Cuil who?
So it seems there's a new kid on the search engine block. One created by former employees of the incumbent champion, no less. They claim to rank results based on content. They also claim to have indexed more pages than Google. That's like saying that you have escaped your shadow or caught up with the horizon, isn't it? Nevertheless, I decided to put them to a vanity-based test. I searched for "laditudinarians", "donaq", and "i rock you suck", all of which I place on the first page of results for Google.

None of them found yours truly on Cuil. Searching for "donaq" turned up my old comments on Popagandhi. Searching for "laditudinarians" turned up some page on sgblogs.com mirroring this blog. Can you claim to produce more relevant results if searching for "donaq" doesn't produce donaq.blogspot.com before producing a link to donaq.blogspot.com as a comment on someone else's blog? I think not. Also, how can you rank a mirror above the actual site (which is not one of the results returned)?

Google: 3
Cuil: 0

They say "cuil" is an Irish word for knowledge. Unfortunately, this would-be new giant seems to be a leprechaun with an illusory pot of gold instead. Google FTW!

Labels: cuil, funny, google

  ¶
Permalink
(2) comments

If you don't like what I say, why not subscribe me for some porn?

  Why Google is cooler than Ebay
Hacker cool, that is. Google organizes a programming competition, and Ebay does one too. Before I even get started, note how the Google Code Jam page is written entirely in HTML, CSS and Javascript. All open standards. Then note how the Ebay page (unnecessarily) uses what has been dubbed "the cancer of the web" by some. Even though I wouldn't go that far, (you can always not go to Flash sites) I do think that its use should be minimized. I will not go into the reasons here, but if you're curious, shoot me a comment. Furthermore, clicking on their "Register Now" button brings up a popup which Firefox promptly blocks.

Anyway, the point is this:

The Ebay competition is very obviously the brainchild of suits and not hackers. At the event where they launched the competition, I did not see a single techie there who represented Ebay. Furthermore, although I can no longer recall the exact figures, implementation comprised a mere 20% or so of their judging criteria. To put this in context, minutiae like business plan or some crap like that was worth 30%. I suppose it makes sense if you're trying to attract talented suits, but then why hold a Developer Challenge? Why not hold a Suit's Biz-Off and just give the winner some money so he can hire hackers to implement his business plans?

Google, on the other hand, doesn't give a flying fuck about your business plan. What you have to do instead, is solve algorithmic problems. As swiftly and accurately as possible. That is the attitude that ensures Google always has the brightest engineers.

p.s. A friend of mine who attended the aforementioned event with me said that we should just interrupt the speakers with this:

I propose that we forgo the competition and split the $25K among all those present here (a coupla hundred for each person, more or less). All those in favour, say "yea"...

My friends are funny.

Labels: geek, google

  ¶
Permalink
(1) comments

If you don't like what I say, why not subscribe me for some porn?

  Watch out, Google, here comes Google.
I read this recent article on the Straits Times website. Its title was "Watch out Google, here comes SPH Search." Apparently, Singapore Press Holdings is going to develop its own search engine for local stuff, and they're telling the search engine to watch out. The really funny bit for me was not the title, funny as that already is, but that just below the article, there were, ironically, Google ads. And yes, they were all ads posted by Singaporeans.

To conclude, allow me to post a coupla comments I saw on that page.

Overworked: Cool!!! Where can I find it (SPH search)?
Instill: Just google it.

Labels: google, SPH search

  ¶
Permalink
(4) comments

If you don't like what I say, why not subscribe me for some porn?