The NY Times had an excellent article on Google today. The author said that Google may eventually turn out to be more far-reaching than Amazon or ebay. For me, Google is more far-reaching than they are already.

Apparently, Bill Gates is trying to catch up to Google and says that "The magic moment will come when our search is demonstably better then Google's." He says this will happen in a year or so. I have to doubt that. Google's revenues are increasing by 100% a year, and its profits are rising faster.

All I know is that I love my google e-mail account much better than any I have ever had, and I only use Google to search with. Do any of you see another company overtaking Google in the near future?

I find Google a very satisfactory search engine and use it almost exclusively. What I don't understand, though, is how they make any money. I don't pay them anything - which is certainly not the case when I use Windows, Amazon or e-bay.

"Half of Google's revenue comes from selling text-based ads that are placed near search results and are related to the topic of the search. Another half of its revenues come from licensing its search technology to companies like Yahoo."

This is from a January 2002 interview with Google CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt, which can be found at http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,81685,00.asp .

And from http://www.fool.com/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/rulemaker001218.htm :
"Among other things, corporations pay it to index their websites for them, effectively outsourcing their 'search this site' functionality. Google is good enough at what it does that people are willing to pay for its services."

I use DogPile pretty much exclusively although this is a collection of search engines including Google and Jeeves and quite a few others.

Wow, I thought everyone used Google.

It seems Google is having some copyright issues because they are trying to put books online. I'd love to see more books online...besides, maybe they'll create some business for my daughter who is now in intellectual property litigation.

Interesting. I was at a large meeting today of Illinois nurses, most being very well educated. They had a presentation about connecting the group better with a "Web page." The Web page looked just like Wordcraft. People join and post about particular concerns.

You would have thought the idea of posting was from Mars! No one knew anything about PMs or posting or replying or anything. I was quite surprised. When people around me were complaining that they didn't get it, I said, "But don't you post on some forums? It's the same thing." They looked at me as though I was from Mars.

Do only a small number of people post on forums?

What about e-mail? Don't most people e-mail? Again, I am on a local committee and was trying to contact people through e-mail, but no one responded. Finally, one lady told me that she's ashamed to admit it, but that it just takes her so long to e-mail that she barely ever uses it. Again...WHAT???? I couldn't live without e-mail! That is exaggerating, but still...!

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Do only a small number of people post on forums?

Yes, a very small amount. There a large variety of factors, and I will ignore the technological ones. The factors to find a forum are as follows. First, the forum topic has to interest you. Second, the forum has to offer interesting discussions. Third, the forum must be well enough populated to keep the discussions going. I've been in monologues with myself at various forums, and that's never fun. Fourth, there much be enough new blood coming in to keep things fresh. One can't really get involved in a forum that is 10 people who've been posting to the same topics for years. Fifth, the forum must not be so large as to be swallowed up in it. I do pretty well at must forums making a name for myself, sparking fiery discussions, etc., but most people just want to do their thing, and in a forum with hundreds of regulars, that is impossible. Sixth, the level of moderation must be correct. We haven't really had a problem with this at Wordcraft, at least, not while I've been here, but when you get Trolls, Flamers, and Spammers, they must be dealt with accordingly. This forum offers excellent "self-moderation", and we don't have a need for anyone to step in, but I've been at forums which basically shut down due to the poor quality of moderation. Seven, this is related to point 2, the interesting discussions must constantly keep going. Luckily, we all use language every day, and we read books and articles, and there are always things to talk about. Other forums, for example, an Isaac Asimov forum I help moderate, the discussions can kind of dry up, and we have to work to start up interesting topics. Eight, the forum software must be usable. I've posted to forums with terrible interfaces that I just gave up on after a while, or will go occasionally to browse, but not post. Wordcraft, while not excellent(I have high standards), has a good interface.

These are just the factors involved in a person deciding whether or not to belong to a particular forum that interests them. This doesn't even include the kind of person who posts on internet forums(somewhat rare for those over 30), or the kind of topics that typically interest those people. The former plays in the forum dynamic. I've been to forums years ago where I was the oldest person at age 20. These cannot typically hold good discussions. I've been to forums where the youth dropped out and I was the youngest person by 10 years. Again, this was hard for me to hold discussions, not because of intelligent, maturity, or life experience, but because people were talking about their wives, husbands, and kids, and it grew kind of boring for me.

There is much more, and I could go on all day, but I think this should be enough to convince you that people who post to forums are somewhat rare.

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people who post to forums are somewhat rare.

I run a management training course for travel consultants which, apart from five days of work with me, is all self-study. To give delegates (from all over the UK) the chance to set up learning support groups and to exchange ideas with other students, we have a dedicated forum.

It has been running for about five years and last year not one single person used it. This year, in spite of my stirring sales pitch, we have but four users out of a total intake this year of around fifty.

I work in a very technologically advanced field in many ways. At the library we all (as a staff) rely on email to communicate, and have done so for years. We have an intranet for our staff of over 800 employees, and generally only about a dozen people post to the open forums. In that case, email is usually more convenient and gives you a quicker response.

Another techno surprise for me, though, is that so few of my colleagues keep their calendars online. I have been given a PDA and use it faithfully, syncronizing it with my LAN about every other day. Many other managers have never quite gotten around to using it yet. Now they are all coming to me for mini-lessons on how to use their PDAs!

