Showing results for "The Search" in Computers & Technology

Search is as old as language. There has always been a need for one to find something in the jumble of human creation. The first web was nothing more than passing verbal histories down the generations so others could find and remember how not to get eaten; the first search used the power of written language to build simple indexes in printed books, leading to the Dewey Decimal system and reverse indices in more modern times. Then digital happened.

Twenty-one years after its incorporation and 16 years after its stock peak, Yahoo sold for 96% less than its value on January 3, 2000, when it had closed at an all-time high of $118.75 per share, resulting in a market capitalization of $120 billion. Wall Street valued Yahoo!, at that time in business less than six years, higher than it did Disney, News Corporation, and Comcast combined. Yahoo!'s story is one of missed strategies, failed opportunities, and poor execution.

How to be a great online searcher, demonstrated with step-by-step searches for answers to a series of intriguing questions (for example, "Is that plant poisonous?"). We all know how to look up something online by typing words into a search engine. We do this so often that we have made the most famous search engine a verb: We Google it - "Japan population" or "Nobel Peace Prize" or "poison ivy" or whatever we want to know. But knowing how to Google something doesn't make us search experts; there's much more we can do to access the massive collective knowledge available online.

WHAT IS IT THAT DRIVES THE SUCCESS OF AMERICA AND THE IDENTITY OF ITS PEOPLE? ACCLAIMED WRITER AND CONTRIBUTING EDITOR TO THIS AMERICAN LIFE JACK HITT THINKS IT’S BECAUSE WE’RE ALL A BUNCH OF AMATEURS. America’s self-invented tinkerers are back at it in their metaphorical...

As we use the Web for social networking, shopping, and news, we leave a personal trail. These days, linger over a Web page selling lamps, and they will turn up at the advertising margins as you move around the Internet, reminding you, tempting you to make that purchase. Search engines such as Google can now look deep into the data on the Web to pull out instances of the words you are looking for. And there are pages that collect and assess information to give you a snapshot of changing political opinion.