Can Microsoft rival Google in the world of search and information organization? I’d go with no. Microsoft is a huge company, but that also means they have a much broader one focus. They have an operating system, web browser, and all kinds of side projects to worry about. Information and organization just screams Google. The phrase “web search” has been replaced with “Google search” in most people’s vocabulary at this point. I probably use Google at least 50 times a day (and that’s definitely on the conservative side).

I had a conversation over the weekend about Google and their rigorous hiring process. It sounds like it would be basically impossible to get a job with them unless they already knew who you were. Still, they must be doing something right because they have continually shown me they are a company that makes quality products and actually cares about the impact they have on the world.

Let’s review: Google went public last year and if I’d had any money at the time I would have bought stock in a heartbeat. They’ve created one of the only browser toolbars I would ever put on any computer. Forget Yahoo!, MSN, and (god forbid) MyWebSearch or any of it’s duplicates. Now Google has started to branch out by acquiring existing software and expanding it’s own services. They were the first to come out with a desktop search that is incorporated right into their typical web interface. Other companies like Microsoft are following suit (see first paragraph). These services create an index of everything on your hard drive and search that index instead of looking at every file in order to cut search time dramatically. Granted, I haven’t used any of the other options, but Google was on top of their game getting their version out so quick.

Over the weekend I downloaded some software called Picasa 2 (powered by Google of course). It’s for organizing and editing pictures, and so far it’s really freakin’ sweet. When you download any new piece of software the installation usually finishes by asking if you want to view the readme file. I almost always decline, but for some reason I decided to take a look this time. It’s probably because I didn’t really know what Picasa was all about. Anyway, the first thing I noticed is that it wasn’t the typical “how to” with a features list and troubleshooting. It started out by explaining how it’s been a long time since the software was updated, but part of the reason was because they took so much user feedback and worked hard to incorporate it into their next release. It goes on to explain the many features of the software as if it was a casual conversation. Call me crazy, but that’s a lot more interesting to read than a typical technical document.

At this point I’m not sure anyone is still reading, but I still haven’t gotten to the thing I think is the most impressive. Here’s an article about how Google is actually improving the quality of the web through the algorithms they use to list relevant search results. Considering the amount of junk out there about the time I was in high school, that’s definitely a plus. I can remember when finding internet sources were discouraged because accuracy was always called into question. In the last year or two ,I’ve regularly heard teachers say that one of the best places to go for sources is the web, with most naming Google as the easiest place to start. Obviously their method isn’t perfect (this is called Google-Bombing), but nothing ever is.

I look forward to the future from Google. Considering they just snagged one of the chief Engineers of Mozilla Firefox, it really makes one wonder what’s next.