Courtesy: The Tech Herald
It looks like the kings of search aren’t resting on their laurels. According to a post on one of the many Google blogs, the company is looking to make a better, more accurate search than the one they’re running now, and they’re hoping that you’ll want to help.
Some parts of this system aren’t completely finished yet, so we’d welcome feedback on any issues you see. We invite you to visit the web developer preview of Google’s new infrastructure at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and try searches there.
You can read the full post here, but basically all they want you to do is search from that URL. If you don’t like what you get, scroll to the bottom of the results, click “Dissatisfied,” and then type in your complaint along with the word caffeine (apparently they’re screening out anything without the word caffeine).
I find this fascinating for reasons beyond “Oh cool, I get to play with Google’s new search before its launch!” To my knowledge, Google has never involved the public into its development of search, and I can only think that they’re doing so now because they believe their business is come under enough fire from Bing, which is now the number two search engine in the world given that the recent Yahoo-Microsoft deal has Yahoo using Bing.
While Bing is certainly not a gift from above, it is a damn fine search engine. Some pretty clever (and relatable ads) are probably also serving to help along Microsoft’s case that we need a new sort of search engine.
At the end of the day, I’m not sure if I think usefulness is going to be what wins a search battle. Google is nigh-untouchable with its current marketshare, but Bing has been successful in grabbing up a pretty big piece of the current search business – the Yahoo deal put Bing up to around 20% market share.
