[svlug] Making / Google

[Don Marti]

begin marc_news at merlins.org quotation of Sat, Feb 08, 2014 at 11:43:33PM -0800:
> I was tying up some loose ends in my mailbox :)

Loose? I wrote the first quoted paragraph in 1998.
I guess there was a lot going on that year.
  http://gabriellacoleman.org/blog/?p=1729
  http://geekfeminism.org/2009/08/14/when-it-changed-1998/

> On Fri, Jun 26, 1998 at 07:15:43PM -0700, Javilk wrote:
> > > Fortunately, Google technology (http://google.stanford.edu/) will make
> > > all these search engine games obsolete soon.  "Old school" linking
> > > relationships among sites will become more important again.  In the
> > > current war between people trying to create good content and people
> > > out to mess with the search engines, content is losing.
> > 
> >     Obsolete???  If this catches on, it will seriously damage the web. 
> > Why?  because only large multi-site associations (read corporations,) will
> > be able to afford to generate enough cross site links to have their pages
> > listed well, and the little guy just won't show up.  So the really unique
> > and interesting stuff will fall by the wayside.  That would be the death
> > of the world wide web. 
> 
> I'm sorry that google catching on seriously damaged the web.

Pre-Google, calling my web site "free live nude Linux
warez chat" worked to get high AltaVista rankings.
Then pure old-school PageRank made that pointless,
then Google gradually AltaVista-ized itself by
making some forms of keyword stuffing work again,
then Google cleaned house, and "Google will make all
these search engine games obsolete" turned out to be
a really bad prediction, because SEO is a 3.8 billion
dollar industry now.

> >      But as I keep saying on various lists, the real war that is being
> > fought on the web, is between those who will allow home users to serve AND
> > surf; and those who would provide cheap surfing, and expensive serving. 
> > We need a democratic web, not a corporate TV / Newspaper model web where
> > only the rich can present their information.  The Cable TV company is not
> > necessarily your friend; they want a surf-only model, though they can not
> > keep you from serving your immediate neighborhood.
> 
> That, however is still a current issue somewhat.

Google Fiber has gotten rid of the "no servers"
policy...
  http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/google-fiber-now-explicitly-permits-home-servers/

(Hosting your web content off-site has never been
easier, though.  Hey, kids, "Flappy Bird" clone
in JavaScript!
  http://ellisonleao.github.io/clumsy-bird/
)

-- 
Don Marti                    
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti at zgp.org