Let's say you are Google and you own a very popular video site called YouTube. What do you do? Here's what Google did:
* YouTube was the first video site added to Google Video when it was relaunched as a video search engine. Even if Google added other sites, YouTube dominates the search results. Of course, YouTube has a lot of videos and a strong community that provides feedback, but Google Video still can't provide the right balance between YouTube and the rest of the sites.
* as part of the Universal Search, YouTube videos that appear in Google's search results have extended snippets that include thumbnails, links to related videos and the full video can be played inline. Google doesn't do this only for YouTube, but Google Video and YouTube are the only video sites for which you can play videos directly from the search results page. This decision was probably influenced by the fact that Google can't control the performance for other video sites and those sites didn't want to lose traffic.
But what if you are Yahoo and own a photo-sharing site called Flickr? The site doesn't have a dominant position like YouTube (6.42% for the US in July 2007, according to Hitwise) and an image search engine can easily integrate images from other sites.
Yahoo also shows extended snippets for Flickr images, but it commits the cardinal sin for a search engine: forget about relevance and promote arbitrary sites. For example, the first page of search results for [Google Reader] only includes Flickr photos, while you can find many other relevant images on the web (in fact, the first 49 Yahoo results are from Flickr). Other queries also show a very-difficult-to-justify Flickr domination. While Flickr is a great place to find photos, it's not very relevant if you want to find Vista screenshots: 9 from the first 20 results are from Flickr and all of them show Vista wallpapers. A search for minimal surface includes a single result from a math-related site, while the rest of the images are from Flickr.
The conclusion is that it's difficult to have a search engine and sites for user-generated content. You can be tempted to arbitrarily increase the influence of these sites and show biased results.
It's so boring to read both this blog and google blogoscoped, you two always copy each other things :P
ReplyDeleteWell, I didn't copy anything. I found weird to see so many Flickr photos in Yahoo Image Search and I wrote a post in Blogoscoped's Forum that turned into a post on the main blog. But then I though it would be interesting to compare Google/YouTube with Yahoo/Flickr and wrote this post.
ReplyDeleteI try to avoid duplication between this blog and Blogoscoped (which I read and like), so you won't find too many posts on the same topic. But even if the topic is the same, I don't think the posts are identical.
Ohh... sry well I too read them both and it happens quite often they both have an article about the same. Yet blogoscoped has it nearly always earlier and shorter and you more detailed but later...
ReplyDeleteWell, at least I wish you good luck with this blog.
I read both blogs as well, and while sometimes information may overlap, I don't find it to be boring. Both guys have different writing styles that make them unique and interesting.
ReplyDeleteNo way
ReplyDeletethe stuff in both blogs are always different and both blogs have there own writing styles..
I enjoy reading both of them and I am a subscriber to there feeds..
keep up the work you two.
Can anyone tell me about wwhat is the software to remake video ?
ReplyDelete