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> IOW, crawling is part of the "price of admission". Yes, but I think the comment you responded to were saying that it is an insignificant part these days.

mindcrime 8y ago
Yes, but I think the comment you responded to were saying that it is an insignificant part these days. Maybe so. In which case, I'd say I disagree. Great crawling ability is definitely a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for building a competitive search engine. And while the technical aspects of building a large scale search engine have been at least partly trivialized by OSS crawling software, elastic computing resources in the cloud, etc., what is at issue is the possibility of site owners blocking anybody who isn't (Google|Bing|Baidu|etc). In this context, that's my concern: being blocked from crawling, if you're not already on the "allowed" list. Hence my reference to the question quoted above, from TFA.
- kbenson 8y ago
  I think the terminology you are looking for (or at least that you could use that might trigger people to accurately infer what you are trying to express), is that search and crawling are the foundation of everything google has built, in multiple aspects. In one aspect, it was literally their beginning, from which they were able to build a business and expand. In another, much more on point aspect, it underlies the majority of their services, either directly of a few steps removed. Like the foundation of a house, it may not always be the most visible aspect, and it may be taken for granted, but its contribution to the integrity of the whole can't be underestimated.
saurik 8y ago
...which makes about as much sense as saying breathing is the least significant thing a human does to someone bemoaning a lack of oxygen.
tylerhou 8y ago
Web crawling is necessary, but not sufficient. You won't be able to build a better Google just because you can crawl the web, but you won't be able to build a better Google if you can't crawl the web.

mindcrime 8y ago

Yes, but I think the comment you responded to were saying that it is an insignificant part these days. Maybe so. In which case, I'd say I disagree. Great crawling ability is definitely a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for building a competitive search engine. And while the technical aspects of building a large scale search engine have been at least partly trivialized by OSS crawling software, elastic computing resources in the cloud, etc., what is at issue is the possibility of site owners blocking anybody who isn't (Google|Bing|Baidu|etc). In this context, that's my concern: being blocked from crawling, if you're not already on the "allowed" list. Hence my reference to the question quoted above, from TFA.

kbenson 8y ago
I think the terminology you are looking for (or at least that you could use that might trigger people to accurately infer what you are trying to express), is that search and crawling are the foundation of everything google has built, in multiple aspects. In one aspect, it was literally their beginning, from which they were able to build a business and expand. In another, much more on point aspect, it underlies the majority of their services, either directly of a few steps removed. Like the foundation of a house, it may not always be the most visible aspect, and it may be taken for granted, but its contribution to the integrity of the whole can't be underestimated.

saurik 8y ago

...which makes about as much sense as saying breathing is the least significant thing a human does to someone bemoaning a lack of oxygen.

tylerhou 8y ago

Web crawling is necessary, but not sufficient. You won't be able to build a better Google just because you can crawl the web, but you won't be able to build a better Google if you can't crawl the web.