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Google: We're down with ODP | page 1, 2, 3
In fact, the biggest obstacle Harik sees for the company has nothing to do with the ODP at all. One of Google's most powerful advantages -- and a pillar of its claim to objectivity -- is its link-based page ranking system, PageRank. But a user study demonstrated how poorly some users understand how Google's search engine works -- and gave an inkling of how entrenched online cynicism has become. "We asked people, 'Why do you think we're giving you this site first?' And they said, 'Well, they probably pay you more than the other sites do.' This was really shocking to us, that people would assume we were getting paid to display certain search results." Shocking or not, the popular assumption that search engines are agents of the marketing devil is now canonical. The ability to act instantly on online information has inspired many search portals to treat their results pages like slot machines, with every search button clicked presenting a new opportunity to dangle "buying decisions" in front of their short-fused, impulse-driven users. And why not? The Internet Gold Rush is upon us, and if a search engine is at least as honest as a Las Vegas casino, we consider ourselves lucky. If the roulette wheel turns out to be rigged, well, what did we expect? For a company like Google, this world view presents a problem. The company is well funded, but for the most part that money goes into research and engineering, not marketing, so opportunities to counter e-commerce FUD are few and far between. Besides, the reflexive belief, (first formulated by Freud) that "denial is avowal" makes "I am not a crook" (first formulated by Nixon) a bad marketing tack. What's an honest search engine to do? The answer: Emphasize reality, and hope people notice. The reality is that Google, while clearly looking to make a buck, or even several, has its roots in the world of academic research. Besides its genealogical link to Stanford Research, the company boasts a research group of its own, despite numbering less than a hundred employees. "The research group develops the core technologies that we'll be using a year from now," says Google CEO Brin. "It's three people, going on four. Aside from that, we have about 15 Ph.D.s on our engineering staff." The research group is all the more vital because of the company's focus on search technology, as distinct from the marketing-driven portal plays that now pepper the Web. "It's critical to start developing the next generation technologies. AltaVista would never have existed if it weren't for DEC having SRC [Systems Research Center] and WRL [Western Research Laboratory], the two research centers in Palo Alto. And IBM has certainly been doing well based on their long-term research. So for us, providing such a core technology-based service, research is critical." How does this research and technology focus square with the Open Directory initiative? Brin sees Google's technology and the ODP's directory as complementary approaches that allow people to leverage each system's respective strengths. He describes a scenario in which the user targets the initial search as much as possible, then uses the directory links included in the results to navigate outward from there, like a paratrooper dropped behind enemy lines to run reconnaissance. For the same reason, Brin isn't overly concerned that the Open Directory -- begun as a grass-roots project staffed entirely by volunteers with a passion for some corner of the world's knowledge -- be globally comprehensive: The point isn't to navigate down through the hierarchy from the top. "If you look locally on one of these maps, you'll find it's usefully accurate. That's the important thing for a directory: how things work locally. Because there are other ways" (read: search) "to get close to where you want to go." ODP: The power of people Chris Tolles may be a marketer, but he's no hired flack. As one of the co-founders of the Open Directory Project, the ODP's marketing director has been around long enough to remember the June 1998 Slashdot posting that described "GnuHoo," the directory's original moniker, as "an interesting experiment which might work." Unfortunately, the name didn't work for Slashdotters, who found the allusion to the Free Software Foundation's GNU Public License galling, especially since GnuHoo's code and content were then proprietary. The "GnuHoo Booboo" -- and the ensuing flamefest -- led to a homophonous rechristening as "NewHoo." The new name lasted until the directory's December 1998 acquisition by Netscape, which dubbed the non-commercial, all-volunteer project (which had since shed its proprietary shackles) the Netscape Open Directory, soon to be known to open content enthusiasts by the initials ODP. The ODP has come a long way since the flame wars of yore. The project's Web site proudly proclaims it is "the largest human-edited directory of the Web" -- not too shabby, given that the competition includes semi-namesake Yahoo. The ODP's 20,000-plus editors have covered more than 1.5 million sites in a quarter-million distinct categories, and show no sign of slowing down.
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