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Rediff.com  » Business » Google launches 'Hummingbird' on 15th birthday!
This article was first published 11 years ago

Google launches 'Hummingbird' on 15th birthday!

September 27, 2013 17:51 IST

Image: A Google-themed birthday cake is seen at the house where Google was founded on the company's 15th anniversary in Menlo Park, California.
Photographs: Stephen Lam/Reuters Alexei Oreskovic

Google Inc has overhauled its search algorithm, the foundation of the Internet's dominant search engine, to better cope with the longer, more complex queries it has been getting from Web users.

Google launches 'Hummingbird' on 15th birthday!

Image: Amit Singhal, senior vice president of search at Google, introduces the new 'Hummingbird' search algorithm at the garage where the company was founded on Google's 15th anniversary in Menlo Park, California.
Photographs: Stephen Lam/Reuters

Amit Singhal, senior vice president of search, told reporters on Thursday that the company launched its latest "Hummingbird" algorithm about a month ago and that it currently affects 90 percent of worldwide searches via Google.

Google launches 'Hummingbird' on 15th birthday!

Image: Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt (C) poses with co-founders Sergey Brin ( L) and Larry Page.
Photographs: Reuters

Google is trying to keep pace with the evolution of Internet usage. As search queries get more complicated, traditional "Boolean" or keyword-based systems begin deteriorating because of the need to match concepts and meanings in addition to words.

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Google launches 'Hummingbird' on 15th birthday!

Image: A photographer takes picture of a computer inside Google co-founder Larry Page's original office on Google's 15th anniversary in Menlo Park, California.
Photographs: Stephen Lam/Reuters

"Hummingbird" is the company's effort to match the meaning of queries with that of documents on the Internet, said Singhal from the Menlo Park garage where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin conceived their now-ubiquitous search engine.

 

Google launches 'Hummingbird' on 15th birthday!

Image: A shelve of Google-themed artifacts are seen at the house where the company was founded on Google's 15th anniversary in Menlo Park, California.
Photographs: Stephen Lam/Reuters

"Remember what it was like to search in 1998? You'd sit down and boot up your bulky computer, dial up on your squawky modem, type in some keywords, and get 10 blue links to websites that had those words," Singhal wrote in a separate blogpost.

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Tags: Singhal

Google launches 'Hummingbird' on 15th birthday!

Image: Amit Singhal, senior vice president of search at Google, holds a Google Glass as he speaks at the garage where the company was founded.
Photographs: Stephen Lam/Reuters

"The world has changed so much since then: billions of people have come online, the Web has grown exponentially, and now you can ask any question on the powerful little device in your pocket," Singhal said.

Tags: Singhal

Google launches 'Hummingbird' on 15th birthday!

Image: Susan Wojcicki, senior vice president of Ads and Commerce for Google, speaks at the garage. She is the sister of Anne Wojcicki, an entrepreneur and the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Photographs: Stephen Lam/Reuters

Page and Brin set up shop in the garage of Susan Wojcicki -- now a senior Google executive -- in September 1998, around the time they incorporated their company.

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Google launches 'Hummingbird' on 15th birthday!

Image: Amit Singhal, senior vice president of search at Google.
Photographs: Stephen Lam/Reuters

This week marks the 15th anniversary of their collaboration.

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Source: REUTERS
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