DOCSLIB.ORG

Development Team

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Development Team Paper No: 05 ICT for Libraries Principal Investigator Dr. Jagdish Arora, Director Module : 13 Search& Engines, Concept, Types and Advantages Subject Coordinator INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar Development Team PrincipalPaper Coordinator Investigator Dr. Jagdish Arora, Director & INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar Subject Coordinator Content Writer Dr Usha Mujoo Munshi, Librarian, Paper Coordinator Indian Institute of Public Administration Content Reviewer Mr Dinesh Pradhan and Dr Jagdish Arora, Content Writer Scientist B and Director, INFLIBNET Centre Dr Usha Mujoo Munshi, Librarian, Content Reviewer Indian Institute of Public Administration PaperContent Coordinator Reviewer Search Engines, Concept, Types and Advantages I. Objectives This lesson is designed to impart knowledge on the following components on Internet search engines: • Search engines and their evolution; • How search engines work? and components of a search engine; • Categories of search engines; • Search techniques; • Meta data and search engines; • Evaluation of search engines; and • Important search engines. II. Learning Outcomes On completion of this lesson, learners would attain knowledge about basics of search engines. They would learn about the evolution of search engines, functions, components and categories of search engines. They would also learn about important search engines in brief. III. Module Structure 1. Introduction 2. Search Engines: Definition 3. Evolution of Search Engines 4. How Does Search Engines Work? 4.1 The Robot or Spider 4.2 The Database 4.3 The User Interface or the Agent 5. Categories of Search Engines 5.1 Primary Search Engines 5.2 Meta Search Engines 5.3 Specialised Search Engines 5.4 Subject or Web Directories 5.5 Hybrid Search Engines 5.6 Subject Gateways or Subject Portals6. Choosing a Search Engine 6. Choosing a Search Engine 6.1 Ease of Use 1 6.2 Comprehensiveness 6.3 Quality of Content 6.4 Control Over the Search 6.5 Flexibility in Searching 6.6 Assessment of Relevance 6.7 Informative Presentation of Results 7. Searching the Web: Search Techniques 7.1 Basic Search 7.2 Advanced Search or Refining Your Search 7.2.1 Boolean Operators 7.2.2 Phrase Searching 7.2.3 Proximity Searching 7.2.4 Parentheses 7.2.5 Truncation and Wildcards 7.2.6 Case Sensitivity 7.2.7 Field Searching 8. Evaluation of Search Engines 8.1 Database of Web Documents 8.2 Capabilities of a Search Engine 8.3 Basic Search Options and Limitations 8.4 Advanced Search Options and Limitations 8.5 General Limitations and Features 8.6 Results Display 9. Important Search Engines 9.1 Primary Search Engines 9.1.1 Google (http://www.google.com/) 9.1.2 Bing Search (http://www.bing.com/) 9.1.3 Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com/) 10. Summary 11. References 2 1. Introduction The growth of the Internet has led to a paradoxical situation. While on the one hand there is a huge amount of information available on the Internet, on the other hand sheer volume of unorganized information makes it difficult for the users to find relevant and accurate information in a speedy and efficient manner. The first Google index in 1998 had 26 million pages and it touched the mark of one billion by 2000. In mid 2008 it touched a new milestone with 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs. Internet can be said to be the most exhaustive, important and useful source of information on almost all aspects of knowledge hosted on millions of servers connected to Internet around the world. Searching for specific information is the main purpose of using Internet for several users. However, with availability of excessive information, it has become very difficult for a common user to search for precise and relevant information on the Internet. To tackle this situation, computer scientists came up with search tools that search through the information on the Internet to churn out required information by a user. There are varieties of search, resource discovery and browsing tools that has been developed to support more efficient information retrieval. Search engines are one of such discovery tools. Search engines use automated programs, variably called bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, wanderers and worms developed to search the web. The robots traverse the web in order to index web sites. Some of them index web sites by title, some by uniform resource locators (URLs), some by words in each document in a web site, and some by combinations of these. These search engines function in different ways and search different parts of the Internet. 