The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Google (1) vs. Yahoo (1)

It's interesting to note, given Joel's comment "I was going to write about how the search for autotrephination on Google only has one result, which is surprising", that Yahoo's newly launched search service only returns one result as well! Interestingly, they both point to different web pages. Clearly, both search engines could use some work, and there may still be a use for services that aggregate search engine results.

Jesse Savage
Saturday, February 21, 2004

You mean like these?

http://www.dogpile.com/
http://metasearch.com/

Bathmophobic skier
Saturday, February 21, 2004

> autotrephination

Before I search I just want to take a wild guess that this refers to punching holes in one's own head in order to let the bad spirits out. I hope it's not a new grunge trend like spliting the tongue in two. Darn kids these days. In my day, they never punched holes into their own skulls.

Remarkable, I used trepining in a sentence only yesterday.

Ed the Millwright
Saturday, February 21, 2004

...I'm back. Well I got it right. Didn't know there was a movie about the subject. Problem is, i've seen Pi twice, including on opening night, and I don't recall anything at all about autotrephination. I recall it had to do with the Kabbalah and the Hassidic Mafia.

Ed the Millwright
Saturday, February 21, 2004

You apparently left before the end?

Roose
Saturday, February 21, 2004

I think everyone must have short memories regarding Yahoo.

Can you remember the X11 pop-under ads Yahoo served for years? The difficulty it took to get a site added to their directory? The awful "Your connection is too slow" dialog banner ads etc. Google have always respected their users more than Yahoo.

Matthew Lock
Saturday, February 21, 2004

Mathew,

Yeah Google did a good job of keeping usability and respect for the user in mind. A clean, simple, fast loading main page. They express human warmth through their "Google" title art. Simple, elegant, totally effective.

I find it ironic that Yahoo tried hard to be a web portal, while Google stuck to purely being a good search engine, and ended up being a better web portal than Yahoo (IMO). I wonder how many people have Google as their default webpage.

VP
Sunday, February 22, 2004