4 ms·

Wasn’t the clean homepage one if the most iconic differences between Google and other search engines that helped Google become dominant?

bostik 3y ago
That, and the quality of the results. They've had to give up the latter, so might as well dump the former too.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  they also forgot about non-me-too innovation it seems
taeric 3y ago
That is certainly the "legend" of how they succeeded. I honestly think it was less about having a clean homepage than it was a single text input for searches. That said, hard to view any story on how they "won" as much more than a "just so" story. :(
- eduction 3y ago
  Clean home page was definitely a huge part of it: - Google predates widespread U.S. broadband, and even early DSL was not too fast. So cutting bytes made a real difference. -Search was not baked into the browser (search bar etc) so homepage speed really mattered -It was memorable branding, it clearly marked Google as more focused on quality search vs Yahoo et al who were trying to be "portals" with news and listings and so forth -- no one else understood how important search was, that it could be exponentially better and a differentiator
  - taeric 3y ago
    I would want that to be true, but I just don't buy it. I remember search in the early days, and I honestly don't remember having a huge speed difference for most search sites. The homepage of all of them was relatively fast to load. Now, Yahoo and a few others were quick to jump into "portals" of news and such. That slowed down. But altavista and other base search pages were fast enough. (If a bit hard to remember the names of.) (I do find it funny that I remember so few of the options now.)
    - taskforcegemini 3y ago
      probably something difficult to know for a fact, as most people may not pick their tools as consciously. I however remember vividly the clean design winning me over instantly, compared to the alternatives, which were overloaded with ads or other content I was not interested in. same could and still can be said for gmail compared to other freemailers like gmx. but I'm sure google will not stop enshittifying all their services till they are ready for their graveyard.
- gumby 3y ago
  It was definitely an important reason for early adoption (just remember how chaotic altavista and yahoo looked). That and good results. When they were funded there was some chatter that the things that made them good would go away.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > I honestly think it was less about having a clean homepage than it was a single text input for searches. All of the other search engines just had a single text input for searches, too, e.g. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/altavista-2000 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/altavista-2000 By far the biggest reason was that the results were soooo much better. All of the other search engines basically used some variation of keyword matching in the document itself, which is why you'd see so many pages back in that time that were loaded with superfluous keywords. It was Google's original PageRank incarnation that made all the difference early on.
  - taeric 3y ago
    I'm sure I'm remembering the "advanced search" that other sites had. I feel that those were more common back then. Granted, most of my searches back then were probably in libraries and such? The "advanced" search UI was amusing. You would click there thinking that you could give a better search, but you often got worse results by trying to use all of the fields. Google not really having an advanced search at least let you cycle more rapidly on raw searches.
- eyelidlessness 3y ago
  At least among nerds who were early adopters, this was an oft cited reason for their personal enthusiasm about Google versus incumbent search engines. Of course quality of results was paramount, but the spartan homepage definitely drove that segment of early success. The theory that tech adoption promoted more mainstream adoption may be more “just so”, I think that’s harder to validate (but given the adoption of computers and internet at the time, it’s probably at least partially true).
mardifoufs 3y ago
Yes whenever I use Bing (by accident) I'm instantly reminded of those "search engines" that came with crappy toolbars bundled in shady freeware installers. Same goes for any "crowded" search engine. I guess Bing is also a complete mess too because it has no coherence in its UI. Maybe google will be better in that regard, because Bing is hard to beat, but yeah...

bostik 3y ago

That, and the quality of the results. They've had to give up the latter, so might as well dump the former too.

agumonkey 3y ago
they also forgot about non-me-too innovation it seems

taeric 3y ago

That is certainly the "legend" of how they succeeded. I honestly think it was less about having a clean homepage than it was a single text input for searches. That said, hard to view any story on how they "won" as much more than a "just so" story. :(

eduction 3y ago
Clean home page was definitely a huge part of it: - Google predates widespread U.S. broadband, and even early DSL was not too fast. So cutting bytes made a real difference. -Search was not baked into the browser (search bar etc) so homepage speed really mattered -It was memorable branding, it clearly marked Google as more focused on quality search vs Yahoo et al who were trying to be "portals" with news and listings and so forth -- no one else understood how important search was, that it could be exponentially better and a differentiator
- taeric 3y ago
  I would want that to be true, but I just don't buy it. I remember search in the early days, and I honestly don't remember having a huge speed difference for most search sites. The homepage of all of them was relatively fast to load. Now, Yahoo and a few others were quick to jump into "portals" of news and such. That slowed down. But altavista and other base search pages were fast enough. (If a bit hard to remember the names of.) (I do find it funny that I remember so few of the options now.)
  - taskforcegemini 3y ago
    probably something difficult to know for a fact, as most people may not pick their tools as consciously. I however remember vividly the clean design winning me over instantly, compared to the alternatives, which were overloaded with ads or other content I was not interested in. same could and still can be said for gmail compared to other freemailers like gmx. but I'm sure google will not stop enshittifying all their services till they are ready for their graveyard.
gumby 3y ago
It was definitely an important reason for early adoption (just remember how chaotic altavista and yahoo looked). That and good results. When they were funded there was some chatter that the things that made them good would go away.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> I honestly think it was less about having a clean homepage than it was a single text input for searches. All of the other search engines just had a single text input for searches, too, e.g. https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/altavista-2000 https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/gallery/altavista-2000 By far the biggest reason was that the results were soooo much better. All of the other search engines basically used some variation of keyword matching in the document itself, which is why you'd see so many pages back in that time that were loaded with superfluous keywords. It was Google's original PageRank incarnation that made all the difference early on.
- taeric 3y ago
  I'm sure I'm remembering the "advanced search" that other sites had. I feel that those were more common back then. Granted, most of my searches back then were probably in libraries and such? The "advanced" search UI was amusing. You would click there thinking that you could give a better search, but you often got worse results by trying to use all of the fields. Google not really having an advanced search at least let you cycle more rapidly on raw searches.
eyelidlessness 3y ago
At least among nerds who were early adopters, this was an oft cited reason for their personal enthusiasm about Google versus incumbent search engines. Of course quality of results was paramount, but the spartan homepage definitely drove that segment of early success. The theory that tech adoption promoted more mainstream adoption may be more “just so”, I think that’s harder to validate (but given the adoption of computers and internet at the time, it’s probably at least partially true).

mardifoufs 3y ago

Yes whenever I use Bing (by accident) I'm instantly reminded of those "search engines" that came with crappy toolbars bundled in shady freeware installers. Same goes for any "crowded" search engine. I guess Bing is also a complete mess too because it has no coherence in its UI. Maybe google will be better in that regard, because Bing is hard to beat, but yeah...