Google Search

By Jon Mitchell at the inimitable readwrite (ReadWriteWeb), a good, basic description of "How Google Search Really Works." 

Among the things that caught my eye were the following:

• "Today, with real-time search, that can happen in some cases in less than a minute." Back in the day, it might take search engines weeks to find and index your pages/site; there were actually facilities to submit your pages/site to an engine for higher priority indexing. 
• "16% to 20% of queries that get asked every day have never been asked before." I would never have supposed it was that high -- I would have guessed 5% or so. 

As I come across additional pieces concerning how search works, I'll post them at follow-ups. 

Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook: Competition and Antitrust

The December 1, 2012, The Economist: Survival of the fittest: Battle of the internet giants. 

 
THE four giants of the internet age—Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon—are extraordinary creatures. Never before has the world seen firms grow so fast or spread their tentacles so widely. Apple has become a colossus of capitalism, accounting for 4.3% of the value of the S&P 500 and 1.1% of the global equity market. Some 425m people now use its iTunes online store, whose virtual shelves are packed to the gills with music and other digital content. Google, meanwhile, is the undisputed global leader in search and online advertising. Its Android software powers three-quarters of the smartphones being shipped. Amazon dominates the online-retail and e-book markets in many countries; less well known is its behind-the-scenes power in cloud computing. As for Facebook, if the social network’s one billion users were a country, it would be the world’s third largest.

The digital revolution these giants have helped foment has brought huge benefits to consumers and businesses, and promoted free speech and the spread of democracy along the way. Yet they provoke fear as well as wonder. Their size and speed can, if left unchecked, be used to choke off competition. That is why they are attracting close scrutiny from regulators.

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