Google is amazing (Another geek entry. You've been warned)

When Shanky first recommended using Google to me (Freshman or Sophomore year in high school), I was skeptical. What made google.com any better than other search engines I had read about in Newsweek, such as alltheweb.com, askjeeves.com (my favorite at the time), dogpile.com, etc.? It was underwhelming in its power. It's simple layout and straight-forward presentation of results belied the ingenuity of what the company had in store. And being the stubborn geek I was, I kept on asking Jeeves questions such as "What was the impact of the American Revolution?" or "Who are the Tamil Tigers?" and, in my free time, "How do I get Rich?" (Note: AskJeeves has since adopted a more Google-like layout) As time went on, Google clearly returned better results, had a nice "cache" function, and even could index .pdf files and convert them to HTML. Perhaps the most important reason why I adopted Google was because I had a 56k modem and a 350 mHz computer. Google simply loaded faster than any other search engine, by a noticable amount. Ironically, now Google is winning my respect through its high-level technology. Google Maps is a hybrid of the ultrapowerful TerraServer and the practical Yahoo! Maps. Gmail (which I have 50 invitaions to give out, if anyone is interested) has attracted a lot of attention for giving users a 2GB inbox. More important than this though (as Yahoo now offers 1GB, which is still much more than necessary), is Gmail's clean, easy to use interface (text ads only) and excellent usabilty (auto-contactadding, labelling, starring, and Atom feed). Google also has a nice image search, news aggregator, and some software (Picassa has been positively reviewed--response to the Toolbar and Desktop Search has been more lukewarm). Oh, and let's not forget that Google runs Blogger. In the past week, I've read up on PHP and server-side internet scripts. My hope was to design my own blog (layout, coding, EVERYTHING) from scratch and independent from Blogger, Movable Type, Greymatter, etc., a la Ayame. I mean, being a true webmaster is undescribably PIMP in an undescribably geeky way. I even have to give props to the Lees for managing their sites w/o the help of outside scripts, albeit they do it the old-fashioned way, with ftp and manual updates. I think, after some reading at Borders today, that I could write enough php to have a self-sufficient blog. But Blogger has grown a lot since I first tried to abandon it in my GreyMatter project. It now offers individual entry pages, a commenting system equal or superior to Haloscan's, an automatically generated Atom feed, and 300MB for image hosting for FREE. If I started a blog from scratch, I'm not sure how I could program an equal commenting system, and I'd only have 75 MB to work with if I used freepgs.com. The only big advantage I'd have over the current Blogger system is the ability to support multiple categories on differennt indicies instead of all globbed together (this post, for instance, would only show up on my Geek page, whereas the previous post would go under my Journal page). I think I'll writeup a php blog script for fun. I'll probably stay with Blogger though because it is so full-featured and the ability to support multiple categories will probably come in due time, as individual entry pages and built-in commenting did. Go Google! I really do admire Google...this isn't just a ploy to get higher ranked by them. I guess you could say I : Google :: Lindsay Kerrigan : IU College Republicans