For the moment Google is the biggest player when thinking of search engines. But although Google has a good head-start there are lots of search engines out there trying to make it. And I think that these new search engines, that are forced to innovate in order to stand any chance, are the future.

So what can be added to a search engine that Google hasn’t added already? Well some tried more relevant ads, or advanced search features, category searching and even tabbed searching but let’s be honest, how many of them are really successful? There is even a top 100 alternative search engine chart.

But when it comes to it, all that matters is how effective is your engine and how useful are the functions you provide to your users. Practically Twerq.com is not even a search engine by itself, it’s more of an easy way to search the web using existing services like Google and Yahoo! search. And this is where TWERQ shows its best, it has some functions I’ve found quite interesting and useful at the same time, as you can see in this video:

The simple syntax it uses enables you to create relevant searches in no time at all. But the true power of TWERQ comes out when you register and create custom search lists. In this way you can search images, blogs, news, etc in the same time with only one search. It’s really helpful to configure this kind of search domains for information you need daily, it saves lots of time.

So is this the search engine of the future ? Certainly not, but I’m sure that functions like the search syntax and tabbed searching will be part of future search engines.

I was asking myself a week ago what will Google plan for 1st of April this year. A first approach is taken by Gmail. As you probably know, there is a small counter on the front page that shows the continuously increasing storage space for your e-mails.

With the new update, here’s the new space targets and how many days until that much space is hit by the counter on the page:

2800MB: Already reached
2835MB: In 18.22 days
2980MB: In 384 days
3125MB: In 749 days
3270MB: In 1114 days
3415MB: In 1479 days
3560MB: In 1845 days

So at a glance, Gmail will increase with just 700MB in 5 years. That doesn’t look so promising. However, noting the history of Google events that took place on the 1st of April, I took the liberty of guessing a few directions regarding this issue.
* Google could announce the new quota will be actually available now, instead of 5 years, and everyone would be happy.
* Google could speed up the increasing process and a realistic quota will be available much sooner.
* Google could keep things just the way they are (regarding Gmail) for 1st of April this year and focus on another prank.

That’s for Google to plan, and for us to find out.

Google already started at the end of the past year, a beta session for its Audio Ads, which later became quite successful. However, today, Google needs more beta-testers for the above mentioned AdWords system.

“The beta has been going well and, in fact, the Audio Ads Team is looking for more testers. In terms of feedback, the Audio Ads team has heard that beta testers like the simple and clean user interface and the targeting and reporting options. Beta testers also find the audio ad creation process easy and fast since it only takes them a few days to create their ads and launch their first campaigns (as compared to potentially weeks for traditional radio ads)”

Vivian, Inside AdWords crew

The system’s procedure is simple enough for anyone to understand. Google collects audio ads from multiple AdWords publishers and redirects them to several radio stations that are part of older partnerships. This way, the advertisers can reach their target customers and attract a certain category of the offline users to their online services.

Google already had several attempts of expanding their advertising solutions towards the offline area. Although the audio tests were very popular, numerous users hearing them at multiple US radio stations, there were more beta tests: newspapers ads or TV ads. Some time ago, Google selected multiple AdWords publishers and sent their adverts to several US newspapers, representing the first Google attempt to become a powerful offline advertising platform.

Shortly you can sign up for beta-testing for Google, by following this link.

Google is the most popular search engine. That’s where it all started. Now it ended up with dozens of web services and huge popularity. Did you noticed Firefox 2.0 doesn’t detect a grammar error when you type ‘Google’, but it does when you type ‘Altavista’? Go thinking.

Anyway, my point is Google has such an influence on everybody that their past April Fool’s day jokes were actually believed by many people. Click on the joke’s title to visit the original page.
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I don’t know what’s your opinion on Alexa but I consider it to be at least a hint when you talk about site statistics. If we consider the data Alexa provides as a guideline you can easily see that the top three sites listed are: Yahoo!, MSN and Google. Not necessarily in that order.

First of all we must consider the services provided by the three giants. Yahoo!, Google and MSN have mailing services, search engines and ads services. So in some way we can compare the sites, but also it must be considered that MSN has a separated site for the search engine: live.com. Let’s take a look at the stats and then discuss it some more:

As you can see, it seems that MSN beats Yahoo! and Google by a long shot. What you should know is that the majority of MSN visitors are located in U.S. If you take a look on the same charts provided by Alexa you’ll find out that in most countries of Europe MSN it’s not only in the first three places.

The big surprise of this experiment is that Google doesn’t rule the charts, as I was expecting. I thing this is partially due to Alexa’s rating algorithms and partially due to sub-site system that Google uses. Anyhow it doesn’t matter, Google is the most prolific company of them all in the last period.

We’ve all assisted Google launching the Premiere web applications package a few days ago. Some of us considered switching, some of us are still holding the grounds, but one thing is certain. There will be debates. Google is obviously trying to conquer Microsoft’s office suite market and they’re playing it rough. Let see a few reasons in favor or against the migration to the new service.

In favor:
* The price - Instead of paying ~$500 for the full Microsoft Office suite, you might as well pay $50/year to Google. I am not referring to the price per quality ratio right now. It’s strictly about the price. It’s cheaper, even on a long term basis.
* Remote accessibility - With Google, your documents will be accessible from almost everywhere. And you’ll see why I’m phrasing it like that a bit later. However, your data is accessible with every computer with an internet connection.
* Minimum computing power - Since everything is browser-based and you will not run any third-parties on your own machine, the computing power is reduced significantly, transforming even those old computers into something useful.

I am not going to discuss the so-called security advantages, since it’s all relative, but I am going to mention the fact that with Google office apps, you will get rid of those updating procedures you got used to with Microsoft, you won’t have to worry about license restrictions, and you won’t have to spend time and resources installing the suite when you feel like adding a few computers to the network.
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You might have seen these pictures before, but if you didn’t, I guess I can tell you that they perfectly reflect the truth. We trust Google with everything. Our agenda, our personal or confidential e-mails, our wanted information, our browsing privacy, and many many more.
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