Life Of Navin

"Google is by far the best search engine out there!!" How many times have you heard someone claim that?? Well, maybe it was, but somehow its results seem to be getting more and more irrelevent by the day.

Have you noticed the ever-growing number of Google-owned sites that have crept into the search giant's results? Doing a Google search for Mentos and Coke will take you to a results page where over half of the items are videos on Google's two video sites: YouTube and Google Video. And lets not forget AdSense, and those never ending ads towards the right hand side of the search results page. The search I've mentioned returned ads from sites such as Monster.com (offering me jobs in Coca Cola and Mentos!!).

However, the entire issue set into me to a much higher extent when I stumbled across Timo Paloheimo's blog. This guy from Finland seems to think the all-around increase of Google-owned sites in the results is impeding with what the search engine is all about (My point exactly!!). To remedy this he's put together a Google custom search called Google minus Google that removes all of Google properties from the equation. It's like any other Google custom search, except for the giant handpicked blacklist of Google properties. So that basically means the Original Results -Blogger -Knol -YouTube -Google Videos!! But AdSense ads still exist!! There is NO Google custom earch engine that can exclude all AdSense!!

To Google Minus Google's credit, doing the same search puts a Wikipedia article on top, followed by the Eepybird people, who were the creators of the video that's the best known example of the Web phenomenon. Hmm... but it all depends on what you were originally looking for....... if you were looking for the video then Google did manage to get the job done right?? All a matter of perspective I guess!!