A Small Piece of the World Wide Web

Who decides what's popular?

One of the key things to remember about the world wide web and Web 2.0 is that the users decide what is popular and what content gets "liked", "upvoted" and shared. Alexa is a tool developed by Amazon to show internet logistics and help growing business boost their visibility and better understand how visibility works.

Some of the most popular websites on Alexa are Google, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, and Yahoo.com. All these sites are quite different in their content, user-base and the information they push to their users. What they do have in common is that they are all Web 2.0 sites. 

These sites can tie their success to the idea of internet freedom and allowing users to write, post and express themselves in any way they want using a variety of formats. YouTube, for example, allows video posts, surveys, and picture posting. Reddit allows users to post in different topics or “subreddits” and users can post text posts, pictures, gifs etc. Along with the freedom to post, these sites heavily emphasize the use of easy search tools to help users find content that is relevant to them and uses this information to suggest similar things they might be interested in. I also think these sites are popular because of their “all in one” format. By this, users can get everything they need from one location – social media, news, weather. 

If we continue to scroll through Alexa, we find that Bing.com is number 47. Why is Bing so low while Google and Yahoo are so high? Let's take a look at some logistics. Bing was launched in 2009 whereas Google was launched in 1997. This 12 year difference is one of the key reasons why Google is both the leading search engine and most used website by Alexa. In the course of 12 years, Google was able to build, strengthen and improve its indexing capabilities. Google generates about 63.4 percent of all search queries in the United States whereas Bing queries about 22.8 percent of all search queries. In addition, Google dominates about 93% of the mobile search market. Google’s success lies not only in its long-term development but also in its continuing innovation. Google treks into smart phone development through Android and offers a range of services such as Google Play, Google Music as well as online shopping. Google has developed a culture among users as being the “best”. Bing, on the other hand, is commonly mocked and made into a meme (along with Internet Explorer) and that continuing reputation harms the growth of the company. 

     Google is king. Just another reason for the Google world domination is Gmail. Gmail is a free email service developed and supported by Google. Anyone can create a Gmail Account and it provides users with a gigabyte of storage for messages and the ability to search, sort and organize emails. Gmail also offers spam filtering and free Pop and IMAP services allowing users to access their Gmail from email servers such as Outlook or Apple Mail. In addition, Gmail comes packaged with a slew of apps and widgets such a Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Drive. Since Google combines many of its products and services a Gmail account also allows you to quickly create and access calendaring, file storage, photohosting, Youtube, blogging and more.