January 26, 2005 3:19 PM PST
Google blogger reappears, redacted
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average for customers and employees.
Jen began making entries in Ninetyninezeros on Jan. 17, and soon drew the notice of other bloggers. Curiosity spiked when the postings suddenly disappeared for about a day earlier this week. Adding to the mystery, Google's reputedly omnivorous search engine apparently missed adding the site to its database of about 8 billion Web pages--even though it did show up in search results from rival Yahoo and blog aggregation sites such as Bloglines.
Google spokesman Steve Langdon confirmed that Jen is a Google employee who started work at the company on Jan. 17, and that Jen is the author of the blog. He added that Google has blogging guidelines, but he declined to talk about them. Contrary to some speculation, Google did not pull the site from its index, Langdon said.
That means Google's search engine never indexed Ninetyninezeros in the first place. Passing over one week-old blog site may seem inconsequential given the scale of the Web, but the oversight could yet prove more distressing than any debate about the ethics of blogging. Google is facing stiffening competition from rivals Yahoo and Microsoft in the Web and desktop search markets, and some analysts believe the performance gap is already closing.
In short, Yahoo's search engine turned up the Ninetyninezeros blog even after it was yanked offline, while Google's did not. Does that mean Google's grip on search technology is slipping?
Langdon declined to comment.
4 comments
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<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://russ.johnsonville.net" target="_newWindow">http://russ.johnsonville.net</a>
Please. Spare me bloogle. Perhaps his next blog will be details of how the unemployment line works?
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://russ.johnsonville.net" target="_newWindow">http://russ.johnsonville.net</a>
Please. Spare me bloogle. Perhaps his next blog will be details of how the unemployment line works?