The World Needs More Ninjas

So, in response to Yahoo’s claim that it has doubled Google’s capacity, some people at the NCSA have attempted to assess the claim. They do so by measuring how many results are generated by random queries. The results tend to insinuate Yahoo may be stretching the truth with its claims.

As some responses to this article have pointed out, just because Yahoo returns less doesn’t necessarily invalidate their claim. It could just mean they have a better filtering algorithm that Google. It’s really a difficult claim to validate one way or the other unless the search engines agree on a common methodology for counting their indexed pages.

A couple of other random interesting tidbits about this article. One is that I can see the NCSA’s building from my window, so that’s kind of cool that I’m that close to something getting national attention. And, two, I was kind of shocked to see Vern Burton as one of the authors of the study. I’ve actually heard him talk at Graduate InterVarsity before and he’s in the history department and researches the civil rights movement. So, how on earth he ended up doing such a study for the NCSA is beyond me!