Why Use Google?

Let's start off with the most basic question: Why bother to use Google? After all, there are other search sites out there.

It's true that there are other search sites, but none are as fast or effective as Google. Google doesn't necessarily scan more of the Web and index more websites than any other search engine. That's not really what's important. What it does better than any other site is deliver more accurate results. At times, the results seem so uncanny that you almost feel as if Google is reading your mind. (You'll learn more details about why Google is so accurate in the next section, "How Google Works.")

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You might have heard that a child has been named after Google, but did you know that an ant has been named after the site as well? The entomologist Brian Fisher discovered a new species of ant and named it Proceratium google, to honor the mapping program Google Earth. Fisher received help from the Google Earth team when he needed to combine an online repository of ant data (called AntWeb) with Google Earth. Thanks to the work, scientists can search for ant species by location and plot ant habitats in three dimensions. By the way, here's a tidbit about the Proceratium google species: It lives in Madagascar and eats only one kind of foodspider eggs. If you don't believe me, do a Google search.

Google does something else exceptionally wellpresenting its search results and enabling you to quickly go to the page you want. Its search results pages load fastthey're not weighted down with unnecessary graphics and adsand they're easy to scan at a glance. Before the days of Google, this wasn't how search sites displayed their results. They were heavy with graphic-rich ads, they were slow to load, and you often had to wade through a great deal of advertising and unnecessary material until you got what you wanted.

There are reasons beyond accuracy and presentation to use Google as well. Google is constantly coming up with new tools to integrate searching and other Web services into your life. Google Desktop, for example, can search your hard disk in the same way that Google searches the Web, and you can even see both sets of results at the same timewhat's on your PC as well as what's on the Web. And there are plenty of other examples like this.