

Why Google is not winning in Russia - and unexpected search comparison results  - TomorrowMars
http://www.scandinavianstartups.com/blog/google-5-countries-away-global-dominance-why-not-all-google-vs-yandex

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larrik
Ouch.

I can't help but think using the Swedish Google to search for Russian is
hardly a perfect example of science here.

Why isn't he using google.ru? I have no idea if it would return different
results, but his current article doesn't prove as much as he thinks it does.

(Although, Library of Congress? Seriously?)

~~~
dukehoops
Good question. I am a Russian speaker - ran the same searches on google.ru and
got much better results (than google.se). Were Google.ru's results better than
Yandex? Probably not.

Perhaps the problem isn't quite as fundamental (non-English NLP sucks) but has
more to do with secondary Locale handling in specific countries?

Interesting observation on US-centricity (is that a word?) nonetheless. Many
major US Corps derive > 50% rev from outside of US. Not sure if GOOG is one of
those.

~~~
TomorrowMars
You raise a very interesting point. Just because a lot of American companies
draw a large amount of income from abroad does not make them respect the
market or adjust the product to that market. IN fact, US imperialist policy
(and that is simply what it is, don't take me for a rebel commie, but a
country that has been at offensive war for most of it's history cannot be
named anything but an imperialist) has insured that other countries are force
fed American products, right after we liberize them, as in liberate for
immediate colonisation.

~~~
anamax
> country that has been at offensive war for most of it's history cannot be
> named anything but an imperialist

Actually, it can.

The fact that both offensive war and imperialism are bad does not mean that
they're the same.

If you can't distinguish between different evils and confuse them, how do we
know that you can identify evils?

In other news, imperialism is not colonialism.

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mono
Great article about language as the last man standing against globalism. If
you ever have to manage the translation of a piece of software into a
different language, you will find two kinds: One in western chars where you
can get a feeling about the translators work and one in different chars like
russian, japanese, chinese, arabic where you don't get a ghost of idea what is
written there.

For search engines this is much harder: if you don't employ a sufficient
numbers of native speakers for these languages, you will never get sufficient
results. All other employees can't help you out. Translation software is
useless, if you don't know how to weight the possible results from the
cultural canon. A cyrillic reader expects to find the russian state library on
top when looking for a lib, not the library of congress.

~~~
ma2rten
Just for the record: Google has two engineering offices in Russia and one of
Googles co-founders is born in Russia.

~~~
TomorrowMars
does it mean they concentrate on the Russian market? Hardly.

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thesz
Most of all, google cannot find information in my blog (it is in russion and
it is Lifejournal one) for a long time while yandex still can (Yandex Blogs).

Google search is quite forgetful. After certain amount of time you just cannot
find something you need.

~~~
TomorrowMars
Well, for Yandex, livejournal is as important as .gov domains for google.
Livejournal.com is very important for Russians on the internet and completely
irrelevant for everyone else. It's where american teenage goths write diaries
about fat issues for us Yankees. In Russia, a lot of important people blog
there, with thousands of readers and followers.

~~~
thesz
I often encounter links to LJ here, at HN. One-two a week.

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=ru&q=site%3Anews.ycombin...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=ru&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+livejournal&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=)

So maybe LJ isn't all that teenage goth for hackers.

------
tonfa
Well comparing a search for a russian word in the US version of Google vs the
same search in Yandex, this are not unexpected results... He should compare to
the russian version of Google.

------
eurohacker
Europeans have invented PHP, Linux, Python, C++, Ruby on Rails, Opera browser,
Skype etc.

should promote european better search engines more , otherwise average-level
product makers like Google and Microsoft will take over the world

~~~
TomorrowMars
I think despite all the article's flaws, that point you mention is very valid-
google is a very American product, with the good-enough-for-us-means-good-
enough-for-the-rest-of-the world.

~~~
redthrowaway
It's still great in Canada, too. Don't even say it, we're totally different
and unique.

~~~
TomorrowMars
when you search in French from Canada, do you get results from France as well?

~~~
redthrowaway
Nope.

[http://www.google.ca/search?source=ig&hl=fr&rlz=&...](http://www.google.ca/search?source=ig&hl=fr&rlz=&q=biblioteque&btnG=Recherche+Google&aq=f&oq=#hl=fr&safe=off&sa=X&ei=enwzTbnlJoaWsgOX48y3BQ&ved=0CBsQvwUoAQ&q=biblioth%C3%A8que&spell=1&fp=70519d4f700750a7)

Google does have some god-awful URLs though.

