August 11, 2009

Okay, I'm not even sure if that's really true about sharks. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not. But still, it is true about search engines, in that they have to keep innovating and updating, if for nothing else to stay ahead of spammers. Google, as the king of search engines, obviously has been doing that constantly throughout the years. Some of the changes are noticeable, but most are subtle tweaks on a rolling basis.

But today, the company has begun testing a new engine for its search product that's a big enough change that it felt compelled to let the world know about it. Codenamed "Caffeine", it promises to "push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions."

The test, available here: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/, really doesn't look any different at first glance. And Google notes as much, saying that these changes are primarily under the hood. When you hear that, most people will probably assume this means speed in showing results.

So is it any faster? It's hard to tell. Most results on Google are already so fast, that shaving a nanosecond here or there hardly seems to matter. By Google's own counter (which show up along the top of every Google result page next to the number of results), the results are mixed. Sometimes Caffeine wins, sometimes regular old Google wins.

Source:-http://www.washingtonpost.com