2. Search Engines: Definition Search engine is a generic term used for the software that “searches” the web for pages relating to a specific query. Google, Yahoo and Bing are few examples of common search engines that index and search a significant part of the web. Several web sites have their own search engines to index their own websites. The World Wide Web has several sites dedicated to indexing of information on all other sites. A search engine can be defined as a tool for finding, classifying and storing information on various websites on the Internet. It can help in locating information of relevance on a particular subject by using various search methods. It is a service that indexes, organizes, and often rates and reviews 3 Web sites. It helps users to find the proverbial needle in the Internet haystack. Different search engines work in different ways. Some rely on people to maintain a catalogue of Web sites or web pages, others use software to identify key information on sites across the Internet. Some combine both types of service. Searching Internet with different search engines for the same topic, therefore, provide different results. 3. Evolution of Search Engines The Archie, developed in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal, can be considered as the first search engine that was used for indexing and searching files on FTP server. Archie became a database of web filenames which it would match with the users queries. Inspired with the success of Archie, the University of Nevada developed Veronica in 1993. VERONICA (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Netwide Index to Computerized Archives) was developed at the University of Nevada to search all menu items on Gopher servers. Soon another user interface named Jughead appeared with the same purpose as Veronica. The JugHead (Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display) was a powerful gopher search tool written by Rhett “Jonzy” Jones. It was computer program that searched a specified Gopher site (not all). It searched directory titles only, not the text of resources that appeared on the Gopher submenus. Archie, VERONICA and Jughead have now disappeared, but before the web's spectacular growth, these tools were real workhorses for searchers on the Internet. Soon after launch of World Wide Web in 1993, the first robot, called World Wide Web Wanderer, was introduced by Matthew Gray to search the Web. In October 1993, Artijn Koster developed an Archie-like Indexing tool for the Web, called ALIWEB. It did not use a robot to collect the metadata, instead, it allowed users to submit the Web sites they wanted to be indexed by ALIWEB with their own descriptions and keywords. By December 1993, three full-fledged robot-fed search engines had surfaced on the web, i.e. JumpStation, the World Wide Web Worm, and the Repository-Based Software Engineering (RBSE) spider. JumpStation gathered information about the title and header from Web pages and retrieved them using a simple linear search. As the web grew, JumpStation slowed to a stop. The WWW Worm indexed titles and URLs. The JumpStation and the World Wide Web Worm did not use any ranking method to list their search results, rather results were listed in the order they were found. The RSBE spider did implement a ranking system. 4 The Excite was a by-product of the project called Architext that was started in 1993 by six Stanford undergraduates. They used statistical analysis of word relationships to make searching more efficient. The Excite search software was released by mid-1993. However, the technique used by the Excite seems irrelevant because the spiders were not intelligent enough to understand what all the links meant. The EINet Galaxy Web Directory was launched in January, 1994. The EINet Galaxy became a success since it also contained Gopher and Telnet search features in addition to its web search feature. In April 1994, David Filo and Jerry Yang created Yahoo as a collection of their favorite web pages. As their number of links grew, they had to reorganize and develop a searchable directory. The Yahoo directory provided description with each URL as an improvement to the Wanderer. Brian Pinkerton of the University of Washington launched the WebCrawler on April 20, 1994. It was the first crawler that indexed entire pages. In 1997, Excite bought out WebCrawler, and AOL began using Excite to power its NetFind. WebCrawler opened the door for many other services to follow the suit. Three important search engines, namely Lycos, Infoseek and OpenText appeared soon after Web Crawler was launched. Lycos was the next major search engine developed at Carnegie Mellon University in July 1994. On July 20, 1994, Lycos was launched with a catalogue of 54,000 documents. By August 1994, Lycos had identified 394,000 documents and by November 1996, Lycos had indexed over 60 million documents, more than any other Web search engine. In October 1994, Lycos ranked first on Netscape's list of search engines by finding the most hits on the word “surf”. Infoseek was also launched in 1994. In December 1995, Netscape started using Infoseek as its default search engine. AltaVista was also launched in Dec. 1995. It brought many important features to the web searching.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Wie Funktionieren Suchmaschinen?
