hour Estimate

August 2, 2007

It may be a small addition, but it’s a useful one. You know how Google Maps directions give you an estimate of how long your trip will take? They now include an additional estimate: how long your trip will take in traffic.

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