Search: September 2005 Archives

Google seems to have declared that size doesn't matter in the latest development in their continual jockeying for top index size position with rival Yahoo!

Quoting Google's Marissa Mayer, the Yahoo! News article reports:
"Mayer said that since apples-to-apples comparison are no longer possible, Google decided to stop listing the size of its index and instead invite Web surfers to conduct the equivalent of a "taste test" to see which engine consistently delivers the most results, Mayer said."

Google initially launched a debate with Yahoo! over whose index was the larger after Yahoo! disclosed that their index had topped 20.8 billion documents. Now that it appears they can't compete on size, they will have to reframe the argument to be about how they use it.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050927/ap_on_hi_te/google_page_count;_ylt=AhapTrRmbPG6fDYizcfg8gFk24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3cjE0b2MwBHNlYwM3Mzg-

Tyler Cowen writes about Google's internal use of market forecasting to create a predictive tool for launch dates and other decisions. Market forecasting uses competitive bidding to determine the likelihood that an event will occur, and on a specific date.

Says Google: "We designed the market so that the price of an event should, in theory, reflect a consensus probability that the event will occur. To determine accuracy of the market, we looked at the connection between prices of events and the frequency with which they actually occurred. If prices are correct, events priced at 10 cents should occur about 10 percent of the time."

Market tools like this have been getting some attention in the media lately as they continue to be applied in new and interesting ways. It's an intriguing model to say the least, though I'm not sure if there are limits to their accuracy when, as in the Google case, no actual money is at stake on the part of the bidders themselves.