As much as I love eBay (and I do) I have also noticed this, much to my annoyance - primarily because a good chunk of the Google searches I do are in an effort to accurately identify things I plan to sell on eBay! I have some antique glass pieces to sell and I’ve been trying to identify the patterns and manufacturers. For example, I have several pieces with the Westmoreland hallmark, but if you do a search on “Westmoreland patterns” you’ll end up with a ton of eBay listings.
To be fair to Google, I’m not entirely sure it’s “disguising” links as much as it is just picking up keywords in eBay listings. The URLs have nothing in them that indicates they’re going to take you to eBay, so I wonder if Google is picking up the URLs of the hosting sites - my eBay listings are done through a sellers’ program and the photos are hosted on a separate server. Technically, they’re not on eBay’s site, therefore not on eBay’s URL. Does that make sense?
On a quite related subject, does anybody else find About.comextremely irritating? It’s almost staggering how they’ve managed to acquire such a comprehensive collection of frothy crap. Almost every possible google search seems to lead to some corner of about.com. “Looking for ways to cause pain that won’t go away as fast as you can say “thumbscrew”? Try About Torture Devices!” As soon as you click on them, they assault you with pop-ups and incredibly unhelpful links. How’d they get so damn big?
I have figured out over the years how to phrase my search queries to filter out most of the crap, but there is still the occassionally mindboggling what-the-hey?
E.g., I’ll hit a page that contiains only the phrase I’m searching on with links to the scammer’s main pages. The only way I can think that this works is that they are monitoring Google’s realtime list of search queries and setting up pages to match. So someone else had Goggled on the same thing earlier and now I get this crap. Weird.
Google is losing ground to All-The-Web. And, whatever happened to wild-card matching???
In short, the crap is overwhelming the good on the 'Net. I remember when selecting a random link usually led to something interesting (at least to someone).
We have had nefarious dealings with several thousand evil supernatural deities. Our health insurance deductable is our everlasting soul, for example (Better hope you don’t get sick twice!)
No, nobody will hand Google $25 billion. That is an estimate of Google’s possible market value after they go public. It doesn’t mean that Google will pocket that much money.
Google will sell shares to the public*. They will sell them at a price set before the sale begins, say $30/share. If Google sells 50 million shares, Google will pocket $1.5 billion. The value of those shares may rise as the market buys and sells the shares. So if the price of a share goes up to $60, Google’s market value will double to $3 billion, but Google still only has the $1.5 billion. The market value is just the price of a share multiplied by the number of outstanding shares. The market value mostly tells you how big the company’s dick is. It doesn’t tell you how much money they have.
Increase the number of outstanding shares and the price of the stock and you can make an example where Google’s market value is $25 billion.
Well, maybe to the public, maybe not. Most IPOs go to big trading companies and the small investor gets shut out. But Google is thinking of auctioning their shares on the internet, so we might actually get a shot at it.
I have found Google-Watch to be a great source of information about what’s going on with Google these days. They also have a search engine that I like a lot better than Google’s.
God, I hope you’re kidding. Ask Jeeves is the worst search engine I’ve ever used (and I’ve been using the web since its inception, pretty much). I have never once gotten a useful result from Ask Jeeves. It’s a mystery to me how they’ve managed to survive as long as they have.
Thanks. StinkPop.
I know we’re just grabbing numbers here, but using your figures the price would have to go from $30/share to $500. And maintain that price. It could happen.
Google Watch is run by a disgruntled link-farmer, who sued Google (and lost) after they tweaked their engine to pay less attention to the clients who paid Google Watch for high placings in searches (using bogus interlinked sites).
His linked arguments against Google are pathetic and are regularly disproven on Slashdot (admittedly a pro-Google site).
Google Watch’s search engine looks like a redirect to Google with snarky comments underneath that even Proxomitron doesn’t delete.
awhile ago I had a $#%&* piece of spyware or adware on my system that literally inserted bogus/spam/porn sites as the first 3-4 hits in google. I was getting ticked at google when I noticed there was a new program in my add/remove programs. After I uninstalled it google went back to normal. (sorry, don’t remember the name of the adware/spyware.
Try downloading and running Spybot and/or Adaware and see if it helps.
Google-Watch is not a reliable source of information. It does raise some fair points about internet privacy and online awareness, but these apply to everywhere, not just Google.
