It's slow?

So … it was reported that Google was “slow”.

This brings us to this blog’s title, Fast, is never fast enough. How slow does a Google search have to be, before you try an alternative service? And when did it start to matter how fast it takes me to find the answer to a question?

Google reported that 14% of its user’s experienced either an outage or “slow down”. So, if you were one of the people impacted on a Google, did you try to Yahoo? No one reported an increase in Yahoo’s traffic, at least that I saw. Does this mean the masses are so tied to Google that no one tried alternative search engines?

I understand the outrage over inaccessibility to Gmail and other services, but “slow” searching? How slow does searching have to be, before you try an alternative service? How many outages does Google have to suffer before users start to use another service?

I did an internet search, using Google and Yahoo, for the last reported Yahoo service outage. From the information that I found, the last Yahoo outage was back in February 2000 (source: 02/09/2000, Yahoo outage raises Web concerns, Network World Fusion, Brian Fonseca, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2000/0209yahoo2.html).

And look at the headline, “Yahoo outage raises Web concerns” and yet there were no gloom and doom Google outage web impact headlines.

My, “fast is never fast enough” quote originated when I was discussing purchasing CISCO stock back in the 1980’s (yes, see picture for proof) and he thought I wanted to buy the other SYSCO. I tried to explain the importance of network speed, the lowering costs of bandwidth, and the impacts on business. Because users are demanding ever faster networks, being fast today will not be fast enough in six months. Therefore, fast is never fast enough, and that CISCO was going to be successful.

I was amazed when the iPhone first appeared on the scene. Here you had a device about the thickness of a pack of cards and smaller than a 3 x 5 card that could access the internet from almost any location. And what was the major beef? It was slow! Slow! An easy to use, phone, internet access device that is smaller than a 3 x 5 card and the main complaint is that its slow?

And it seems that search is following the somewhat the same path. A fast search today will be considered a slow search tomorrow. Fast is never fast enough.