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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week //2009 Which search engine do you use,
and are you adding to the body count ? A lot of
people don’t know that the internet portal they choose – meaning
the site on the internet that they always enter on – is one of the fiercest
battles being fought in the industry. Everybody wants to be your home page. When we
see new browsers and new search engines being introduced – and
I’ve reviewed several over the past few months including Cuil,
Google’s Chrome, Wolfram Alpha, and Microsoft’s new BING –
there’s a hidden agenda behind each company’s releasing their
products to the public. When a website
becomes your home page, they can count you in their daily traffic counts to
their advertisers, and the higher their numbers, the more money they make
– off you using their site as your home page! And search engines love
being your home page. Some
online services – Like AOL – default you to coming on at their
homepage, so you automatically help them build their numbers. Some online
services don’t give you a choice; others do - but most of their users
aren’t sophisticated enough to know that. Usually
when you subscribe to an ISP service like AOL or Comcast or MSN, they
immediately try to take control of your on-line life, and have you use their
email and their web browsers, and most of their users really don’t know
anything else. But at
some point you want to take off the training wheels, and have the freedom to
choose what browser you use, your own email program, and have your own home
page entry point. Over the
years I’ve had several ISP’s – starting with a few
long-gone services – then AOL back in the 90’s – then
Earthlink – then Qwest – and now Comcast. But for
almost the past 10 years now I’ve just used whatever ISP I happen to be
using just as my connection to the Internet, and from there I do what I want. I currently use the Firefox browser,
Outlook email, and my homepage is Google. I use
Firefox as I think it’s a more secure browser than IE and more
customizable, I use Outlook because it’s the de facto email standard
for the industry, and I use Google because when I first get on the web I want
to read the news or do a search on something. From there I have many favorites places I can go to to
do other things. Last week
I quoted Information Week that Google presently controls about 64% of the
U.S. search market; Yahoo holds 21% of the market, and Microsoft has about 8%,
with these 3 totaling around 93%.
I would guess that there is a similar correlation with these figures
and the home pages of millions of internet users. So when
we see Microsoft now announcing their own new search engine named Bing – and other companies introducing
similar products - remember that all this has nothing to do with altruism;
instead it’s blatant capitalism - and you need to be a wise consumer
and choose the one that works best for you. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2009 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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