    Schriftenreihe der Abteilung "Organisation und Technikgenese" des Forschungsschwerpunkts Technik-Arbeit-Umwelt am WZB FS II 98-104 Reisen ohne Karte Wie funktionieren Suchmaschinen? Von Tilman Baumgärtel [email protected] Institut für Sozialwissenschaften Fachbereich Umwelt und Gesellschaft, TU Berlin und Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung GmbH (WZB) Reichpietschufer 50, 10785 Berlin Telefon (030) 254 91 - 0, Fax (030) 254 91 - 684 Zusammenfassung Suchmaschinen sind die Eingangstore zum Internet. Doch obwohl Netz-User die Suchmaschinen bei fast jeder „Surftour" benutzen, wissen nur die wenigsten ihrer Nutzer, wie sie funktionieren. Dieses Papier geht der Frage nach, ob die zentrale Position von Suchmaschinen im Netz auch zu einer Zentralisierung des Internet fuhren kann. Durch eine detaillierte Darstellung der Funktionsweise der Search Engines wird gezeigt, daß sie nicht pauschal als Instanzen betrachtet werden können, die dem „unstrukturierten", „hierarchiefreien" Internet ein Zentrum und eine Hierarchie aufzwingen. Technische Einzelaspekte erscheinen jedoch trotzdem problematisch: Besonders Suchmaschinen, die - wie Lycos - die angebliche Beliebtheit einer Site zum Maßstab ihrer Beurteilung machen, tragen dazu bei, im Netz eine hierarchische Gliederung zu voranzutreiben. Abstract Search Engines are the entrance doors to the internet. But despite the fact that net surfer use them almost every time they go online, most of them don't know how they actually work. This discussion paper addresses the question, whether the central position of search engines can lead to a centralization of the internet. A detailed technical analysis of the search engines leads to the conclusion that they cannot simply be considered as the main authorities that impose a center and a hierarchy on the supposedly „unstructured", „non-hierarchical" Internet.
    [Show full text]
  • Google Maths
    Google Maths Philip Knight March 13, 2009 Outline • Brief history of search engines • Google and Googleplex • Web as a graph • Link Analysis • Search 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, . 1 History • Archie (1990), Veronica and Jughead (1993) • WWW Wanderer, ALIWEB(1993) • WWW Worm, JumpStation, RBSE (1993) • WebCrawler (1994) • Yahoo, Lycos (1994), AltaVista (1995) • Google (1998) 2 Google and Googleplex • Founded by Larry Page and Sergei Brin. • “Scraped together” $1000000 in 1998 to start up. 3 Google and Googleplex • Founded by Larry Page and Sergei Brin. • “Scraped together” $1000000 in 1998 to start up. • First office a garage (9/98). • By 6/99 had $25000000 in funding. 3 Google and Googleplex • Founded by Larry Page and Sergei Brin. • “Scraped together” $1000000 in 1998 to start up. • First office a garage (9/98). • By 6/99 had $25000000 in funding. • Launched search engine 9/99,“world’s biggest” 9 months later. 3 Google and Googleplex • Founded by Larry Page and Sergei Brin. • “Scraped together” $1000000 in 1998 to start up. • First office a garage (9/98). • By 6/99 had $25000000 in funding. • Launched search engine 9/99,“world’s biggest” 9 months later. • 14142135 shares floated in 2004 for $2718281828. • Current market value is $100, 000, 000, 000. 3 Fundamental Problems A successful search engine requires • A well-maintained index. • Effective presentation of results. • A good business model. • Properly ordered results. 4 Web As A Graph • Think of web as a collection of vertices and edges. • Vertices (V) are web pages. • Edges (E) are links. • Web is a directed graph G(V, E): edge goes from vi to vj if page i links to page j.
    [Show full text]
  • The Commodification of Search
    San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research 2008 The commodification of search Hsiao-Yin Chen San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Chen, Hsiao-Yin, "The commodification of search" (2008). Master's Theses. 3593. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.wnaq-h6sz https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3593 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE COMMODIFICATION OF SEARCH A Thesis Presented to The School of Journalism and Mass Communications San Jose State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree Master of Science by Hsiao-Yin Chen December 2008 UMI Number: 1463396 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 1463396 Copyright 2009 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 E.
