Google's uncertain future

[steven36]

It's a story synonymous with the birth of the mainstream internet. In the mid-1990s, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two graduate students at Stanford, started work on a project to rank web pages and let people search for things. That little project of course became Google, a service now so ubiquitous it's a verb, while Page and Brin became Silicon Valley legends. This week, Page and Brin announced they are officially stepping down as the leaders of Google's parent company and will now take on a more supervisory role.

 

 

 

It is thus tempting to say that an era is over. But Brin and Page had stepped away from the everyday running of their company some time ago. Instead, it is perhaps more interesting to think about how the company they started is at something of a crossroads, currently caught between their search-based past, and their AI-powered future.

 

Even now, despite parent company Alphabet housing an almost bizarre array of projects, from life extension group Calico to Waymo's self-driving cars to the secretive "moonshot factory" called X, nearly 90 percent of Google's revenue still comes from its ad and search engine business. Meanwhile, the reign of Google CEO Sundar Pichai — now CEO of the whole company — has essentially been about focusing Google's more ragged elements, and trying to turn those moonshots into businesses.

 

But if you think about what now defines Google — that is, what defines it in the popular imagination — it is almost exclusively things like its Assistant, which appears in its smart speakers and on Android, its AI projects like DeepMind, and of course, Android itself, the world's most popular operating system. It is, in essence, a search company practically speaking, but as a brand, it is a company known for almost everything else.

 

That sense of what Google is to the broader public is a useful thing to dwell on. A decade or two ago, Google was the company with the billboards that advertised jobs using complicated math problems and the cutesy, colorful design of its web services like Gmail. Google meant fast, clean, online tools that just worked because they were created by the sharpest minds. And that was what the web demanded then: tools to help you sift through an ocean of stuff.

 

Once a digital life became the norm, however, we needed something smarter to help us sort through the mass and surfeit of information. It's not enough to just search for something now; it has to come to you. Recommendations, personalization, or a notification telling you it's time to leave your appointment — that is what we expect from tech now.

 

So as a company, Google is focused on its AI future. Almost everything the company does these days is honed in on the predictive, or the whiz bang of artificial intelligence. Its Duplex tool, which phones places and makes appointments using an AI assistant voice, or its Smart Compose feature which predicts what you want to type are exemplary of this next phase of Google's life — a company that once said its purpose was to organize the world's information is now looking to automate or streamline the stuff of everyday life.

 

Of course, the other thing Google famously used to say was "Don't be evil." The unofficial slogan looks quite different as the decade draws to a close. Not only has the company gotten off relatively free regarding its highly invasive data-collection practices, particularly compared to rival Facebook, it has lately showed signs of becoming the evil empire itself. Tales of employees being fired for attempting to organize labor have stained the company's image, in addition to claims of a culture hostile to women, and its own problems with fake news.

 

Google, like all its massive tech peers, is facing the consequences of its own success. It now has not just billions of users around the world, but a role in the day-to-day life of those people. As a result, it has a social responsibility that extends far beyond pat slogans, and also like its tech peers, it has struggled to meet its obligations.

 

As a business, Google continues to rake in money; it made $7 billion in profit last quarter. But some high profile projects continue to flail, particularly its Pixel phone and laptop lines, which have neither managed to sell many units at all, nor conquer its now notorious hardware problems. And all those genuinely innovative little tools like Duplex have yet to coalesce into anything nearly as stable or as profitable as its ad and search businesses. We don't even really know how much money the company makes from Android, despite it being used by billions.

 

Google's rise was one of the defining tales of the 2000s. But now that the web and the world has moved into a different era, one that is not only far more skeptical of tech and its approach to privacy but also its general place in our lives, Google needs to figure out who they actually are. Yes, they have an origin story — but now what?

 

Source

[mp68terr]

1 hour ago, steven36 said:

In the mid-1990s, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two graduate students at Stanford, started work on a project to rank web pages and let people search for things. That little project of course became Google...

What about WebCrawler, Altavista and others? Weren't these search engines there before these two students started their project? The article starts as if these people invented search engines.

[steven36]

45 minutes ago, mp68terr said:

What about WebCrawler, Altavista and others? Weren't these search engines there before these two students started their project? The article starts as if these people invented search engines.

No it dont the WebCrawler, Altavista, Yahoo etc were 1990s , early 2000s .  Yahoo could of bought  Google back then but didn't .  Yahoo bought Altavista in 2003 and shut it down in 2013 Yahoo began using Google for search in 2000.  So  all you been using  since 2000 is Bing and Google . These  search engines  you speak of were there own search engines pre dotcom bubble.  Marissa Mayer who use to work  for Google  ruined Yahoo when she became CEO so they sold  it to Verizon Communications  .

