[Reader-list] INDIA'S FIRST LOCAL INTERNET SEARCH ENGINE

[Shivam Vij]

On 10/13/06, t.ray at vsnl.com <t.ray at vsnl.com> wrote:

> Shivam,
>
> I am an IIT-an, among other things. I say "other things" to stress the point that I have not confined myself to being an IIT-an and all that it entails in the popular imagination. For many years now, I have not even been an engineer ... and no, not a management guy either.


Nice to know you better, Tapas.


>
> That said, let me ask you what exactly is objectionable in trying to find India-related content on the web. Why exactly is it parochial? I suppose you have used Google. Have you noticed that the home page of Google India has an option up front that says "pages from India"? Is that parochial? If not, why? Because Google is an American company?
>
> Maybe I am missing something here. Could you help me understand the logic?
>

Tapas, I didn't say there's anything wrong with finding Indian content
on the web. I do it at least a dozen times a day through Google, and
at least another dozen times when I visit Indian news sites. My point
was, and I quote:

> > Yet, what is this gobbledygook about the web
> > algorithms - how exactly do they identify a web page as Indian? Indian
> > server? The word 'India'? An article about America on an Indian site -
> > is that Indian? An article about India on an American site - is that
> > Indian?

I was asking questions out of sheer ignorance, and if I had the
answers I wouldn't have asked them.


> Also, could you please explain what you mean by "another IITan publicity stunt"?

That dig was probably unwarranted, but the news excerpt quoted by
Quraishy says in the very first line that the site has been founded by
two IIT Delhi graduates. Perhaps it was the writer of the report who
thought the IIT bit made good copy, though it is more likely that the
IIT badge was prominently advertised in the press release itself,
given that it is there in all twelve results I could find about it on
Google News: http://news.google.co.in/news?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tab=wn&ncl=http://www.moneycontrol.com/india/news/tech/searchenginegoesswadeshisearchengine/searchenginegoesswadeshi/market/stocks/article/245430&hl=en

I agree that this was a frivolous remark on my part, but equally, I
don't see why it should have bothered you! Or perhaps I was thinking
about another IIT 'stunt' gone awry:
http://purohitexposed.blogspot.com/ :)

And if you can still help me understand how a certain webpage may be
identified as being Indian by a web crawler, I'll be grateful to you
for that.

Continuing conversations,
Shivam

-- 
http://www.shivamvij.com