    [Show full text]
  • Autonomous Collaborative Unmanned Vehicles: Technological Drivers and Constraints
    Autonomous Collaborative Unmanned Vehicles: Technological Drivers and Constraints David G. Bowen Scott C. MacKenzie DEFENCE R&D CANADA Contract Report DRDC CR-2003-003 September 2003 This page has been deliberately left blank Page intentionnellement blanche Autonomous Collaborative Unmanned Vehicles: Technological Drivers and Constraints Authors: David G. Bowen, P. Eng. Sparktek Ltd. Scott C. MacKenzie, P. Eng. Consulting and Audit Canada Date: August 28, 2003 CAC Project Number: 510-2984 This contract was funded by the Canadian Forces Experimentation Centre (CFEC). This page has been deliberately left blank Page intentionnellement blanche Table of Contents Executive Summary………………………………………………………………..vi 1 Introduction............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Objectives and Scope............................................................................................... 2 1.2 Definitions........................................................................................................... 3 2 The Battlespaces and Robots ................................................................................... 5 2.1 Space................................................................................................................... 9 2.2 Air ..................................................................................................................... 10 2.3 Ground .............................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Search Engine Optimisation Elements Effect on Website Visibility
    Cape Peninsula University of Technology Digital Knowledge CPUT Theses & Dissertations Theses & Dissertations 11-1-2006 Search engine optimisation elements effect on website visibility : the Western Cape real estate SMME sector Eugéne Bourbon Visser Cape Peninsula University of Technology Recommended Citation Visser, Eugéne Bourbon, "Search engine optimisation elements effect on website visibility : the Western Cape real estate SMME sector" (2006). CPUT Theses & Dissertations. Paper 80. http://dk.cput.ac.za/td_cput/80 This Text is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses & Dissertations at Digital Knowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in CPUT Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Knowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION ELEMENTS’ EFFECT ON WEBSITE VISIBILITY: THE WESTERN CAPE REAL ESTATE SMME SECTOR by EUGéNE BOURBON VISSER Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Magister Technologiae in Information Technology in the Faculty of Informatics and Design at the CAPE PENINSULA UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Supervisor: Prof M. Weideman November 2006 DECLARATION I, the undersigned, hereby declare that the work done towards this qualification has been my own work and that it has not been submitted to any other educational facility for assessment. In addition, all sources that have been used or quoted are indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Signature: ____________________ Date: ____________________ EB Visser ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS All Glory to my Creator for giving me the perseverance to complete this research project. Special thanks to my mother (Heléne Visser) and my godparents (Hal and Bettye Walker) for believing in me, and for their constant love, support and financial assistance.
    [Show full text]
  • Thessaloniki, Greece Msc in Management
    Thessaloniki, Greece MSc in Management MASTER DISSERTATION SILICON VALLEY, SUCCESS AND FAILURE Saule Mukhamejanova ID: 1102100051 Supervisor: Pr. Vangelis Souitaris September 2011 Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………..................3 Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………....4 Chapter 1 1.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………..........5 1.2 Global Entrepreneurship……………………………………………………………...5 1.3 Objectives of the study………………………………………………………………..9 1.4 Scope of analysis…………………………………………………………………...…9 1.5 Plan of analysis………………………………………………………………….…...10 Chapter 2, Literature Review 2.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………......10 2.2. Start-up companies………………………………………………………………......10 2.3 Funding for start-ups………………………………………………………………....11 2.3.1. Angel investors…………………………………………………………………....11 2.3.2. VC (venture capitalists)……………………………………………………….......13 2.3.3. Other ways of funding………………………………………………………….....16 2.4. Search engine companies……………………………………………………………17 Chapter 3, Methodology 3.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………......20 3.2 Research Method…………………………………………………………………......20 3.3 Case study, Context of the study: Silicon Valley ………………………………...…...20 FINDINGS 3.3.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………......22 3.3.2. Within case study analysis………………………………...………………………23 3.3.3. Cross-case analyses……………………………………………………………......26 Chapter 4, Conclusion and recommendations 4.1 Summary……………………………………………………………………………..28 4.2 Limitations of study……………………………………………………………….....30 Chapter 5 5.1 Contribution of the
    [Show full text]
  • Web Search Engine
