June 12, 2003

James Rettig, head librarian of the University of Richmond's Boatwright Memorial Library, noted that "people who use only search engines will miss things" -- such as books, which represent most of humankind's body of knowledge to date.

Camille Ramani helps people find jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area, no easy task in a down economy, particularly in tech-heavy California. Her job is made tougher by the fact that her clients are immigrants or political refugees, most with advanced degrees. They seek out Ramani at a nonprofit organization called Upwardly Global, which specializes in helping non-U.S. professionals find jobs. One of the first places she points them to is Google , the search engine that's so simple and fast to use that it's an ideal resource for learning quickly about the U.S.

Take Isabel, a social worker from Kenya. Ramani got her a job interview in May at a nonprofit that helps HIV/AIDS patients in San Francisco. When random Web searches left Isabel more confused than enlightened about her new field, "I sat her down in front of the computer and called up Google," recalls Ramani. "I typed in 'HIV AIDS, San Francisco, organizations,' and up popped all these Web sites on the topic. Isabel said: 'Oh my gosh! That's exactly what I need.'"

Ramani's experience is probably typical of that of the 81 million people who visit Google each month. The site provides answers to upwards of 200 million queries each day -- as many as 75% of all Web-search requests in North America by some estimates. It does this either through Google.com or via the Web interfaces of partner sites such as Yahoo! and the America Online unit of AOL Time Warner (NYSE: AOL) , which pay Google per query (but keep the revenue from advertising they sell against its searches).

Privately held Google doesn't reveal its financial results, but analysts say its revenues were about $300 million in 2002, when it delivered operating margins of 20% to 30%, and that its sales are expected to more than double over the next year. In short, Google's role as a worldwide clearinghouse for information has made it the social Web's linchpin.

Google has grown so fast that even those who use it religiously have started to worry about the tendency of its huge audience to increasingly regard the site as comprehensive when in reality its compilation of information is anything but. Here and there, moreover, Webmasters are starting to question the opaque rules that Google uses to determine what to index -- or not. Some businesses complain that because of these rules, they've been banished from the search engine without warning, explanation, or cause -- a development that can cost them dearly in terms of lost sales. All of which raises the question: Is Google getting too big for its britches?

To read this whole story on the e-Commerce Times web site, please click here.

        

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