2.2 The importance of data quality

“This part needs additional information and improvements and is then not finished
yet.”
As I mentioned it there are two levels of data quality:
· Poor quality one: for example you and I are looking for information
whatever it is in order to get a quick answer or even a mere comment. Here
two theories are facing each other:
▪ An information should be given even if it is possibly wrong. It of
course can be useless if the information is a hoax but will it be in the
case of a warning of a terrorist attack?
▪ An information should be given only if it is 100% accurate. Here it is
interesting in order to not create polemical situations for nothing.
There are no rational choice to make here, sometimes you need to use the first
theory and sometimes the other one.
I would describe poor quality data as mass consumption information which
mean good enough for “lambda” people but not that useful for businesses and even
less for researchers. With the increasing of Internet users more and more mass
consumption data are created and of course their number is bypassing the one of
quality ones.
· High quality one: here we find the data which fits the four criteria I
described above. High quality data are useful in order to take complex and
rational decisions.

Chapter 3: Search engines dependency

In order to understand well this part we should have firstly a look at the
search engine market configuration. Even if for a lot of people search engine is a
synonym of Google it may be not true for some other people. I made a strong effort
during this work to make it as global as possible. Europe is good as well as the
United States but we will never got the all answers of our issues if we always
consider these two parts of the world.

3.1.1 Search engine categories

3.1 Search engine market configuration
3.1.1 Search engine categories
The world of search engines is not as uniformed as we could have think. I
until now identified three kind of search engines:
· Standard: the most well known search engines such as www.google.com,
www.livesearch.com (Microsoft) , Ask (http://www.ask.com/?o=312) they are
looking for any kind of information through the Internet and are characterized
by a very light interface:

Illustration 2: A light interface: the homepage of the search engine www.ask.fr

· Portals: may be the most complex search engines to analyze on a figures
point of view. Portals are characterized by a lot of information on their home
page including the search engine function. It is then difficult to make the
difference here between the success of the portal and the success of the search
engine on this web page. The best example I found is the one of mail.ru
which is the most visited website in Russia far before Google. It seems when
looking at the search engine statistics that the research made on Mail.ru are
not accounted or that no one is using the search function of Mail.ru. So it is
sometimes hard to measure the success of some search engines. The most
well known portal is Yahoo.

Illustration 3: Home page of the Mail.ru portal

Specialized search engines: they to my point of view belong to a
subcategory of the first group. The major problem of standard search engines
is that they are too big. Specialized search engines are then no more than a
special function which is working as a filter. It is then far more easier to find
the information you are looking for on a specific website rather than using
standard ones. A good example of it can be the one of Ebay, it is of course far
more convenient to go on the Ebay website and use the search engine directly
from there rather than going on Google and writing a request such as 'Ebay
buying socks'. I mentioned it again but in most of the cases specialized search
engines are not a revolution they are just one part of standard search engine
and are not a new technology by themselves.

3.1.2 Search engine market

The search engine market is segmented by an enormous leader: Google, a
follower who is far from him: Yahoo and a large amounts of small search engines.
The dominant position of Google may stay for years and years and only a technical
revolution could really jeopardized him.

Illustration 4: Top 10: Search websites in the world August 2007

As you can see here I identified what we could call « The big four » which
represents the four major search engines. Then comes three specialized search
engines (7,49% all together) but their success are limited to the size of the website
they are browsing. Then came in last positions what I would called the dead
champions which once have been great and well known search engines but which
are nowadays in decline and will one day probably disappear.

3.1.3 The search engines in the world

The more I study the E-world and the more I realize that the web is exactly
the reflect of our society but in a non-physical aspect. Internet did not break cultural
differences and search engines really show it.
As we just saw Google represents 6 research out of 10 in the world but does it
mean that each country in the world has a population of 60% Google users?
To answer this question let's have a look at the following map:

