the story of search engines

once upon a time, not too in the distant past, there was a world that was plagued with unsorted files over the internet and was waiting for a messiah who would aid his believers in accessing the files from the utter chaos that was rampant or so goes the prophecy.

then came 1994 and with it the calling of the messiah! two students graduated and paved path for millions to help them access any files they chose to, with relative ease and the believers revelled in glory basking in the splendor of what became to be known as the father of all search engines - Yahoo!

five years went by and yet again another messiah answered the calling of his people. but? the world already had its messiah and who was this brat to hog up the spotlight. it so happened that the former had indexed the forbidden site and with that ensued all the commercial crap of the e-world. ensnared in its grip, Yahoo! tried to escape but in vain. no more could it cater its people with search results they desired but hiding them beneath the bloated commercial garbage.

and so the world needed another savior and then came Google and things have been pretty much the Google way. a folklore suggests it is the Yahweh of search engines.

so what was the silver bullet that Google possessed and Yahoo! didnt? before beginning, i would like you all to know that i am writing this from a totally my point of view ( which happens to be not so broad considering i am unaware of the events during 1994, so cut me some slack!)

coming back, what did Google have? from my point of view Google kept it simple. the motive of Google was that of a search engine and that it sought to provide with exemplary standards. and it did. but wait a minute wasnt/isnt Yahoo! also a search engine with more experience than Google? yes, but i think there were couple of mistakes that Yahoo! made which cost it.

Yahoo! had started out as a search engine and later on progressed to various other activities to keep its customers on its pages as much as possible and thereby earning more revenue. cool,but what happened was, it also invited a lot of commercialization. with commercialization comes degradation in quality if not watched over carefully. this is exactly what happened. it crowded its page with varieties to lure and this went on fine as long as there was no competitor. and then suddenly providing meaningful search results wasnt a priority anymore.

stating that Google didnt vie on commercialization would be wrong, but Google had its priorities straight. it started out as a search engine and maintains its image as a search engine. if one would glance at the interface that Google has provided, it hasnt changed much. the main essence remains the same. a text box to type your query in and a search button. cant get simpler than that.

where Yahoo! failed Google succeeded. i guess it understood the thinking of the common man. rather than dumping him with a plethora of meaningless options, it thought of keeping things simple and direct.when it announced of a 1 gb mailbox, all Yahoo! could reply to it was with an increase of 100 mbs.

Yahoo! revolutionized chatting (started with AOL). it mandated the download of the client to enable chatting. Google went one step further. it embedded the chat feature in the inbox. hence if you want to chat and though you dont have the client, you will still be able to accomplish your work.

Google's approach to mail- GMail is lightening fast and a clutter free interface. Yahoo! tried to give a fitting reply by sprucing up its looks but the time taken for loading, where it mattered the most, was too long.

then GMail came up with online text/document editing. this helped the user not to make any assumptions of the system he was sitting on. he would have his tools everywhere. Yahoo! was nowhere near this scene. GMail isnt commercial free either! rather than images that distract our attention as in Yahoo!, it resorted to using text that didnt divert our attention. but placed strategically enough to catch our attention.

one of the things that Google became instantly rich was because of its AdBots. these were scripts crawling through the cyber space either collecting information or displaying an advertisement pertaining to the subject of the site (if you would notice there are adwords in Gmail when a mail is read, and they are close to the words / content in the mail. and also if the mail happened to contain the number through which checking the status of an activity was possible, it would on its own provide a link to the site with the results corresponding to our number. no hassles.

these are some of the many examples that point to only one fact: Google was far adept in its social engineering skills than Yahoo!. it had the correct notion of the common man's needs and sought to it that they are catered yet keeping its focus on producing refined search results all the time. this translated as more "quality" time spent on Google's pages.

so there wasnt much to think over, quality wins over quantity.

i guess i am pretty much done now. Google seems to be the messiah and lets hope it is here to stay.

cheers,
kyos

P.S.: the post might have sounded pro-Google and anti-Yahoo! but i assure you that i have given an impartial observation of what i have experienced and have not placed either in bad light.