I attended a professional, statewide conference last month where Omar Wasaw, founder of blackplanet spoke. At the beginning of his speech he asked everyone to stand. Then he asked questions to see how savvy or experienced we were. If you could not answer YES to the statement, you sat down. He said things like "I have used email." "I have lost touch with friends because they don't have email." "I no longer use a paper calendar." "I have been dumped by an ex by email." It was interesting to see who was still standing by the time he said "I have read an entire book on a computer or PDA."

Not everyone has a computer, and not everyone has access to the Internet. I haven't found any statistics on the percentage of forum users, but I imagine it's fairly low. Some people have better things to do.

A Nation Online: Entering the Broadband Age is a September 2004 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Here are some quotes from it. The bold italics for emphasis are mine.

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The proportion of U.S. households with computers reached 61.8 percent in 2003, and 87.6 percent of those households used their computers to access the Internet. As a result, 54.6 percent of U.S. households had Internet connections (54.1 percent in households with a personal computer or laptop, plus an additional 0.5 percent using a mobile telephone or some other home Internet access device). Household Internet connections increased only four percentage points in the 25 months between the two most recent surveys, compared to an almost nine percentage-point increase during the 13 months separating the previous two surveys (August 2000 and September 2001).
......
Reasons for Non-Use

When asked, the reasons given for why some Americans choose not to use the Internet or broadband technologies extend beyond issues of geography. Many Americans—41.3 percent of the total U.S. population—still do not use the Internet from any location. But, only 32.4 percent of U.S. households do not contain at least one person who uses the Internet. The key reasons given by those households that have never connected to the Internet at home suggest problems of cost/value and availability, including: “Don’t Need/Not Interested” (41.6 percent), “Too Expensive” (22.9 percent), and “No or Inadequate Computer Available” (22.5 percent). Affordability and computer availability are even more important for those who had Internet service but discontinued it. Major reasons for discontinuing home Internet use include “No or Inadequate Computer Available” (27.5 percent), “Too Expensive” (27.2 percent), and “Don’t Need/Not Interested” (18.4 percent).

Many of those who do not use the Internet employ other communications devices and entertainment media although their usage rates trail those of Internet users. For example, 48.3 percent of households that do not have Internet have cable TV versus 59.9 percent of Internet households. And 31.1 percent of households that do not have Internet have cell phones versus 67.7 percent of Internet households.

Indeed, a certain percentage of Americans remain non-users even when there is already someone in their household using the Internet at home. Figure 12 shows that almost one-quarter (24.7 percent) of non-Internet users live in a household that has an Internet connection. Additionally, only seven percent of the non-Internet users live in a household with broadband access. Therefore, it appears that regardless of availability or affordability, a certain percentage of Americans likely will remain non-users, just as five to six percent of households have consistently declined home telephone service since the early 1990s
.......
For example, almost one-third (31.9 percent) of Americans access the Internet on a daily basis. Ninety percent of these frequent users have Internet access in their homes.

I haven't read the entire report and probably won't. One thing that surprised me was that "five to six percent of households have consistently declined home telephone service since the early 1990s."

I suggest that perhaps we are seeing where the actual digital divide is. It's not just people not having computers, but they don't have most of the technological things the rest of us have. The computers at my library are almost always full, even though I have so many (nearly 40). People in the 'hood have cell phones, but not long-term contracts like I have (same number and company for all 6-7 years we've had them). If they don't have internet access and they don't have cable, it's often not because they've chosen . . . but rather the economic situation they're in.

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I run a management training course for travel consultants which, apart from five days of work with me, is all self-study. To give delegates (from all over the UK) the chance to set up learning support groups and to exchange ideas with other students, we have a dedicated forum.

What you should do, they did this at my university, is require all the new students to write a post to the forum when they first start the class. While some will never post again, those who didn't do it because they didn't want to bother to learn how would be forced to do so, and perhaps become regulars.

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What you should do, they did this at my university, is require all the new students to write a post to the forum when they first start the class.

The difficulty is that there are no sanctions that can be applied. I ask them to post to the forum during my procedural briefing on the induction day but few do and, short of expressing disappointment, there's not much I can do.

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This doesn't even include the kind of person who posts on internet forums(somewhat rare for those over 30),

This hasn't been my experience. I have posted on a number of forums where there are lots of people in their 40s, 50s, and older.

Tinman, I agree that not everyone has computer access, though of course everyone does through his/her library (not always that convenient, I agree). However, I would estimate that 90% of the audience I had posted about had home computers. The amazing part to me was that many had obviously never even seen a forum. They had no idea was a PM was. I can understand not posting on forums, for all the reasons Sean gave, but to never have seen a forum?

I won't forget the first time I went to a chat room. I had never seen one before and knew literally nothing about them. I am for gun control, and I went to a gun chat room to post about all the data out there supporting gun control. I don't know why I chose that for my first chat room, though it may have been because my daughter was doing an internship in Washington DC on gun control at the time. Anyway...I surely learned a whole lot about chat rooms (and NRA people!) when I was there. I learned a few priceless words, as well! At first I thought we'd have a healthy debate, but after a few rude insults, I quickly left.