4 ms·

People forget that had Google been acquired it's not like we would still have the same site today. The main reason it was successful back in the day was becaus

People forget that had Google been acquired it's not like we would still have the same site today. The main reason it was successful back in the day was because it was fast, clean and had no ads. Any company that acquired them would sort those out pretty quick.

makapuf 7y ago
I remember I and many others starting to use them for exactly that. Look at this comparison (not that early is starts at 2004 while google iirc started to see usage at 2001) http://aautar.digital-radiation.com/blog/uploaded_images/google_vs_yahoo.jpg http://aautar.digital-radiation.com/blog/uploaded_images/goo... Some other search engines were even more heavy handed on advertising.
madiathomas 7y ago
"Fast, clean and no ads" was a big deal for me. Internet was very slow when I starting using it. When I discovered Google, it was a breath of fresh air to my life. For a change I was using a search engine that loaded fast.
onion2k 7y ago
I've come around to the idea that the old 'directory style' search engines is a feature that I'd quite like to see again. If a search engine is only available as a search listing then you're entirely at the mercy of the algorithm. With a human-curated directory of links there's some checking going on, and it's much harder for someone to game their way to the top of the listings.
- cosmodisk 7y ago
  Such a directory would still face similar problems Google has to deal with on daily basis.Popular!= Good or reliable and etc.
- simonh 7y ago
  With a pure search system, you can endlessly tweak your results to precisely what you need in any obscure topic space using search terms. With a human curated directory, you will instead find that whatever terms you add, you always get dumped back into the same box of hand built pages of results. Once you’ve mined those out, this will get really frustrating.
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    A blend of the two approaches would be useful. Expose the internal topic classifications and let searchers manipulate them to narrow or widen the search space.
tinus_hn 7y ago
Don’t forget that Pagerank, the ‘results must have all terms’ feature and the very large index made for significantly better results that the competition had.
simonh 7y ago
Right, but the received wisdom was that the ‘winner’ of the internet race to be the number 1 portal would look more like Yahoo, Excite or AOL. A big front page with lots of content and big juicy adds. If Google had been acquired, they would simply have become the tiny little search box on the Excite front page. That could have left space for another company to develop competing search tech and beat them with a minimalist approach. Or for another heavy duty portal page site to develop competing tech. Maybe it was only Google’s radically minimalist focus that allowed their superior search tech to really stand out.
jelling 7y ago
Agreed. This is what Excite looked like: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a3/Excite_screenshot_1997.png/220px-Excite_screenshot_1997.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a3/Excite_...
- dehrmann 7y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/19980429181017/http://excite.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19980429181017/http://excite.com...

makapuf 7y ago

I remember I and many others starting to use them for exactly that. Look at this comparison (not that early is starts at 2004 while google iirc started to see usage at 2001) http://aautar.digital-radiation.com/blog/uploaded_images/google_vs_yahoo.jpg http://aautar.digital-radiation.com/blog/uploaded_images/goo... Some other search engines were even more heavy handed on advertising.

madiathomas 7y ago

"Fast, clean and no ads" was a big deal for me. Internet was very slow when I starting using it. When I discovered Google, it was a breath of fresh air to my life. For a change I was using a search engine that loaded fast.

onion2k 7y ago

I've come around to the idea that the old 'directory style' search engines is a feature that I'd quite like to see again. If a search engine is only available as a search listing then you're entirely at the mercy of the algorithm. With a human-curated directory of links there's some checking going on, and it's much harder for someone to game their way to the top of the listings.

cosmodisk 7y ago
Such a directory would still face similar problems Google has to deal with on daily basis.Popular!= Good or reliable and etc.
simonh 7y ago
With a pure search system, you can endlessly tweak your results to precisely what you need in any obscure topic space using search terms. With a human curated directory, you will instead find that whatever terms you add, you always get dumped back into the same box of hand built pages of results. Once you’ve mined those out, this will get really frustrating.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  A blend of the two approaches would be useful. Expose the internal topic classifications and let searchers manipulate them to narrow or widen the search space.

tinus_hn 7y ago

Don’t forget that Pagerank, the ‘results must have all terms’ feature and the very large index made for significantly better results that the competition had.

simonh 7y ago

Right, but the received wisdom was that the ‘winner’ of the internet race to be the number 1 portal would look more like Yahoo, Excite or AOL. A big front page with lots of content and big juicy adds. If Google had been acquired, they would simply have become the tiny little search box on the Excite front page. That could have left space for another company to develop competing search tech and beat them with a minimalist approach. Or for another heavy duty portal page site to develop competing tech. Maybe it was only Google’s radically minimalist focus that allowed their superior search tech to really stand out.

jelling 7y ago

Agreed. This is what Excite looked like: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a3/Excite_screenshot_1997.png/220px-Excite_screenshot_1997.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a3/Excite_...

dehrmann 7y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/19980429181017/http://excite.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/19980429181017/http://excite.com...