[Web4lib] RE: Another Google question

[Richard Wiggins]

Folks might find it illuminating to go back to the original paper that Brin 
and Page wrote at Stanford proposing the idea of Google. They were alarmed 
that the search industry, notably leader at the time AltaVista, had begun 
selling the top of the hit list without disclosing that they were doing so. 
Sergey and Larry sought an alternative way to choose the top of the hit 
list, and thus PageRank was born. So their original motivation was indeed 
pure.
 PageRank is probably more useful to most people most of the time -- 
including everyone on this mailing list -- than previous attempts at Web hit 
list management. I do wish that they would give us more knobs to control it, 
and I do wish they either would do the set theory "right" or explain what 
goes on at the Googleplex.
 http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html 
 /rich
 PS -- I met Larry Page once; his dad, a computer science prof at Michigan 
State, took us to lunch. Larry is a nice guy. (I would've bought lunch if 
I'd known he would later become a billionaire.)
 On 7/15/05, Jeremy Dunck <jdunck at gmail.com> wrote: 
> 
> On 7/15/05, Mike Taylor <mike at miketaylor.org.uk> wrote:
> > No. And that's the whole point. We couple of hundred information
> > professionals on this list care deeply about this stuff, but we do
> > need to come to terms with the fact that no-one else does. As far as
> > the other 5,999,999,980 people out there are concerned, Google is just
> > fine. If we pretend otherwise, we're hiding out heads in the sand.
> 
> First, I'd like to thank you for voicing what I've been too afraid to.
> Which is to say, I'm no librarian, I'm just here because I want to
> see the web become more useful to libraries. I've been quite
> surprised at the-- I'm sorry but it does seem accurate-- glee that
> folks on this list seem to take at poking holes in information tech
> that's available.
> 
> Scholarship and accuracy are great, but they are not the end-all of
> utility, and most of the time, people just want to get things done.
> Should we burn the libraries once Google Print has all stuff scanned?
> Hell, no. Libraries have purpose, even if they are underfunded and
> get far too little emphasis in the press. But Google Print will still
> be useful in a way that's different than libraries. Get your head
> around it! It's not a zero sum game.
> 
> I'd be very happy if the depth and richness of major libraries were
> available online, but the resources haven't been there, have they?
> 
> > After all, the world's most dominant software vendor achieved that
> > position by producing a badly flawed product that was "just good
> > enough". Why should we be surprised that the world's most dominant
> > search provider is adopting the same strategy?
> 
> I think that goes too far. What google's doing is making profit on
> the back of an unprecedented commodity hardware farm and the ideas of
> a lot of smart people. You shouldn't interpret failures of
> transparency are the Evil Empire out to snooker the poor
> used-to-be-a-library-goer into trusting the web as gospel. Providing
> useful feedback on this stuff is great, and I think that largely
> that's the spirit Bernie's effort is towards, though sometimes I'm not
> sure.
> 
> What if making a totally accurate "links to" index would require 10x
> the resources that it currently does? Should Google really not have
> offered it? If you want to go that way, I have yet to see a library
> which carried all titles ever produced-- hey, I'm missing a viewpoint
> there!
> 
> Would it be sufficient for there to be a disclaimer like "links are
> not comprehensive", and "total results are approximations"?
> Continuing the comparison, it's pretty well understood that no single
> library has all titles, right? Roy, what would you have expected? If
> it was perfection, well, how would that be sustainable?
> 
> And what's with the Google fetish, anyway? Isn't this list supposed
> to be about using the web to the benefit of libraries?
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