Google insists that
the Caffeine optimization project for its
search engine isn't a reaction to rival Microsoft's
recent advances in the search engine game with Bing and
a new online search and advertising alliance with Yahoo.
But maybe that's the wrong line of inquiry for Mountain View, Calif.-based Google. Maybe a better question to ask is not if Google embarked on Caffeine to counter Bing, but if they're talking up Caffeine to counter Bing. Consider what Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer, had to say in a Monday blog post in reply to the question, "Is this Caffeine Update because of Company X or Y is doing Z?"
"Nope. I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months," Cutts writes. "I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we've done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don't think we'll ever stop trying to improve."
That makes sense -- Google didn't get to where it is today in search and online advertising by resting on its laurels. The search giant has been as good as any technology firm and better than most at avoiding the trap of forgoing the disruption of change for the sake of preserving legacy revenue streams.
But also consider that by Google's own admission, the Caffeine project's tweaks to the search engine mostly occur "under the hood" and that few people beyond Web developers are likely to even recognize Caffeine's benefits.
"Currently, even power users won't notice much of a difference at all," Cutts writes on his blog.
Okay, fine -- so why all the hoopla -- including a news-friendly name like "Caffeine" -- for what appears to be a routine infrastructure code clean-up of Google's flagship product? Is it too far-fetched to guess that even if Google didn't kick-start Caffeine as a reaction to Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft's Bing, it very well may be talking about the project for that very reason?
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