Is Google beginning to feel the competition from Bing already? In a blog post yesterday, Google has announced their “next-generation” infrastructure dubbed Caffeine.
When Microsoft unveiled Bing, it was a pleasant surprise to see an engine by the Big M that didn’t suck. We can see now that Bing is here to stay, and Google will have to accommodate.
Competition brings out the best in products, and this is clearly an example of the benefits of competition. Like all things Google though, the Caffeine-based engine is as simple as the standard Google search. The changes made have been entirely “under the hood” and the only effect (and not even much at that) will be in the search results.
According to Google’s blog post:
“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”
With Web 3.0 slowly creeping in, the way information is collected, recognized and processed, will need to change, as such changing the way the web is crawled makes sense. However while Bing has been appreciated for the way it makes related information available, the new Google engine offers no such thing. It is too early to say of course, as in their own words it is only the “first step” in the process. When Google believes the new engine is ready, we might be greeted with a revamped UI too. Although given their penchant for simplicity, it seems unlikely that the Google search box will gain any weight.
Google is now looking for people to give feedback on their new venture, especially the power searchers who might actually notice a difference in the results they get. So what are you waiting for, get started here right away!