Sunday, November 16, 2008
Jill Whalen on why Google has become so popular (Page 199)
The main reason why Google took off was simply because it was a better search engine than the competition. Whalen gives a quote, “Try this; if you can’t find what you are looking for with Alta Vista or the other engines, try this one.”. This is exactly how I remember it. Back in elementary school I was looking for something for a class assignment and had a very hard time finding the information I needed. Then someone suggested that I try to search with Google instead, and it worked. I didn’t switch exclusively to Google form that day on, but when ever I was looking for something I included a search with Google. For me, I think what made the scale tip over was when I noticed the simplicity of the Google design compared to for example Alta Vista, something that Whalen also mentions as part of Google’s success.
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4 comments:
I may be alone here, but I didn't really notice a difference when I switched. I just switched because Google seemed faster (perhaps thanks to the simplicity of the design) and because it was the popular choice. But I was perhaps 12 years old or so when I started using Google, so I didn't do that many narrow searches that really tested the search engine's capability.
There are people who don't like google even though google has strong search engine and simple to use. Google doesn't success well in Korea. Because Google didnp't catch propensity of Korean. For me, I use Google because many information and easy to use. I think each country have different propensity so if one company try to expand their territoy, the company should analysis within different point of view.
I have to admit that I switched over to Google incredibly late, not really becoming a frequent user til just a few years back. So I can't really comment on that it was being a better search engine that lead Google to success, even though I today see its' superiority as a search engine. But I have to agree with Filip because I actually believe that it was more the simplicity in Google's design that was and is the main factor to tip the scale in Google's favour. People like Simplicity and Google's interface is the height of user friendly.
I agree. Google makes search more sophisticated and simple. Also, I like the simple design, which I believe it is a success factor. However, still, google has enormous amount of search results, which people normally don't look at (only first page or so). Moving forward, hope we could experience more customized search...
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