The Design and Implementation of laffer1

 WSJ article

Google finally has some new competition.  I predict that they will end up like Yahoo down the road.  It might not be this engine, but someone will de-thrown them from search.

cuil.com

 I've been using Google for several years.  I'm thinking about trying some alternate search engines.  I just realized you can't easily change the default search in safari like you can in Firefox and even IE.  

Apple doesn't seem to have a preference for it and cuil's FAQ incorrectly suggests there is a setting.  I can't find it.  A search on cuil returned one useful hit, but the site was pulled down.  They also don't seem to cache pages like Google.  I decided to use Google to look for an answer.  There are two options.

1. Use http://www.inquisitorx.com/ to configure your search.  I don't know if they log searches or use any form of spyware.  They probably don't, but I consider search very important and don't want to trust this.
2. Some people have reported success hex editing safari.  I could do this, but I don't know what would happen when software update tries to push/install a new version.  Best case, I'd have to do this every time Safari gets a security update.

Oddly enough, it's easier to change on the iPhone where apple could lock users in.  I may stick with Google, but now I feel like I'm forced to.  It's sad as I like Safari in my any other ways and have even been using WebKit in BSD for browsing.

CNN has an article on what google must do to make Chrome OS successful.   I don't agree with all the points in the article.  Apple has no incentive to port iTunes over to Linux.  Not only would they need to port iTunes, but Quicktime as well.  The latter is the real problem.  It's not easy to get a multimedia application like quicktime to work.  Apple would need to license codec use and ship a binary product on a platform full of GPL'd code and open source fans.  

Commercial applications have not done well on Linux as many users have philosophy issues with these licenses.  One could argue that Chrome OS targets a whole new audience, but we heard that about netbooks and now they've failed (with linux).  

Apple does want an alternative to windows, it's called Mac OS.  Helping a rival take market-share from you makes no sense.  Apple could justify porting iTunes over to windows because they could sell music and videos to a very large customer base;  the hardware sales of iPods and iPhones helped too.  For the chrome os port to work, apple would need to support iPods and iPhones on linux as well.  

The next problem is that the article made a big point about usability and changing the interface.  If you think that users hate applications that look different, why would Google's Chrome OS be any better?  Instead of starting a friendly application, they have to open a browser (or it's always open) and click on web pages to play a song!  I just don't see that happening.  I think it's worse than telling a user open firefox for "the internet" and thunderbird for "email".  Users memorize icons or program names, and "screens".  As someone working on this problem, I can tell you that it's very difficult to get someone to try out a new system, let alone switch to it on a daily basis.  

Finally, the business model makes little sense.  When Microsoft sold DOS and Windows for PCs, it was for all PCs.  It was risky in the sense they were shipping a system on a new competitor to Apple, but it still targeted a (eventually) large user base.  Google is making an OS for one type of computer that many fall out of fashion much like the PDA has.  You don't see 20 PDAs at your local best buy or walmart anymore.  Now it's smart phones or mp3 players or even handheld video game consoles that fulfill these duties.  As netbooks get larger, they blur on the traditional laptop.  Many netbooks are now near 12 inches.  Some years back, that was a very common size for a laptop.  It was entry level from apple, and midrange for PC vendors.  Netbook means cheap laptop that's slow now.  Eventually the CPUs will catch up and they'll just be cheap laptops.  For the same reasons as the article site with Linux, do you think a non-windows (or mac) OS can actually gain momentum in such a market?

Is this the end of web search competition?  Microsoft and Yahoo have inked a deal to use Microsoft's Bing search engine on yahoo.com.  That means Microsoft has won.  This is the foothold Balmer has wanted in search and marks the end of his massive attention to search.  That means, Microsoft can focus on other attacks against Google or other sectors again. 

The deal is terrible for yahoo.  The CEO must not understand why the previous people in her position did not want a deal with Microsoft.  Search was the only thing yahoo really had.  Portals come and go.  They won't have a product for ten years.  There's no way they can recover and eventualy Microsoft will steal the portal users to their own websites.  It's a very bad move for Yahoo.  I feel bad for the engineers at Yahoo that will be fired.

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=

Fill in the url you want to check at the end of this URL.  Google will report if a site contains malware or not.