Web search
A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of algorithmic and human input.
How Search Engines Work: Search Engine Relevancy Reviewed
This article is a fairly comprehensive review of search engine relevancy algorithms, published by Aaron Wall on June 13, 2006. While some of the general details have changed, the major themes referenced in this article were still relevant when I reviewed it a year after publishing it.
However, when I reviewed it on January 12, 2011, there have been significant changes:
- Yahoo! Search is now powered by Bing in the United States and Google in Japan.
- Ask announced they were leaving the search space to focus on QnA, and their core search will be powered by another search engine.
- A couple newer smaller search engines (like Blekko and DuckDuckGo) have launched.
- Some foreign search engines that dominate their home markets (like Yandex and Baidu) are looking to become global players.
http://money.howstuffworks.com/youtube.htm
YouTube. They designed the site to let people share videos with the rest of the world. In November 2005, Sequoia Capital invested more than $3 million in the site, and a month later YouTube emerged as a full-fledged Web destination. It didn't take long for the site to become popular, and in November 2006, Internet search engine goliath Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion.
As the company has grown, so has the scope of the videos on the site. In the early of YouTube, you could find videos showing interesting locations, crazy stunts and hilarious pranks. You can still find that sort of content today, but you'll also see political debates, musical performances, instructional videos and unfiltered war footage. In 2007, YouTube even provided members with a way to interact with potential United States presidential candidates. YouTube members submitted video questions, and CNN featured some of them in Democratic and Republican candidate debates.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/search-engine1.htm
When most people talk about Internet search engines, they really mean World Wide Web search engines. Before the Web became the most visible part of the Internet, there were already search engines in place to help people find information on the Net. Programs with names like "gopher" and "Archie" kept indexes of files stored on servers connected to the Internet, and dramatically reduced the amount of time required to find programs and documents. In the late 1980s, getting serious value from the Internet meant knowing how to use gopher, Archie, Veronica and the rest.
Today, most Internet users limit their searches to the Web, so we'll limit this article to search engines that focus on the contents of Web pages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine
The popularity of the personal computer as a business tool has a lot to do with a company founded by two men, Paul Allen and Bill Gates. In 1975 the duo wrote a version of BASIC for one of the very first personal computers, the Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) Altair [source: Microsoft]. It wouldn't be long before their success would lead them to found their own software company called Micro-Soft.
Now, after more than 30 years, one corporate name change and several operating systems later, Microsoft is on top of the computer world. In the meantime, Gates and Allen have become billionaires, with Gates reigning as the richest man in the world. Even an $18 billion loss in 2008 didn't knock him off the top
