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 webslinky: search engines
This week, any questions? Like everyone else, if I really need to know something, the first person I turn to for information is my butler. This is because butlers are oracles of all human knowledge - or presumably this must have been the reasoning behind the Ask Jeeves search engine, famous for its serf-bothering interface. But last year poor Jeeves was dropped by his masters at Ask.com in favour of a more Google-esque minimalist homepage. And now, to reposition the service following his disappearance, comes a staggeringly ill-judged marketing campaign, dressed up as real activism. Its apparent role is to imply that the world's favourite search engine is monopolizing our access to information: the Information Revolution's “propaganda” is mostly vague polemic on the benefits of “choice”. Choice is obviously a good thing, yes, but the “revolution's” solution? We should use Ask.com instead of Google. Is that it, guys? Your campaign revolves around the fact you're just not Google? How about making a better search engine? Because we all know we're a fickle bunch. This marketing strategy has been dubbed “astroturfing” (fake grassroots campaigning, you see), and it's difficult to imagine a scenario in which such a tactic could be well received. Judging by the comments on the Information Revolution’s “Movement ” blog, it certainly hasn't in this instance. Perhaps Ask.com should have paid attention to reaction on the Internet when Sony's All I Want For Xmas Is A PSP blog (or flog) was ousted as a fake, which was genuinely hilarious - but for all the wrong reasons. Ask Jeeves' advantage used to be that it understood queries that were phrased naturally, instead of strings of keywords. And Ask.com still responds to that kind of prompting pretty well. But there's another alternative to Google that they fail to mention, which has traditionally been very effective: the power of asking other people. For instance, are noodles a type of pasta, or is pasta a type of noodle? Thankfully, the community at Yahoo! Answers seem to know. In fact, lots of niche sites offer similar services – Ask Metafilter is long established, though obviously with a slightly nerdy bias. So worry not, comrades. You have plenty of choice. You just need to know who to ask.
David Thair
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related info
 useful linkswikipedia: astroturfing “movement” blog alliwantforxmasis... consumerist.com uk.answers.yahoo.com ask.metafilter.com www.google.co.uk
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 webslinky #126papercraft  webslinky #125the weather  webslinky #124mothers  webslinky #123tv listings  webslinky #122winter warmers  webslinkyarchive books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. art  art archive Watch artist interviews and see images from British exhibitions. |
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