Illustration 5: The most visited website by country

As we can see here the world is not covered entirely by Google. We clearly
have some Google countries, Yahoo countries, Mail.ru countries and so on and so
fourth.
We can however notice some striking information such as almost all the
American continent is using Google as well as Europe, Northern Africa and
Southern Africa, Australia, India. In one word almost all countries which have strong
links with the Anglo-Saxon culture.
Then comes what I would qualified as a cultural wall which is starting in
Eastern Europe and which is finishing in Russia. Here are the ex-soviet countries. I
unfortunately have no concrete proves of what I am saying but I suppose that there is
a kind of a « boycott of American technologies » and support of Russian
technologies. The recent partnership between Yandex (main search engine in Russia)
and the browser Firefox raised those suspicions10.
Russia is not the only country in this situation, China also. The recent
advertisement broadcast by Baidu (the leader search engine in China) shows clearly
the will that Chinese public institutions are ready to protect their territory.11
As you can see Asia is the region where Google is the least present. It is also
the continent where are gathering a lot of different search engines.
I may not emphasize the diversity of the Caribbean area as well as Center
Africa which are areas where Internet is not that well implemented which mean then
that the battle to take the lead is not finished yet. For example is it really relevant to
say that Yahoo is the leader in Cameroon which is a country with less than 500,000
Internet users?
I however will highlight that the Pacific area which is containing all the
« Tigers » (Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore...) are all in red: Yahoo.
The search engine world is then divided in two parts:
· The Google world: which is composed of all the Anglo-Saxon countries as
well as countries which have strong links with the United States or Great
Britain. It is clearly showed regarding India and Australia. We can at the date
of today still identify two countries which are not under Google control:
Czech Republic and Iceland but actually by looking at the figures and the
forecasts it is just a matter of time12.
· The Asian – Pacific world: Asia is composed of a lot of countries and of
course a lot of cultures. Among them we can identify four players:
◦ Mail.ru which is dominating all the ex-soviet countries;
◦ Baidu which has a total control over China;
◦ Naver, a 100% South Korean product which is the best example that
search engines work by culture;
◦ Yahoo which is leader in all the “Tigers” Asian countries.
Yahoo being an American technology such as Google, how is it possible
that Yahoo is so successful in the Pacific area and not elsewhere? The
reason I found is that Yahoo is a shiny portal and that Asian culture on
Internet recognize a quality website to the number of animations on it13. I will then
add that Japan is a strong pole of Internet with one of the highest rate of Internet
integration in the world per capita14. This is why I think Yahoo is so popular in this
region.

3.1.4 The search engine market shares per country

One of the most complete work I found on this topic after mine is the
« Global Search Report 2007 »15. What stroke me the most in all the countries
studied in this report as well as in all the report and research I made until now are the
search engines market configuration which looks like very often to this:

Illustration 6: Search engine market shares in
Czech Republic

It is very rare to find a country where there is a close competition among
search engines. Even if in the High Technology world things change from a day to
another you have often the following configuration where the first search engine
is leading the game by more than 30 points on its followers.
This is typical from the search engines market or you are adopted by a
population or you are not. This trend seems quite relevant in the
software industry, people seem to look for a standard used by all. This is the case for
the Operating System industry, the browser industry, the e-learning industry. The
explanation I found for the success of search engine within a population is the word
to mouth, this is how Google has been so successful isn 't it? How never heard
sentences such as « you just have to Google it » Google is even nowadays in
dictionaries as a verb16.
As a conclusion I would say that in the world of search engines you are first
or you are nothing.
I have to mention as well that the market has a lot of small local search
engines which are if original enough bought by the big ones or if not will disappear
quickly (some example are coming in the news every month). The only key of the
success on the short term seem to be advertisement but on the long run you need the
technology behind in order to compete.

3.1.5 The search engines competition

Google has been created in 1998 and at that time search engines were already
in place, it did not scared Google and one after the other Google bypassed all of
them. In fact among the big four Yahoo is the oldest (1994) and Microsoft the
youngest (2003). Even if the battle seems to be finished it will take a lot of time to
Google to be the number one in all countries (everything being linked to culture
rather than rationality) which in fact is giving hope to its followers.
At the time I am writing this thesis discussions are still on the way between
Yahoo and Microsoft in order for Microsoft to buy Yahoo search technologies. We
can understand how strategic a such acquisition could be. Yahoo having the research
knowledge and Microsoft the funds as well as the software ownership.
Regarding Baidu we cannot clearly see how they could compete against
Google outside of China.
As I said previously specialized search engines are limited to the website they
are linked to.
We could then think about new comers who starting from nothing could beat
famous search engines in a small period of time, it could have been the success of
some products such as Cuil launched in summer 2008 which received a lot of
advertisement through the news17. But search engines is a very ungrateful world
where visitors are giving no more than one chance: the product works or it does not.

Illustration 7: Results page of Cuil

This is a point that I discovered very quickly and that you can test by
yourself. People want the information as soon as they can. They are
ready to test the product but in a certain amount of tries. When you
move from Google to another search engine you are often intransigent. At the first
result which does not fit your expectations you will go back to Google. But is the
search engine wrong or is it because it is responding differently that on what you
were used to?
In order to conclude this part I would say that with the search engine history
we have and the search engine market configuration, I cannot see how Google
could lose its position. Until now only one company succeeds to make a such gap in
the world of search engine and it is Google itself and it was in a period where
everything had to be created on Internet.
So I would say that on this field I don't see how Google can be beaten and
even worried.
A new technology regarding research is however more and more recurrent in
this field and is called semantic research.