By Clint Boulton, InternetNews
“In a showdown with rivals AltaVista Co. and Inktomi Corp., Google Inc. Monday rolled out what it
claims is the largest search engine on the Net.
With it, the fast growing Google scored a major coup by
dethroning Inktomi from the default search engine provider slot on
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO)
Financial terms for that deal were not disclosed.
Comprising more than 1 billion URLs, the new and improved Google
search offers users a comprehensive collection of Web sites, which
can be easily searched with Google’s fast and highly relevant
search technology.
According to a recent survey conducted by the NEC Research
Institute, there are more than 1 billion Web pages online today.
Google now offers users the ability to search almost all of this
content, providing access to 560 million Web pages and 500 million
partially indexed URLs.
Integrated with more than 70 portals and destination sites
worldwide, Google’s search technology will soon power more than 30
million searches per day on Google.com and its partner Web sites.
Google’s new search index also represents the largest collection of
international Web sites on the Internet, and is a key part of
Google’s strategy to expand its reach to new international
markets.
“Google continues to demonstrate the most innovative search
technology on the Internet. Now with the largest index available,
our users will get not only the most relevant search results but
also the most comprehensive,” said Sergey Brin, Google president
and co-founder. “We remain obsessed with providing our users with
the highest quality search experience on the Web.”
In its deal with portal titan Yahoo!, Google’s engine will serve
as a complement to Yahoo!’s Web directory and navigational guide
within the next 30 days.
Jeff Mallett, president and chief operations officer of Yahoo!,
said the deal was a no-brainer because the two firms share the same
desire to boost consumer growth and scale as high as possible on
the Web.
“We’re extremely proud that Yahoo! has selected Google to
complement its existing directory and navigational guide,” added
Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and president. “This is a
significant milestone for Google and a strong validation of our
business strategy.”
Shannon Stubo, a spokesperson for Yahoo!, said the quality of
Google’s latest search engine exceeds that of Inktomi’s, which had
been the default search provider for the portal giant since 1998.
Inktomi took over the search provider reigns for Yahoo! from
AltaVista.