Timo Paloheimo hatte die Idee für „Google minus Google“. Im Interview mit den Blogpiloten erzählt er über die Hintergründe sowie die Reaktionen aus der Webgemeinde und von Google selbst. Timo arbeitet als Planer in einer finnischen Werbeagentur und betreibt privat das Blog Startupbin.

Blogpiloten: Why and how did you come up with the idea of Google-minus-Google?

Timo: Lately there has been quite a lot of discussion around the topic, that Google would be pushing it’s own sites in search results. This has clearly been the case with Knol, but when you think of it, might apply to their other sites as well. So the natural conclusion that I made was, could it be possible to use Google’s great search engine and filter out the content of Google.

Blogpiloten: Google is becoming a media company. Why does that bother you?

Timo: It bothers me because Google is the most important service on the web. in the US 70% (in Finland 95%) of all search engine traffic go through Google. It is in their business interest to use their monopoly to push their services. In doing so the search engine results get biased and the users are not getting the best possible results.

Blogpiloten: How does Google-minus-Google work on the technical side?

Timo: It uses a Google Custom Search engine, that excludes Google owned sites. The exclude list has about 2500 domains and sub-domains.

Blogpiloten: What do people think about Google-minus-Google? How is the feedback so far? and: Did you get any reactions from Google?

Timo: So far people seem to like Google minus Google a lot. Most people see it as a nice tool that they might come back to later on. Although some people feel strongly that filtering out Google owned domains, they are not getting very useful results in their queries. Some people have also criticized the fact that there are ads from Google besides the results. This is something that comes from using the Custom Search Engine. I’m not getting rich with this service. If it covers its own costs, I’m happy, but the point was not to earn a lot of money but to take part in the conversation around Google.

Google did ask me to remove their logo, that I used on the first version of the site as it was against their terms of service. As for the service itself, they have no problem with it. Their official comment: „For years, users have been able to customize their experience via the advanced search feature within web search, and we welcome all efforts that help deliver useful information and expand user choice.“

Blogpiloten: What will happen in the future? Will Google-minus-Google at one point find nothing at all because Google „bought“ the whole web? ;-)

Timo: I don’t think that will happen. The great thing about the web is that it is so easy for anyone to create content and share it with other people. That’s what I’ve done with Google minus Google. :)

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Schlagwörter: alternative, finland, google, google-minus-google, startupbin, timo_paloheimo