But as Petter said, the guy who own GoogleWatch has a particular axe to grind. His problem is that Google doesn’t rank his website is as importantly as he thinks it is. (From what I can see his web site appears to be a library of documents of particular interest to conspiracy theorists.) Therefore Google must be unfair, evil and part of a conspiracy. See Google-Watch-Watch
So you say the “pro-Google” folks on Slashdot frequently bend over backwards to discredit Google Watch? Do tell. (And it has “snarky comments” too? Dear God, no!)
Having used Google Watch’s search engine almost exclusively for some time now, I can attest that it is extremely useful and user-friendly and I am much more satisified with the overall results I’ve gotten there than at Google. Getting superior results suggests to me it is not just a mere redirect (though certainly such an operation is a factor, and if it is, so what?).
I tried it out. It is a redirect. It’s even called a “proxy” on the site. I assume it is simply anonymising your query for you, and stripping out any advertising boxes etc. The superior results are imaginary and the usefulness and user-friendliness are features of Google, not Google-Watch.
Whether you have a problem with this depends on whether you see the irony in complaining bitterly about a free service’s methods of operation, and then using it all the same. I suspect that Google might not be so open minded in their Acceptable Use policies and the only reason they haven’t blocked it so far is because he’s small potatoes and any action would just fuel his persecution fantasies.
I don’t want to sound totally uncritical of Google. Google is in a near monopolistic position and it’s very difficult to do anything in complete fairness and above criticism in that position. Monopolies are rarely good things for anyone other than the company in question. But I don’t buy the majority of the paranoid rantings of Google-Watch’s owner.
No, I don’t think I said that. Let me check. No, I didn’t say that.
Next time you try to summarize my position, it might help if you included a bit more of my previous post.
Now then, Slashdot runs a lot of Google stories. It’s a big, popular search engine with a lots of nifty features, so stories about are interesting to Slashdot’s audience.
Whenever such a story is run, someone mentions Google Watch.
Someone then either mentions Google Watch Watch or posts a summary rebuffing Google Watch’s arguments.
In no way can this be construed as “bending over backwards”, I was merely pointing out that there were regularly a lot of arguments presented against Google Watch on a major tech discussion site.
As for the snarky comments, I don’t think I want my search results from a site that first pops up a Sexiest Man Poll when I disable my popup blocker, refers to Google as Sellout Central only to then use their engine, has graphics like this, this and this linked under its search bar… The list goes on. It’s simply an unprofessional site run by a net kook.
Wow, anecdotal evidence, let me pick my jaw up off the floor (but hey, if your idea of userfriendly is that returned URLs are pink instead of green, no skin off my back).
But, in the interest of fairness, let’s run some queries on both sites.
Reading what I’ve written so far, it certainly sounds like I could use some “online prozac”. Let’s see… Ok, exact same results from both Google and … well, a front end that points to Google.
“Purchase Windows XP”? Don’t mind if I do. From the exact same suppliers suggested by both sites? Weird.
Finally, let me check out some “traditional indian embrodery”[sic]
Once more, the exact same results are returned, except Google is helpful enough to suggest that I might be looking for “embroidery” instead. RTA, is there any chance you could specify which search terms are giving you better results on Google Watch? Any insight on how such a thing could even be possible?
Look, I don’t give a rats ass about Google. It fits my purposes for the time being, it sometime returns wacky results, and I’m sure there are other engines out there that are just as useful.
That doesn’t change the fact that Google Watch is full of it and has no objective benefits over Google. Why anyone would recommend it in the face of all evidence and common sense is beyond my understanding.
While I hate that I get crap websites now on my first page of Google, it DOES offer lots of laffs.
Here is what I get on my first page of Google when I punch in “fetid toe cheese”:
fetid toe cheese can be found at eZanga.com
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Forget Mad Libs!
One more: “Green snot rockets”:
green snot rockets can be found at eZanga.com
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*
Now, now. He could very well be right. After all, I doubt everyone in the CIA during the 1960s was involved in assassinations and faking the moon landing. I bet they could have had a couple interns following him around for a while.
On the topic at hand, I haven’t noticed Google turning up “search engine” links or advertisements in the top of the results lists. I’ve seen them several pages in but not at the top. What I have seen are a lot of discussion lists getting into the higher results. Message boards, archived listserv messages, etc. I’ve been hitting a lot more frequently.
