Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Friday 5 July 2002, 3:41 PM
Wednesday
Wednesday 3/07/2002
More Tales Of The Bleeding Obvious: in news today -- genetic testing shows the Welsh are different from the English, unprotected sex makes people happy (although the consequences may make one's mood go down as well as up) and, blimey, people use search engines a lot on the Web.
A survey from the Pew Internet Project -- is this any relation to the high tech park benches that councils are beginning to provide in parks? -- says that next to email, search engines are the most popular bit of the Net. And that people spend most time in Google, but visit MSN more often; unsurprising, given that Google works better but Internet Explorer dumps you in the MSN search engine at every possible opportunity. Where's the setting that lets me change that bit of Internet Explorer's behaviour, oh customer-centric Microsoft?
All of which goes to show that the old question often asked of portal sites -- "Why bother, when Google does it much better?" has yet to be answered. As for Google itself, it shows all the signs of answering the other old question, "how do you make money from the Internet?" largely through rendering the first question unanswerable.
Good ideas work out in the end, even on the Net. I know that's not bleeding obvious at the moment, but it's true.
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