>The inevitability argument can be made for YouTube, but I don't think it can be made for Google search. I think it can. Around the time that PageRank was publ

>The inevitability argument can be made for YouTube, but I don't think it can be made for Google search. I think it can. Around the time that PageRank was published, Jon Kleinberg also published the HITS (hubs & authorities) algorithm. There are some key differences in the way they work, and Page & Brin smartly went on to found Google around PageRank, but it was becoming evident in that period that hyperlink-based ranking was a smart thing to do.