Книга: Fedora™ Unleashed, 2008 edition

Google Is Your Friend

Google Is Your Friend

Some of the fastest and most comprehensive search engines on the Web are powered by Linux, so it makes sense to use the best available resources. Out of the myriad number of websites with search engines, http://google.com stands out from the crowd, with at least 81 million users per month. Google makes use of advanced hardware and software to bring speed and efficiency to your searches, although at its heart is a heavily customized Linux distro. If you are looking for specific Linux answers, take advantage of Google's Linux page at http://google.com/linux.

Why is Google (named after a math number) so powerful? You can get a quick idea from the company itself at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. Part of its success is because of great algorithms, good programming, and simple interface design, but most users really seem to appreciate Google's uncanny capability to provide links to what you are looking for in the first page of a search return. Google's early success was also assured because the site ran its search engine on clusters of thousands of PCs running a customized version of Red Hat Linux!

Google has the largest database size of any search engine on the web, with reputedly more than eight billion web pages searched and indexed. The database size is important because empty search results are useless to online users, and the capability to return hits on esoteric subjects can make the difference between success and failure or satisfaction and frustration. Some of Google's features include a GoogleScout link to return similar pages on the results page, the capability to see the exact version of a web page as returned to a search engine (known as a cached feature), advanced searches, and more recently, a link to an active Usenet news feed!

To get a better idea of what Google can offer you, browse to http://www.google.com/options/. You will find links to more than two dozen different services and tools covering specialized searches, databases, information links, translators, and other helpful browsing tools.

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