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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
How do I love Google? Let me count the ways

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Friday, Mar. 12, 2004
TalkBack!Add your opinion
Two days ago, I was looking, for some reason, for a piece of music used in a Nestle's chocolate commercial a number of years ago. I knew it included the lyrics, "sweet dreams you can't resist." (And, no, this isn't the Eurythmics song.) Entering the lyrics into the Google toolbar I've installed in Internet Explorer took me to several lyrics Web sites and the answer: a group called Faith No More.

Browser with built-in search
One of the easiest ways to use Google: Use Apple's Safari browser, which has Google support built right in. Here's what our reviewers said about it.
Likewise, when I recently wanted the real story behind Sir Bob Geldof's "I Don't Like Mondays," I found several descriptions of the tragic school shooting in San Diego that claimed the lives of the school's principal and janitor. (Asked why she did it, the shooter, a teenage girl, blamed it on not liking Mondays.)

Last week, I was looking for a media relations person at Bank of America and couldn't figure out who to call on the company's Web site. But Google returned what I needed in the first page of results. Likewise, I easily found a bunch of proper titles for corporate executives I needed for a different project just yesterday.

NO, THESE AREN'T earthshaking examples, though Google certainly worked better for finding the lyrics than asking friends, "Do you remember that old Nestle's commercial? Maybe it reminded you of Annie Lennox?"

Ten years ago, I used to spend hours on the phone doing this sort of research. OK, not the music stuff, but lots of business questions. Some were as simple as locating a company or getting information about specific products I was interested in.

Today, I Google most of this information myself or have my new assistant Rachel do it for me. I'm still a better searcher than she is, usually because I know more about what I'm interested in than she does, but also because I have a lot more experience.

The easiest way to use Google is to have a Macintosh, where it's the default Internet search tool in the Safari browser. You enter keywords into a search box in the upper-right corner, and the results appear in the browser window. You can do much the same thing in Mozilla.

THE SECOND-EASIEST way to use Google is to download and install the free toolbar for Internet Explorer. To use it, you must agree to the terms of service. Among those terms: to get some advanced features, you must agree to let information about the site you're browsing be sent back to Google. But that's optional, something you elect during the installation process.

I agreed because I'm not all that concerned about my privacy in this regard and, more importantly, because of my respect for Eric Schmidt, the former Sun and Novell genius who now serves as Google's chairman and CEO. I think there is about as much chance of Eric playing privacy games as there is of the sun not rising tomorrow.

Besides giving you easy access to Google searches, the toolbar includes optional pop-up blocking, an automatic tool for filling in forms, and a way to display information about the popularity of the page you are viewing. There is even a link to a blogger. You can turn any of these off--as I have done with the blogger--and just use what you want. I've become a big fan of the form tool.

The official Google toolbar works only with Internet Explorer. If you're not using IE, Googlebar is available for Mozilla and Netscape browsers. It is very similar to the Google-developed toolbar and works quite well.

AS A BUSINESS, I think Google is a model for what the Internet is supposed to be and what most of the players have messed up. Specifically, Google has built its success on what I call the "second-mover advantage."

It's popular to talk about "first-mover advantage," the notion that the first pig to the trough gets the biggest meal. And that is often true. In the case of Internet search engines, the most notable first-mover was Yahoo. But very quickly the service that first helped us find our way all over the Internet became the portal that tried to keep us from leaving. While I still use some Yahoo services, including the IM client and Yahoo groups, I don't remember the last time I used Yahoo for searching.

About the time Yahoo became useless as a search tool (for me, anyway) and AltaVista cratered, Google arrived and quickly built a large following. Why? Maybe because the first-movers had largely moved into portaldom, but also because Google learned from their mistakes.

Google is a free service that displays paid search-result placements alongside the search results themselves. Google is always clear about what's paid content, and sometimes that content is actually quite useful. This makes the transaction a fair one: Google provides me with value and asks only for a little of my attention in return.

THIS WOULDN'T MATTER if Google wasn't also a really great search engine, but excellent product quality almost goes without saying. And Google is current. Recently, when I wrote a column that mentioned a place in Sweden called Fjuckby, that column appeared as a search result for the name, less than 18 hours after the column appeared.

Even faster is Google News, which constantly scours the Internet for news stories, then collects them into topic collections. If you really want to know what's up with a given story from a variety of different perspectives and sources, this is the place to go.

And after my recent column on social networking services, a friend sent me a link to Orkut, the Google-affiliated networking site. I'm still not sure whether I like these things, but the quality of people I found there was excellent. Orkut is intentionally more clubby than the other services, which works to its advantage. The only way to join is to be invited by another member, which is just fine by me.

I've never had a bad experience with any Google product. It helps to spend some time learning to turn a search phrase properly. (Google itself, of course, offers some handy tips.) But even with advanced techniques, the search engine occasionally provides unexpectedly useless results, requiring a different line of attack. However, I find that to be more of an adventure than an annoyance.

Bottom line: Google is my favorite place on the Internet and the most useful tool for finding things I don't already know. Most Google users, I think, would agree.

What do you think? Do you use Google? What are you favorite tricks/tips? TalkBack to me below! 

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