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"What Google seems to do really well is building robust systems at a scale that pushes the limits of what humanity is capable of" Can you give some examples of

"What Google seems to do really well is building robust systems at a scale that pushes the limits of what humanity is capable of" Can you give some examples of things Google did which pushed the limits of what humanity was capable of?

davidatbu 4y ago
Not OP, but doesn't availing any particular tiny slice of all knowledge on the web to you within ~1.5 seconds, by inferring your intent incredibly accurately from a few words, count as "building robust systems ... that push the envelopes of what humanity is capable of"? Or, how about a video distribution network that serves more than 600,000 hours of video every minute, and manages to do that such that, every time service deteriorates on my 4G connection in a poor country, it's the last website (even considering text only websites) to stop working?
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  Yeah, I guess before Google you did have to wait 5 whole seconds to get the same information, because of all the ads AltaVista spewed at you along with their search results. Progress. As for YouTube, it was bought, not created by Google, wasn't it?
  - davidatbu 4y ago
    As to AltaVista, I'm not old enough to have used it. But my guess is that its accuracy and speed was not higher than that of the best competitors to Google right now. And to me, no competitor comes close in matching Google's combination of accuracy and speed across many categories of search (I've tried bing/you.com/yahoo.com/duckduckgo so far). As for youtube, serving video is not the impressive part. It's the scale at which they do it. And my understanding is that the scale has increased exponentially since the 2006 acquisition.
    - fatnoah 4y ago
      I'm old enough to remember AltaVista and all of the others. There's a reason I stopped using them almost immediately when I found Google.
      - pmoriarty 4y ago
        Me too, but it was just a better search engine at the time, which isn't nothing, but not exactly "pushing the envelopes of what humanity is capable of" either.
        fatnoah 4y ago
        Fair point!
  - dekhn 4y ago
    a typical search on altavista in its prime often took 30 seconds. Most of the results would be totally irrelevant.
hotpotamus 4y ago
I've never understood all the praise Netflix gets for technical excellence (not that they're bad) for running a video streaming site while Youtube does the same thing about as well with the added difficulty of taking in user submitted video with all the technical and legal troubles that entails. I'm far from one to praise Google, but Youtube is an amazing service.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- aidaman 4y ago
  no. youtube does it way better
ctvo 4y ago
Street view on maps / Google Earth. The end to end execution of capturing the images, making them available, keeping it updated. You can walk down the street in New York City without leaving your home —- it’s something out of sci-fi.

davidatbu 4y ago

Not OP, but doesn't availing any particular tiny slice of all knowledge on the web to you within ~1.5 seconds, by inferring your intent incredibly accurately from a few words, count as "building robust systems ... that push the envelopes of what humanity is capable of"? Or, how about a video distribution network that serves more than 600,000 hours of video every minute, and manages to do that such that, every time service deteriorates on my 4G connection in a poor country, it's the last website (even considering text only websites) to stop working?

pmoriarty 4y ago
Yeah, I guess before Google you did have to wait 5 whole seconds to get the same information, because of all the ads AltaVista spewed at you along with their search results. Progress. As for YouTube, it was bought, not created by Google, wasn't it?
- davidatbu 4y ago
  As to AltaVista, I'm not old enough to have used it. But my guess is that its accuracy and speed was not higher than that of the best competitors to Google right now. And to me, no competitor comes close in matching Google's combination of accuracy and speed across many categories of search (I've tried bing/you.com/yahoo.com/duckduckgo so far). As for youtube, serving video is not the impressive part. It's the scale at which they do it. And my understanding is that the scale has increased exponentially since the 2006 acquisition.
  - fatnoah 4y ago
    I'm old enough to remember AltaVista and all of the others. There's a reason I stopped using them almost immediately when I found Google.
    - pmoriarty 4y ago
      Me too, but it was just a better search engine at the time, which isn't nothing, but not exactly "pushing the envelopes of what humanity is capable of" either.
      - fatnoah 4y ago
        Fair point!
- dekhn 4y ago
  a typical search on altavista in its prime often took 30 seconds. Most of the results would be totally irrelevant.

hotpotamus 4y ago

I've never understood all the praise Netflix gets for technical excellence (not that they're bad) for running a video streaming site while Youtube does the same thing about as well with the added difficulty of taking in user submitted video with all the technical and legal troubles that entails. I'm far from one to praise Google, but Youtube is an amazing service.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
aidaman 4y ago
no. youtube does it way better

ctvo 4y ago

Street view on maps / Google Earth. The end to end execution of capturing the images, making them available, keeping it updated. You can walk down the street in New York City without leaving your home —- it’s something out of sci-fi.