Europe’s Answer to Google Books Gets an F
November 21, 2008
I wrote that only a country can challenge Google. The company’s unprecedented 10 year run through online has been largely unchallenged. In the present economic climate, I don’t think the resources are available to out Google Google. The European Union, however, tried. According to Wired here, “Europe’s answer to Google Book Search officially launched Thursday after two years of prep — and promptly crashed.” First the collider suffered a multi million euro glitch and now Europeana nukes itself. The Google alternative experienced heavy traffic and choked. At some point, folks will take a look at Google’s engineering and try to replicate it. The notion that “our servers can handle the load” is time and again proven a fantasy statement. Google’s been working on its system for a decade and continues to invest in plumbing. Now I am not even sure a country can knock off Google. Google is tough to understand, hard to regulate, and now sailing serenely along without a significant competitor to one of its interesting but minor initiatives. The debate over Google as good or evil is essentially irrelevant. The focus has to shift to build businesses on what is now the computing platform for the foreseeable future.
Stephen Arnold, November 21, 2008
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
