CIL2006, Day 1: Opening Remarks and Keynote by Chris Sherman

Posted on March 22, 2006
Filed Under Computers in Libraries, Search Engines |

First, for Tom Hogan’s opening remarks:

***************

Keynote: Search Engine Update, Chris Sherman

Starting to see true differentiation and divergence among the major search engines:

Ask:

Jeeves retired. first-class search engine, as good as or better than the others
They also have Gary Price
Many new tools. Web Answers - a natural laguage search that actually works.
great map tool - better than google and yahoo. Even gives driving/walking directions, depending on what you want to do

Google:

MSN:

still spending money to develop a search engine and a search advertising network
You need version 3.0 with all microsoft products… so wait awhile
Clustering (sorta like Northern Light used to do)
Birdseye and street level imagery - nice satellite imagery

Yahoo

Pace seems to have slowed at Yahoo
turning into a “people mediated” search - with tagging and personalization
Yahoo Mindset - a version of the search engine that has a slider that can be dragged towards shopping or research to personalize search results

Google and Books

Google is probably legal
Publishers VCR myopia factor - it will probably be better for publishers in the long run - it will help sell more books
Publisher will control how much content is displayed - they alwo authorize Google to scan the books
You can’t copy or print the text…
They plan to link to Worldcat pretty soon
Browse full text of public domain materials
He thinks they are scanning books so Google can learn and improve search technology…
lots of lawsuits

Google’s DoJ Request

asked for 1 million random web addresses and records of all Google searches for one week. Other search engines complied! Yikes
Google refused because of privacy concerns - good for them.
50k random URLs & 5k queries will be ultimately provided
many problems and absurdities with thte request in the first place:
won’t show what people are searching for…
random URLS don’t show searches, relevance, algorhythms, etc
also doesn’t factor in automatic queries

China and search:

US is bashing search engines over China censorship
But the search engiens are simply obeying the law
The Chinese people prefer the censorship to not having search engines at all
only a relatively few topics are censored
savvy chinese web users know they can reach virtually any web site using a proxy

Conclusions:

search is getting exciting again
new tools are making content more searchable
threats to privacy and individual liberties are subtly increasing in the US, while ironically things seem sto be improving in China

Share: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.