There is a great article in the New York Times this week about how Google is managing to stay ahead of its competitors. It’s a fantastic read and you should definitely sit down and digest the whole thing. I caught a glimpse of the sort of brains they have working there at the Google Developer Day last week, they just have passionate brilliant people working there, who manage to think about old problems in new ways (and new problems in new ways).
I found this line particularly fascinating.
These formulas have grown better at reading the minds of users to interpret a very short query. Are the users looking for a job, a purchase or a fact? The formulas can tell that people who type “apples†are likely to be thinking about fruit, while those who type “Apple†are mulling computers or iPods.
It really is amazing how close they have to come to mind-reading, I know I usually only use about 2-5 words when I search and they need to determine exactly what I might mean by that query. It’s brilliant that they can usually deduce exactly what I’m looking for.
This post is tagged under: Development, gdd07
