>>>I don't blame Google for this state of things -- it is understandable for
them to try to beat their competition and they actually do provide a better
service than most other search engines (and they aren't known for
eliminating their competition in dishonest and/or unfair ways, the way
Microsoft does), but I think it could become a really bad problem,
especially regarding use of the web for academic and other serious research
purposes Too often, a web search forms the primary basis of initial
research, even published research in journals, so that someone could
conceivably write a survey article on something that completely omits a
major point of view or even a major set of facts, if the omitted material
isn't easily accessible by Google.>>>

For what it might be worth, before you slam MS for "eliminating their competition in dishonest and/or unfair ways," you had better be able to prove it. Forget the rhetoric and the guesses. MS (Yes, I am a defender of MS) did/does what any large corporation does to become a large corporation and some people do not like it. For any number of reasons that really do not matter. Enough about that.

As for searching Google and how they can improve the process, I think they should help people learn how to do advanced searches. Most users should learn how to improve their search results by properly using an a search engine, but they do not. There are many tricks to find information on Google that go way beyond what most users (and many professional researchers, for that matter) never think of.

Google is THE SE used by most searchers, or so it seems. I have no hard supporting data. If it is true, then we may one day look at Google and ask a few questions about their business practices. I do not blame Google for anything; they are a great company. However, if Google becomes the defacto SE for the web, then they should wonder how long before they are taken to court. They could become a monopoly, just like MS.

Google will never, EVER be able to provide proper searches to suit every user. Take any search term and do a simple Google search. The site indexes perhaps tens of thousands of sites. You might see 456,000 returned results for something you search for and the precise information might be on page 345,765. I know you will never surf to the bottom of the list.

By the way, I just used Google to find the WDL Blog and it was number one on the list of returned search results. I typed in "WDL AND Blog" and there it was, the first listing. When I type "WDL" I get this: "Results 1 - 10 of about 774,000 for WDL." Included in the results was the Wilmington Drama League, a company named WDL Systems, and info about the .WDL file extension.

New sites come and old sites disappear. The web is cluttered with pages and site long ago abandoned or slanted, or inaccurate, incorrect, or filled with the spewing of those with an agenda. The vast numbers of poorly written web sites will always be with us and since Google indexes them, silly results will always arrive.

At the library, I can search the card catalog. If I want books by Hemmingway, I can perform a search and I will not be given a list of 435,443,000 results. For the time being, my card catalog is a better way to search for specific information. On the web, I might find sites by someone named Hemmingway, the story of Hemmingway the cat, the history of the Hemmingway Pen Company, and great hotels to visit in Hemmingway, Idaho.

Google is my primary SE but there are hundreds of specialty search engines. I do not use Google, for example, when I am searching for plastics information. There are better sites for that.

Bob

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