Google Scholar helps you find offline stuff too

As Google launches yet another arm to what is becoming an octopus-like operation, I'm yet again impressed by what looks like a very useful search tool for academic writing. Google Scholar ranks results by how many articles reference it (among other things) rather than how many sites link to it - and it even pulls out references within texts and presents them as separate results, even if these are books or publications not available offline. I did a search for Online Journalism and immediately discovered some very useful stuff.

Meanwhile, bigger fish Microsoft is looking to challenge Google with its own search technology, expected to be bundled in its next OS (a la Explorer) in 2006. Apparently if you type in "more evil than Satan" Google comes up top, partly because the Google motto is apparently 'Do no evil', which is better than those bland corporate mottos you usually get (although the company is doing a good deal of its own gobbling, including Blogger.com and Usenet).