    Web Search Engine Bosubabu Sambana, MCA, M.Tech Assistant Professor, Dept of Computer Science & Engineering, Simhadhri Engineering College, Visakhapatnam, AP-531001, India. Abstract: This hypertext pool is dynamically changing due to this reason it is more difficult to find useful The World Wide Web (WWW) allows people to share information.In 1995, when the number of “usefully information or data from the large database searchable” Web pages was a few tens of millions, it repositories globally. We need to search the was widely believed that “indexing the whole of the information with specialized tools known generically Web” was already impractical or would soon become as search engines. There are many search engines so due to its exponential growth. A little more than a available today, where retrieving meaningful decade later, the GYM search engines—Google, information is difficult. However to overcome this problem of retrieving meaningful information Yahoo!, and Microsoft—are indexing almost a intelligently in common search engines, semantic thousand times as much data and between them web technologies are playing a major role. In this providing reliable sub second responses to around a paper we present a different implementation of billion queries a day in a plethora of languages. If this semantic search engine and the role of semantic were not enough, the major engines now provide much relatedness to provide relevant results. The concept higher quality answers. of Semantic Relatedness is connected with Wordnet which is a lexical database of words. We also For most searchers, these engines do a better job of made use of TF-IDF algorithm to calculate word ranking and presenting results, respond more quickly frequency in each and every webpage and to changes in interesting content, and more effectively Keyword Extraction in order to extract only useful eliminate dead links, duplicate pages, and off-topic keywords from a huge set of words.
    [Show full text]
  • Real Knots: Knotting, Bends, Hitches and Knotcraft
    Real Knots: Knotting, bends, hitches and knotcraft. knot knots knotting tie tying rope yarn hitch hitches bend scout sail climb marlinespike. Standard copyrights and disclaimer. Ropers Knots Page ( ) The knot site on real knots in rope. What are the recent changes of the Roper Site ?? 990825 Breast plates. Some fancy knots. Because you want them so much. The Web Knot index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Instruction Pages Stoppers Terminal Knots Overhand-knot, (Flemish)eight and more bends To bend two lines together. Reef-Knot, Sheet-Bend, Carrick-Bend, True-Lover's, and more Hitches To tie on an object. Timber Hitch, Constrictor, The Eight, and more.. Single Loops Bowline, Bowstring, and more... The Noose The running bowline, hangman, and more.. Frequently Asked Knots. The monkey fist, Dolly (trucker-hitch). Breast plates. Some Fancy work Links to other knot sites .At the base of realknots Books on Knots on the Web Ashley, Klutz and more Links to pages with links to Roper's pages . For finding people with the same interests.. http://www.realknots.com/knots/index.htm (1 of 3) [9/2/2004 10:23:45 PM] Real Knots: Knotting, bends, hitches and knotcraft. News in the knotting world The newsgroup rec.crafts.knots is on line. And (perhaps also thanks to your support) I am able to join this news group! On Ropers Knot Site If you like it you can subscribe to mail notification on major changes.
    [Show full text]
  • Comparative Study of Search Engines
    “COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SEARCH ENGINES USEFUL FOR LIBRARIANS” A Dissertation Submitted to the Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune For Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) In LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE Submitted By Mr. SUSHANT KORE Under the Guidance of Dr. N. B. DAHIBHATE Principal Technical Officer Information Division (DIRC) National Chemical Laboratory, Pune TILAK MAHARASHTRA VIDYAPETH DEPARTMENT OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE PUNE - 411 037. December, 2014 DECLARATION I hereby declare that the dissertation entitled “Comparative study of search engines useful for librarians” completed by me for the degree of Master of Philosophy in library and Information Science. The entire work embodied in this thesis has been carried out by me under the guidance of Dr. N.B. Dahibhate, National Chemical Laboratory, and Digital Information Resource Center (DIRC), Pune. (Mr. Sushant Kore) Research Student (M.Phil.) Place: Pune Date: 26th December, 2014 CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the thesis entitled “Comparative study of search engines useful for librarians” which is being submitted herewith for the award of the Degree of Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) in Library and Information Science of Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune is the result of original research work completed by Mr. Sushant Kore under my supervision and guidance. To the best of my knowledge and belief the work incorporated in this thesis has not formed the basis for award of any Degree or similar title of this or any other University or examining body. (Dr. N.B. Dahibhate) Principal Technical Officer Information Division (DIRC) NCL, Pune Place: Pune Date: 26th December , 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I am very thankful to my respectable parents for their kind support in my life as well as completing my dissertation and bringing me to this stage in the educational field.
