For quite some time, the net was ablaze with how Bing was trying to one-up Google. Then there was Wolfram and other “decision engines”, then there was Collecta and a huge list of other real-time search engines who would one-up Google. Twitter came on with the hope to be the pulse of the planet, and said “We’d like to do to Google, what Google did to others”. Bing included tweets. What did Google do?
We’ve been following Google pretty closely, from their improvements on visual presentations to every new feature they’ve included. To some, it seemed like Google was losing focus. Apparently not. The company that made it big with search is back to fortify it’s stronghold on the industry. Say hello to Google Caffeine. There were several who feel that Bing does give better results than Google, though shifting is a major inconvenience. Google, of course denies that Bing has anything to do with it, merely stating that they’d be looking to better themselves for quite some time.
The new initiative Google Caffeine, which users can test at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/, is visually the same. There are no snazzy make-overs, no major changes made in presentation. The difference, is under the hood, subtle but noticeable for those who bother. And Google wants you to test it out. Google says on its blog post “It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions”. Caffeine will redefine the core of the search infrastructure that Google utilises. There are several who’ve tried comparing with comments. I myself fiddled around with comparing results for WATBlog, Google Caffeine, myself and other strange queries. A few websites have compared and analysed the results. Supposed authorities on search engines like Vanessa Fox have posted their reviews on their sites. She remarks how a search for buffy the vampire slayer on the new infrastructure, for instance, returns video and news results midway down the page while a search on the current Google returns news at the top, video in the middle, and images at the bottom of the page.
Google has already commented that most people will not notice major changes, but they are hoping that developers and power searchers, will contribute by making their search efforts better. There are a few websites who have a run a few extensive tests. Google or Caffeine Caffeine 
or read comments on the official Google Blog. Meanwhile, try it out. If there’s something really interesting that happens, tell us. Or more importantly, go tell Google.
