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Some of google's success was due to simple business decisions. An acquirer would reverse these, and google wouldn't win. These were: uncluttered search-only, i

Some of google's success was due to simple business decisions. An acquirer would reverse these, and google wouldn't win. These were: uncluttered search-only, instead of a portal filled with junk; no paid-placement; it was also faster due to clever backend, so an acquirer could save money on the backend, bringing it down to adequate speed. Some argue that The Algorithm (pagerank) wasn't important for google's success at all, except as marketing to geeks, because search results were comparable to alternatives. Today, apart from consumer habit, google's biggest advantage is speed, possible by massive capital investment in datacenters. But also today, google is hamstrung by money (Wall St), making them vulnerable, as previous search was. OTOH the problem/need was there, maybe eventually there would have been another google targetting search-only.

srean 7y ago
> because search results were comparable to alternatives. As an early user of Google I vehemently disagree. That better results was not due to PageRank alone is well understood.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  I was an early user of Google too, and I don't remember the search results being any better than AltaVista (the dominant search engine at the time) or any of its other competitors. Google was just fast and ad-free, unlike AltaVista, which was ad-infested and slow. That was the attraction for myself and the other people I knew who used it.
  - srean 7y ago
    Perhaps we used to search for different things. AltaVista allowed far more control over operators and filters, but invariably I would have to dig much deeper in ther results to find what I was looking for. On google it would be there on the first page.
xiphias2 7y ago
One of the things that struck me in the interview is that they conpared Excite with Google on top quieries. Getting the top quieries right is relatively easy by hand, the real question is how the engines performed on random queries.

srean 7y ago

> because search results were comparable to alternatives. As an early user of Google I vehemently disagree. That better results was not due to PageRank alone is well understood.

pmoriarty 7y ago
I was an early user of Google too, and I don't remember the search results being any better than AltaVista (the dominant search engine at the time) or any of its other competitors. Google was just fast and ad-free, unlike AltaVista, which was ad-infested and slow. That was the attraction for myself and the other people I knew who used it.
- srean 7y ago
  Perhaps we used to search for different things. AltaVista allowed far more control over operators and filters, but invariably I would have to dig much deeper in ther results to find what I was looking for. On google it would be there on the first page.

xiphias2 7y ago

One of the things that struck me in the interview is that they conpared Excite with Google on top quieries. Getting the top quieries right is relatively easy by hand, the real question is how the engines performed on random queries.