Pretty damn good.

Now can they manage my mutual funds?

What if Google starts a house-cleaning service too? They could make my bed, deliver my milk, not to mention making Google brand furniture, cars, etc.

Everyone suspects that Starbucks or Microsoft will end up taking over the world and establishing a massive, corporate government which everyone will work for.

What if it turns out to be Google?

Julian Elson

I am also surprised that it lacks direct copiers.

This might have something to do with the US government granting Google a monopoly ;)

That said, there are some competitors which use similar algorithms (but, I guess, not covered by the Page Rank patent)... I read about one on Slashdot long ago, but I had forgotten the name. It turns out it's called Teoma (Sidenote: Brad, you should take your own advice: I did a search for "Google competitors" on Google ;)

Jim: actually, hubs-and-authorities type algorithms are probably useful any place where you face an information overload, financial domains included. In fact, there is some evidence that humans naturally organize themselves into hubs and authorities (it would be neat if an economic model were able to take advantage of this fact...?)

But for me, the biggest thing with Google News isn't the headlines, but the search. Search for "Bush approval ratings" in the main Google search, then search for it in the news section. Note the dates of the articles you get!

Of course, I spoke in jest about Google managing my mutual funds.

Still, they could do as well as Janus, I bet. A sad commentary.

Google is -so- useful. I've been using it as an informal spell checker for some time now (if you misspell a word, it suggests a correct spelling). However, I think it's getting a little too frisky, sometimes-- the other day I did a search on "steven king" which it changed, without -any- comment to "stephen king"

I should add that "steven king" wasn't the only phrase in the search, and I did intend to use "stephen king", but still, I'd prefer to be asked what I actually mean.

We already know what you mean.

Few people appreciate that Google's audience dwarfs any individual publisher's audience... even in the publisher's specific niche. Publishers who play the game well now get more visitors from Google than they reach in print.

So far, Google has been demand driven. Now, on any given topic, Google can present its own package to the people who use the service 5 billion times a month.

When the kinks are worked out -- why is Pokermag.com a source? -- News.Google will upend the news business. Newspaper home pages should atrophy as publishers pour their programming resources into optimizing to serve Google.

"Newspaper home pages should atrophy as publishers pour their programming resources into optimizing to serve Google."

Hopefully, this is wrong. The finest Newspapers are a treasure and need to be presented in their entirety. The New York Times on Google will never suffice for an educated reader.

I like the new google news service particularly for its timeliness. But it simply does not cover a broad enough range of topics or enough depth to replace much of my obsessive news searching.

Now if only they would add Collaborative Filtering!

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/COLLFILT.html

Rob Sperry

Google has a lot of odd stuff in development actually, some of which they put online at http://labs.google.com for people to test out. They don't advertise the site to keep the server load down.

In the spirit of frustrating that, I've personally switched to using their mouseless search as my default homepage. Highly recommended for anyone else who hates their mouse, btw.

I'm officially amazed with Google. I had never heard of it until...when? I don't know how I heard of it other than knowing it wasn't through advertising and now it's my homepage.

And whatever its algorithms, it's the most complete and far-reaching search engine on the web. (Although, try typing in the word *the* for the search -- it will give you an estimate for the number of pages it found that exceeds the total number of searchable pages listed on its homepage.)

Brad, if there's another service that compares to Google, pass it along. I haven't seen it.

I like Google, but if you ask me, the technology is inhumane and should be banned! See the evidence:
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

"I like the new google news service particularly for its timeliness. But it simply does not cover a broad enough range of topics or enough depth to replace much of my obsessive news searching."

Watch that space.

Four years ago, when Google first launched, their Web search capability was as basic as their news search is now. If history is a guide, they will quietly add one feature after another, until you can do pretty much anything you want.

BTW the other new entry in the search engine contest is www.wisenut.com.