Below is a good summary article about some recent news concerning Google, including their newly released (and instantly popular) "Web API" code which makes its programming interface available to developers.
If you are interested, here is the link to google's API:
http://www.google.com/apis/
Here is something a bit less serious ...
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html
Google Hands Out the Hammers ... Carefully
- Jimmy Guterman, Media Unspun
As Google becomes the go-to place to find everything on the Net, it gets more and more attention and more and more competitors grabbing for its ankles. In recent weeks, Unspun has reported on feeble new competitors (Teoma) and feeble new lawsuits (Overture); this week Google learns more about life as an 800-pound gorilla.
How dominant has Google become? A just-released survey says nearly half of all Web surfers search using the site, more than twice that who search via Yahoo. (Microsoft was a distant third on the list from OneStat.com; AOL, the folks who were supposed to take over the Web, came in seventh, at less than 2 percent.) Most outlets ran wire copy, but CNet seems to want to own the Google story. Its News.com and ZDNet services -- republished on MSNBC, Yahoo, and elsewhere -- have been all over Google over
the past 24 hours.
For geeks, the big story is Google's making its programming interface available to developers. In the less than a week since Google released its "Web API" code, high-profile programmerslike Scripting.com's Dave Winer have praised its potential just short of hyperbole, and News.com got in-character quotes from Winer and others, although reporter Stefanie Olsen was careful to note high in her piece that the plan "could turn out to be so much hype." So far, all eyes are on the dream of real-time search, but none of the pieces we saw reported on how many developers had downloaded the code or how many "Web API" programs are running so far.
Google doesn't want to let everyone in, though. It has long since locked out computer-generated searches, fearful that the practice would pollute its rankings. And recently it denied service to at least 100 Comcast subscribers. Many of those shut out didn't do anything wrong, but the culprit appears to be a program that creates Web pages intended to fool search engines into ranking something higher. The president of the company that makes the program told CNet, "You can buy a hammer to build a house or you can buy a hammer and go smash your neighbor's window." What his company appears to be doing is selling hammers along with instructions on how to smash windows.
And Google wouldn't be an Internet giant if it weren't getting sued. Today Deutsche Bahn, the German national railway operator, filed suit against Google because of links to pages that show how to sabotage railway systems. So who's holding the hammer now?
Developers dig into Google's toolbox
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-884546.html
Deutsche Bahn to sue Google
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/04/16/020416hngoogle.xml
Google protects its search results
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-883558.html
Study: Most Web surfers use Google
http://zdnet.com.com/2110-1106-883562.html
Wednesday, April 17, 2002
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