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Google is fundamentally different from Facebook because they solved a really hard problem really well and then found an excellent way of monetizing their soluti
by microarchitect 14y ago
Google is fundamentally different from Facebook because they solved a really hard problem really well and then found an excellent way of monetizing their solution. People still use Google today largely because it works better than the other options out there. Further, the other options are worse not because the others aren't trying hard enough or spending enough on search.
To me, Google falls squarely in the disruptive and hard category. I mean no disrespect to Zuckerburg, but there's a reason Google was founded by two Stanford PhD students and not a bunch of bored undergrads.
- guscost 14y ago110% correct.
- maigret 14y agoFunny, the more I learn about Facebook, the less I believe to this distinction. You've got to see how much people FB hired out of Goog to see that they've got some technical talents, and I can hardly imagine they are idling. Facebook may not be solving all the same problems than Goog, but they probably have an equivalent advanced DC management. See their work on devops, PHP compiler, and how they opened their server architecture. There is a part of truth, but I think Google PR has created itself a good image of "engineer wizards" which may be a bit overstated.
- microarchitect 14y agoFacebook now have a lot of very difficult technical problems to solve and are doing a great job solving them. But what got them here wasn't a great algorithm, it was good execution on a fairly simple concept.