> Was it just the technological advance of Google-Matrix (Page Rank) and Map-Reduce? Well, yes, it was simply that. It was the difference between a search engi

> Was it just the technological advance of Google-Matrix (Page Rank) and Map-Reduce? Well, yes, it was simply that. It was the difference between a search engine that works and one that doesn't. For example, most sites back then had tons of text with the same color of the background, with words that would get you an higher rank on the previous generation of search engines. Also, the search engines had very heavy pages, mostly with news, and they were known as "portals". Google was a blast in comparison.