The Search: Ch. 1-4 (John Battelle)

Although I began this book weary that it would actually be interesting, i was proven quite wrong.  The introduction into the world of Google and the history that led Larry Page and Sergey Brin to the force that they have become today was full of interesting facts.  Learning about the science behind search is full of successes and failures.  Clearly Google is on top today for a reason.  Beginning with the early search sites such as AltaVista and Yahoo, the various processes that make search possible was invented.  I found the concept of “crawlers” quite interesting to read about, especially when Battelle mentions that instead of being “little robots wandering the vasts halls of cyberspace” that it is actually “homebodies, sitting on their own servers and sending out vast numbers of requests to pages on the Internet” (20).

One of the ways in which i was able to relate to the concepts is through the difference between a site such as Google which crawls the web and indexes it, as opposed to one such as the early version of Yahoo! which was more of a site that had an index of websites that were submitted and listed.  If my memory is working correctly, I remember back in the late 1990’s when I was collaborating on making a website with a friend and we submitted the link to Yahoo! for listing on its search list.  We were quite excited when they actually listed it in the correct category, and quite near the top at that.

Another point of interest in the reading included that fact that with search engines becoming ever more important as a web destination for information, the need for telephone directories are becoming less important.  I was thinking this exact thing the other day when the YellowPages people came and dropped off six gigantic books on my doorstep last week.  I was wondering who actually uses a phone book anymore when you can find the same information on Google, often with much more info such as ratings and directions.  Needless to say, the six books sat on the doorstep getting soggy with snow until someone decided to recycle them all.

Finally,  the concept of “navigational query” stuck out to me because i finally realized that there is a word for what I do!  I almost always use Google to locate pages that I already know exist.  Instead of using bookmarks, i just plug the word into Google to find my way to the places that I need to get to.  I’m glad i’m not the only one.