Era One - Human editors provide Yahoo with a real personality. Eventually this becomes too expensive.
Era Two - Enter: Inktomi, Stage Left
Era Three - Hello, Google!
Era Four - Inktomi again.

Greg's point is that the relevance and power of the Yahoo search has changed throughout the different eras, but the Yahoo audience is loyal due to familiarity; they know how to find what they want, and the fact that Yahoo offers free email as well doesn't hurt ;)

Big, Bad Google. Google, however, is for hard-core searchers. It's very utilitarian, Greg says. It's very "just the facts, ma'am!" The Google persona can be compared to that of an engineer in that it's objective and unbiased.

Greg's take on AskJeeves was very interesting. He said, "AskJeeves reminds me of the Canadians. Canadians are very aware that they're not Americans while Americans aren't aware at all of the Canadians."

Now, before anyone gets offended by this statement, I think what he means is AskJeeves is aware that it's not Google or other top search engines, but many other search engines see it as a minor player.

What do you think he meant by this? Click to discuss with experts and peers.

Google Apologizes. This just in - Google has apologized! That's right, folks. There's been a lot of anger and frustration since the Florida Updates but apparently Google understands the fact that people's businesses rely on their results. For what it's worth, Craig Nevill-Manning, Google's Senior Research Scientist, said, "I apologize for the roller coaster. We're aware that changes in the algorithm affect people's livelihoods. We don't make changes lightly."

Well, at least that's good to know.

Stamping Out the Rumors. Something that's been discussed and debated many, many times is whether the change in Google's algorithm was put in place to drive Google Adwords sales. It's always funny to watch the Google representatives squirm when asked questions about their algorithm. According to Craig, "At Google, we want to give the best results possible. In the long term we want people to keep coming back to Google. There's a high wall between our sales department and our search department. We'll be tweaking the algorithm gradually."

Hmmm... I don't know if I believe his response. What do you think?

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