The Day Yahoo Died

For those of us who switched to Google many years ago, it may seem as if Yahoo died long ago. It didn't. At least not until today. Yahoo and Microsoft have announced a search partnership. Yahoo will handle ad sales, and Microsoft's bing will become the new search engine for Yahoo.

While Yahoo will continue to exist for email and as a portal (whatever that means these days) the core of the company, the thing that made it an early web juggernaut is gone. I can't say there's a terrible amount of sentimentality in this for me. It's hard to imagine gathering future generations to enthrall them with tales of putting a search parameter in a box and getting results. I do remember the quaint way you could submit URLs you would want indexed in the early days. And believe it or not, I can remember the first time I used Google instead of Yahoo. It was in the computer lab my freshman year of college, Spring, I believe . (The year is not important!)  I'd heard about google a few times in tech stories, so I gave it a try. A nearly blank screen with a search box appeared. I entered my search terms, and results came back. "This is just like Yahoo," I naively muttered... But again, this isn't like a fond story of an innocent childhood moment, or life-changing decision.

Rather, it feels simply like one of the last vestiges of the another internet time is gone. AOL, you're now the sole link to that time, and sadly, I don't think many people will mourn your eventual passing either. Who knows, in five years we might be forced to write again about the day Google died (or at least Google Search), replaced by Bing. For now, I'll stick with Google. I mean Bing is just like Google! Besides, I'm feeling lucky...

Wolfram Alpha: Wow!

We might be on the cusp of a renaissance in search. After years of Google as the dominant engine, (which follows years of Yahoo in the same position,) Wolfram Alpha could be a game changer. If you haven't done so yet, head to their website and give it a whirl. Yes, searching as you do now might not return results all that spectacular, but take a few moments to go through the suggested searches and the potential power of Wolfram Alpha is revealed.

For example, want to know if you're under/over paid for your industry? Just enter your job title followed by 'salary' and the median and mean salaries for your job will be returned. The biggest initial use of Wolfram will be for research. It takes a few tries to get used to the syntax to get what you want, but once you realize you can find the weather for NYC on Oct. 2 1982 with one click of the search button, it's quite an amazing feeling.

This search engine could fundamentally change the way students write papers. Research time(for better or worse) can be dramatically reduced. One lingering question though will be how Wolfram deals with conflicting data: If two different groups believe two different heights are accurate for a building, for example, if Wolfram chooses one, it might become the default "truth." Or the search engine could devolve into asterisks and caveats to account for conflicting facts.

For now though, it's fast, concise, and super-impressive.

Latest Google-killer a dud

I don't know which is more fruitless: trying to create an iPod/iPhone "killer", or a Google "killer." Today marked the public launch of cuil.com (pronounced cool. Quick tip: if you have to tell people you're cool, you're not.) Cuil is a search engine created by former Google employees. Don't get too excited about this being the next big thing though.

Putting cuil through its paces, reveals an engine far less than ready for prime time. We tested using search terms near and dear to our heart. First, "the digital lifestyle". Our site does not appear in the first "page" of results. I use quotes on page because rather than present the results in a traditional site name/description list, cuil shows a small paragraph of info from the site. The end result being that you have to click through several pages to see as many default results as Google. This wouldn't be a problem if the top results were actually what you're looking for.

Next we tried a search for "Apple news rumors". While we love our friends at macrumors.com. I'm not sure that having 8 of the top ten results point to different subsections of one site helps anyone. Long ago, Google perfected the "more results from this site" option. Cuil should do the same. They intend to make it easier to find information, rather than websites, but in our quick tests, cuil did neither.

Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of room for improvement in the world of search. As you know, our site thrives on Apple news and rumors, but other than this post, is rare that we actually use those words in posts. Once someone creates an algorithm that can look at a posting on a MacBook Touch, and know that's an Apple rumor, we'll be getting somewhere. Chances are, Google will figure this out long before someone else. Trying to beat them at this point is like setting out to create a "Kleenex killer." Google = search. Period.