The answer? “Yes,” according to Google’s PageRank, which is an indicator of how “important” Google considers a webpage to be. I have noted that Apple.com has a Google PageRank of 10 out of 10, whereas Microsoft.com has 9 out of 10. But then again, Alexa’s ranking system gives Microsoft.com a higher ranking than Apple.com. Rather interesting…
Google’s New RSS Reader
Google announced earlier this month that they’ve released a new RSS reader, dubbed “Google Reader,” in Google Labs. Like the Google Personalized Homepage, the Reader is designed to present the web user with personalized content, but the Reader is dedicated entirely to feed reading. Visit the Google Reader homepage to start subscribing. Oh by the way, my blog has an RSS feed. 
I tried out the reader briefly, but personally, I think for now I’ll stick with Firefox for my RSS reading. In these early stages the reader just seems too… clumsy to use for my taste.
Search Google’s AdWords Database
Who knew you could search for Google AdWords advertisements? Just go to http://www.google.com/sponsoredlinks and type in your query. This could be useful for finding out how many affiliate ads there are for a company/product, or for checking out your AdWords competition.
Google Doodles and Logos
Occasionally, you’ll notice that the logo on the Google homepage has changed to celebrate a certain occassion. After some browsing around on the Google website, I’ve compiled this list of the various logos Google has had over the years.
All Logos By Year (FYI, some of these pages have links to more logo pages):
What happens when you cross Google and Dilbert? You get a Google/Dilbert logo/cartoon, which you can find at the Google and Dilbert Doodle page.
You can also visit this page for another interesting read on the person who designs all of these Google doodles and logos.
And finally, the Google Fan Logos page contains more logos compiled by Google fans.
Microsoft vs. Google in Trivia Competition
It looks like representatives from Microsoft and Google will be competing in a trivia competition at the Linuxworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco on August 8. According to this PCWorld article, “Bill Hilf, lead program manager and leader of the Linux/Open Source lab at Microsoft, will captain the Microsoft team, and Chris DiBona, Google’s open source program manager, will lead the Google side.”
It will be interesting to learn who the victor is. Personally, I’m rooting for Google
Using Google for Hack Attacks
According to this article from PCWorld, Google can be used to provide information for hacking attacks.
An example the article mentioned is the ability to use Google to determine the server structure of a large network. If you type in site:nasa, apparantly you get a list of the servers on NASA’s internal network, which could possibly be used to discover entry points for attacking the server systems. The same goes for site:google, site:yahoo, and similar queries.
This wasn’t mentioned directly in the article, but the article gave me the idea: typing something like “warning mysql site:nasa.gov” into Google can allow a searcher to find MySQL error messages on the NASA website. This could allow a hacker to obtain information about the database structure.
Google Moon
When I went to visit the Google homepage today, they had a “Google Moon” logo and a sentence that read:
See what the astronauts saw on July 20, 1969. Try Google Moon.
If you follow the link to moon.google.com, you’ll get a version of Google Maps that shows satellite imagery from the moon, along with information about the various lunar landings. Also check out the Google Moon FAQ, where they mention their G.C.H.E.E.S.E. research center that was announced on April Fool’s Day of 2004.
And when you’re looking at the Google Moon maps, just remember – don’t zoom in too close. 