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"This is really what the search engine that Google launched in 1998 did that was so great. Its results were ordered in a way that seemed like magic."
by herdrick 14y ago
"This is really what the search engine that Google launched in 1998 did that was so great. Its results were ordered in a way that seemed like magic."
- qwerta 14y agoYes, but it also means that Google innovation was not worth two million workers. All Google did was better results over Altavista. It is 10,000 searches a day, each search saves client 10 minutes (thanks to better result ordering), that is 70 people working nonstop.
- cromwellian 14y agoGoogle also has fresher content. It's not a matter if just indexing and querying, it's also updating the index. You have to account for that.
- qwerta 14y agoThis type of discussion is pretty pointless anyway, but since we started ;-) I have a few comments about second article "The boat engine is worth 33500 Egyptian slaves" First ancient Egyptians did not use slaves. Workforce in Old Kingdom which build pyramids were free men. Later it was more similar to feudalism. (BTW: women had more rights in Ancient Egypt than most women in 20th century) Also towing is not really necessary on river Nile. There are northerly winds for most of year, so one could just use sail to travel upstream. And third; 'Pharaoh Nile Express ' actually exist, but it had only 30 rowers :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khufu_ship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khufu_ship
- herdrick 14y agoAll Google did was better results over Altavista "All"? What else do you think a search engine is for?
- brent_noorda 14y agoThe first time I did a search in AltaVista I was amazed and it really did seem like magic. Within an hour it was no longer magic and was just a nice technical feat. So when Google came along is was too late for this stuff to be magic, but they clearly did the technical feat better.