 

Quote

Over Mayer's tenure, The number of monthly visits on Yahoo's home page went down from nearly 10 billion to less than 4.5 while Google's went up from 17 billion to over 56.

 

 ,Yahoo downfall  was they invested in China owned Alibaba  in 2005 buying almost half  while Google  invested only in itself  .

 

Quote

Google beat its rivals in search and increased its operating cash flows. In 2005, both Yahoo and Google earned approximately $2 billion from operations. But afterwards, Google’s cash flows increased two, three, four, and five times from the level set in 2005. In 2010, Google cash flows were now $11 billion. By comparison, Yahoo’s cash flows from operations in 2010 were lower, not less than zero, but $1.2 billion

 

[mp68terr]

35 minutes ago, steven36 said:

No it dont the WebCrawler, Altavista, Yahoo etc were 1990s , early 2000s .  Yahoo could of bought  Google back then but didn't .  Yahoo bought Altavista in 2003 and shut it down in 2013 Yahoo began using Google for search in 2000.  So  all you been using  since 2000 is Bing and Google . These  search engines  you speak of were there own search engines pre dotcom bubble.  Marissa Mayer who use to work  for Google  ruined Yahoo when she became CEO so they sold  it to Verizon Communications  .

Was not speaking about 'after 2000', was referring to the earlier 'mid-1990s' when google was a project while search engines were existing already.

From the same source (wikipedia):

"AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995."

"At launch, the service had two innovations that put it ahead of other search engines available at the time: It used a fast, multi-threaded crawler (Scooter) that could cover many more Web pages than were believed to exist at the time, and it had an efficient back-end search, running on advanced hardware."

Then, "In 2000, AltaVista was used by 17.7% of Internet users while Google was only used by 7% of Internet users, according to Media Metrix."

[steven36]

44 minutes ago, mp68terr said:

Was not speaking about 'after 2000', was referring to the earlier 'mid-1990s' when google was a project while search engines were existing already.

From the same source (wikipedia):

"AltaVista was a Web search engine established in 1995."

"At launch, the service had two innovations that put it ahead of other search engines available at the time: It used a fast, multi-threaded crawler (Scooter) that could cover many more Web pages than were believed to exist at the time, and it had an efficient back-end search, running on advanced hardware."

Then, "In 2000, AltaVista was used by 17.7% of Internet users while Google was only used by 7% of Internet users, according to Media Metrix."

No body cares about what happen when people used  windows 98 they did not say they invented  the search engine they said they invented  one that is now  called Google  the topic is about Google not other  search engines that yahoo  dominated back in the day .  Yahoo made 4 big mistakes  they didn't buy Google  and  Facebook , they invested all there money in Alibaba and didnt sell  to Microsoft  when it was offered . You cant change the past. Verizon is not interested in nothing that not mobile and they own AOL  too, So all that left of these sites you speak of  is archived  matreal you done went way off topic from what the post is talking  about . Google done killed these  search engines already , If anything ever takes there place it  want be one of the ones that dont exist or owned by Verizon!

 

Page ranking  and search engine is 2 different things

 

The eigenvalue problem was suggested in 1976 by Gabriel Pinski and Francis Narin, who worked on scientometrics ranking scientific journals, in 1977 by Thomas Saaty in his concept of Analytic Hierarchy Process which weighted alternative choices,  and in 1995 by Bradley Love and Steven Sloman as a cognitive model for concepts, the centrality algorithm.

 

A search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services, designed by Robin Li in 1996, developed a strategy for site-scoring and page-ranking. Li referred to his search mechanism as "link analysis," which involved ranking the popularity of a web site based on how many other sites had linked to it. RankDex, the first search engine with page-ranking and site-scoring algorithms, was launched in 1996. Li patented the technology in RankDex, with his patent filed in 1997 and granted in 1999.^[ He later used it when he founded Baidu in China in 2000.^[17][18] Google founder Larry Page referenced Li's work as a citation in some of his U.S. patents for PageRank.

 

Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed PageRank at Stanford University in 1996 as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank#History

 

They invented PageRank not search engines. No other  Search Engine can use PageRank because Google  bought  the  rights  too it. from Stanford .

 

The word is a trademark of Google, and the PageRank process has been patented (U.S. Patent 6,285,999). However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google. Google has exclusive license rights on the patent from Stanford University. The university received 1.8 million shares of Google in exchange for use of the patent; it sold the shares in 2005 for $336 million.

[dMog]

the only uncertainty is just how big google will become. Even if the American government steps in and breaks it up, it far too large and powerful to kill, it will only be wounded somewhat and come back bigger and stronger and more untouchable in  a decade or less.. As a model for this, just look at the phone companies and how the government attempted to break them up and where they are now.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/att-breakup-1982-directv-bell-system-2018-02