November 18, 2004

Google Scholar

by brian_turner

Today Google officially launched “Google Scholar” at http://scholar.google.com/.

Effectively, Google made arrangements with a number of publishers, allowing Google access to books and private online content, so that Google could spider it and add it all to its index.

The problems are various, though –

One: Google is condoning the use of cloaking for commercial purposes.
Two: Third party subscription services are useless to searchers, if we’re not going to be given any idea of what actual content is.

Overall, I think this services currently offers far too limited scope – what’s the point of sending searchers to pages they cannot even view the content of?

And although Google may think that the page is relevant for the user query, Google is not at all able to give any details on the actual usefullness of the content for any particular purpose.

While that is a not a problem for normal search – because the searcher can view the content and make their own judgement – the big problem here is that obviously the searcher is unable to make any kind of value judgement on the content itself.

So what sort of service is Google actually providing for searchers, if Google cannot even provide evidence of content and quality of content to the searchers in the first place?

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Story link: Google Scholar

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