    [Show full text]
  • Science Search Engines to Mine Scientific Information from the Information Superhighway
    © eScience World J. Lib. Inf. & Comm. Tech. ISSN: 0975-3168 Vol. 2: (1-2) June,2010 SCIENCE SEARCH ENGINES TO MINE SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION FROM THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY G. Rathinasabapathy 1, L.Rajendran 2, J. Arumugam 3 and M.S. Prem Raj 4 *** ABSTRACT The Internet is a huge network of millions of computer networks spread across the globe and the information available on the network is increasing in a fast manner. Especially, the scientific information available on the Internet is increasing steadily. Though the major search engines available on the Internet to search across the information superhighway viz., Google, Alta Vista, Ask, Bing, Cuil, Duck Duck Go, Kosmix, Yebo, etc., are very efficient search tools, there are some special scientific search engines available on the Information Superhighway which will produce more relevant and effective results for those who are searching scientific information on the Internet. In this context, a thorough search has been made using various general purpose search engines including Google, science directories and portals. The results had been consolidated, duplication eliminated and unique search engines are tabulated with their name and URLs. This paper attempts to profile some of the important science search engines available on the Information Superhighway useful for students, research scholars, faculty and scientists who are using the Internet for scientific information retrieval. Keywords: Internet, Science Search Engines, Scientific search, Gateways, Portals ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Internet The Internet plays a vital role in all walks of life and it powerfully leverages our ability to find, manage, and share information. Never before in human history has such a valuable resource been available to so many people at such little cost.
    [Show full text]
  • Dynamic Competition in Online Platforms Evidence from Five Case Study Markets
    Dynamic Competition in Online Platforms Evidence from five case study markets MARCH 2017 Dynamic Competition in Online Platforms Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... 5 Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... 6 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 9 Policy context .............................................................................................................................. 9 Research questions .................................................................................................................. 10 Our approach ............................................................................................................................ 12 Qualitative analysis of the case study sectors ....................................................................... 12 Quantitative analysis of the case study sectors ..................................................................... 12 Interviews with market participants ........................................................................................ 13 Small-scale survey of the UK population ............................................................................... 13 Background on the Case Studies .............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Behind the Search Box: the Political Economy of a Global Internet Industry
    BEHIND THE SEARCH BOX: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF A GLOBAL INTERNET INDUSTRY BY SHINJOUNG YEO DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Library and Information Science in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Dan Schiller, Chair Professor Linda Smith Professor Christian Sandvig, University of Michigan Professor Fred Turner, Stanford University Abstract With the rapid proliferation of the Web, the search engine constituted an increasingly vital tool in everyday life, and offered technical capabilities that might have lent themselves under different circumstances to a sweeping democratization of information provision and access. Instead the search function was transformed into the most profitable large-scale global information industry. This dissertation examines the evolution of search engine technologies within the context of the commercialization and commodification of the Internet. Grounded in critical political economy, the research details how capital has progressively shifted information search activities further into the market, transforming them into sites of profit-making and poles of capitalist growth. It applies historical and political economic analysis by resorting to an extensive array of sources including trade journals, government documents, industry reports, and financial and business newspapers. The first chapter situates the development of the search engine within the wider political economy of the Internet industry. The second shows how the technology of search was reorganized to enable profitable accumulation. The third and fourth chapters focus on another primary concern of political economy: the labor structures and labor processes that typify this emergent industry.
    [Show full text]