Friday 27 September 2013

Google Updates Search Algorithm

Google Inc recently announced that it has updated its search algorithm to provide better results for all the increasingly challenging and complex search queries posted by web surfers.

The Hummingbird algorithm, introduced almost a month ago, impacts 90% of the searches made on Google. The update is aimed at giving the search engine a better understanding of concepts rather than words alone. Google is trying to better understand complicated search queries as traditional keyword based-systems give way to systems that can identify concepts and meanings in addition to words.

Google’s search engine has become an integral part of people’s lives and they often tend to insert phrases in the searchbox instead of just words, a fact which underlies the update. Also, the new search algorithm is expected to impact traffic to websites. The outcome of this new algorithm is not the way in which Google searches the web but it lies in the results of the searches instead. In fact, this is the most significant update that Google has made to its search engine since it redesigned the way in which websites were indexed through the Caffeine update.

Google continues to innovate. With an upcoming update to Google’s search application for devices running APPLE’s mobile operating system, people will be able to avail a unique facility by which they can set reminders on an android device at home and later receive them on an iPhone.

Google recorded a profit of $3.23 billion or $9.54 a share in the second quarter of 2013, up from $2.79 billion or $8.42 a share in the year-ago period. Total revenue grew to $14.11 billion, up about 19% year over year. The search ads and other commercial products related to Web content account for most of Google's revenue, which is expected to approach $60 billion this year. The company has expressed its intention of increasing investment in its core products in the future.

Google Turns 15 With 'Hummingbird' Algorithm Update

Google (GOOG) is celebrating its 15th anniversary with an big update to its search algorithm and, of course, one of its "doodles" on Google.com.

Google updates its algorithm hundreds of times each year, but executives have been touting the new update called "Hummingbird," which the company quietly rolled out earlier this month.

"When Google switched to Hummingbird, it's as if it dropped the old engine out of a car and put in a new one," wrote SearchEngineLand.com blogger Danny Sullivan. "It also did this so quickly that no one really noticed the switch."

The new algorithm should help users who prefer "conversational search," says Sullivan. Google's mobile software, Android, and other Google products let users search by speaking to their devices — the new update reportedly will better focus results based on speech patterns.

The update comes in concert with Google's 15th anniversary as a company. Google incorporated in California on Sept. 4, 1998, and started working in a garage in Menlo Park, Calif., near Stanford University, where founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were Ph.D. students. (Google hasn't responded to our question about why Sept. 27 and not Sept. 4 is the preferred birth date.)

Wall Street expects Google's 2013 revenue to rise 40% to $59.6 billion. Not bad for a company the same age as the average high school sophomore. The company's market cap is fast approaching $300 billion. On the Nasdaq, only Apple (AAPL) has a higher valuation.

Google is, of course, having some fun on its birthday. It posted a game on Google.com where users can spend time trying to smash candy out of a pinata. And if you search for "Google in 1998," you'll get a look at what search results used to look like.

To mark the birthday, the Pew Research Center on Friday released information from a poll of Internet users that it conducted in April and May. Pew found that 56% of Internet users have used a search engine to look up their own name to see what information is available about them online. Seems low to us, but that is up from 22% the first time Pew asked that question, in 2001.

That percentage, says Pew, has been pretty steady since at least 2009, when 57% of Internet users said they had searched for results connected to their name online.

Friday 6 September 2013

Syria crisis: No clear winner in Russia-US G20 duel



Both sides have claimed victory in this G20 gladiatorial contest over Syria, but identifying who is on which team is not straightforward.

So who backed Russia and who backed the United States?

According to President Vladimir Putin, the outcome was not a 50/50 split, but a balance of opinion in Russia's favour.

He claimed that, at the G20 dinner on Syria, only four countries - France, Turkey, Canada and Saudi Arabia (plus a British prime minister rebuffed by his own parliament) - had backed America.

Whereas siding with Russia in rejecting military strikes on Syria, he says, were seven nations: China, India, Indonesia, Argentina and Brazil, as well as South Africa and Italy.

Yet not all the Russian president's views on Syria were endorsed by other G20 leaders.

Who else in St Petersburg publically declared, as he did, that Syria's "so-called chemical weapons attack" was in fact "a provocation staged by rebels, in hope of winning extra backing from their foreign backers"?

In making that categorical claim, the Russian leader left little room for compromise and ended up looking, perhaps, somewhat isolated.