Advantage of search engines Now-a-days there is a debate that are search engines making us dull? I believe that those who think like that are stupid themselves. Following are the advantages of search engines:-
Quick findings : - you can find information in a very convenient time. Almost in 2-3 seconds. If there won’t be search engines, it would even take a week to find the same information from library.
Cost effective:- like any other services of computer and internet, these search engines are more cost effective than any other offline search processes.
Category wise search:- be it books, or be it images, videos, softwares, you can the topics as you wish.
Keywords match:- which putting words in the search box, we can see a ‘combo drop down’ menu is coming giving suggestion of likely words that we want to search. Some people argues that stops our thinking process. But then not everybody searches on internet putting one finger on keyboard and the other on a hardcopy of dictionary! For common people the general search options / suggestions should be available. If someone still insists that availability of search options makes our brain dull, then I have to say that the same thing is done by Television, radio etc. Do we throw off our our television set or radio set for that? Or, we keep enjoying these media again and again?
Business promotion: plenty of business promotions of several websites are done through search engines. Nobody can deny that.
All the search engines like Google.com, Askjeeves.com, Altavista.com are “helping” net users to match keywords better. They have no intention to block our imagination. By providing word suggestions, they are actually releasing pressure from our brains.
About cuil.com :
The very first time, I opened the page of cuil.com, I had a feeling of going to the ‘unknown zone’. Generally, I have a perception that the sites whose home page’s background colour is ‘black’ generally are suspicious websites. Now, cuil keeps its background colour black which seemed quite irritating to me. Then, I typed keywords for searching. Many highlighted ‘relevant’ keywords immediately came from the search box ( like a combo box). The font in the search box were in ‘bold’ format which also I did not like (Not so ‘Cool’, eh!). When my search results came I saw more search results than I found in Google for the same keywords. But, in case of searching on net, I value ‘qualitative search results’ rather than ‘quantitative search results’. I saw most of the important page links found in Cuil were also available in Google on its first page.
Actually, Google can easily adopt the technology used by Cuil. But Google’s strategy is keeping its page short and simple. It keeps its background white and fonts in the search box is regular and search results are ‘valid’ in most of the cases. This gives Google the Corporate Look. In Cuil search you will get some picture preview of the website which may / may not give you some perception of the search results. Now, I did not get the provision to check Cuil’s filtered search options. Google has no fear from Cuil because, the search engine keeps constantly innovating and adding new features to itself which Cuil still has to adopt.
