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This could not be more false. I worked at Inktomi for four years. Inktomi provided search results to a number of customers (MSN, AOL, Hotbot, Yahoo) through an

by diego 17y ago

This could not be more false. I worked at Inktomi for four years. Inktomi provided search results to a number of customers (MSN, AOL, Hotbot, Yahoo) through an api but did not control the UI. When Google came into the picture it had a superior UI compared to the horrible clutter on our clients' portal pages. Our management believed that people used Google because it had better results, but our internal blind tests showed that it wasn't the case. We built internal metrics frameworks and improved our result sets until they were at least as good as google by objective and subjective measurements. We stayed focused on the quality of search results for a long time and disregarded the UI effect as we didn't control it. As a result we lost and ended up being acquired by Yahoo for a tiny fraction of what the company had been worth at its peak.

gruseom 17y ago
A fascinating comment. I never found Google's results to be noticeably better. What got me to switch were their simple UI and, most of all, how fast they were. These two things were of course related, since that lightweight goofy UI was so much faster to load. Indeed, performance is UI if you think about it. I've read that studies show that if you put the Google brand on search results, people automatically rate them as having higher quality. So a lot of this is perception. (Quality is related to performance too. Once people notice that a piece of software is faster, they're primed to believe that it's better in every respect.) Your comment confirms that the reason most people cite for Google's success is quite different from what actually gave them an edge. Of course, once they got it they capitalized on it bigtime.
Retric 17y ago
I liked Hotbot's UI and switched to Google because Hotbot's results where terrible in comparison over about 2 months. improved our result sets until they were at least as good as google You may have fixed the problem, but at that point your reputation was already shot. Ford makes high quality cars today, but it took a long time and a lot of effort to change peoples perception that American cars are not total crap. PS: When company's selling something think it's a good idea to outsource their core product there is a huge problem.

by diego 17y ago

gruseom 17y ago

A fascinating comment. I never found Google's results to be noticeably better. What got me to switch were their simple UI and, most of all, how fast they were. These two things were of course related, since that lightweight goofy UI was so much faster to load. Indeed, performance is UI if you think about it. I've read that studies show that if you put the Google brand on search results, people automatically rate them as having higher quality. So a lot of this is perception. (Quality is related to performance too. Once people notice that a piece of software is faster, they're primed to believe that it's better in every respect.) Your comment confirms that the reason most people cite for Google's success is quite different from what actually gave them an edge. Of course, once they got it they capitalized on it bigtime.

Retric 17y ago

I liked Hotbot's UI and switched to Google because Hotbot's results where terrible in comparison over about 2 months. improved our result sets until they were at least as good as google You may have fixed the problem, but at that point your reputation was already shot. Ford makes high quality cars today, but it took a long time and a lot of effort to change peoples perception that American cars are not total crap. PS: When company's selling something think it's a good idea to outsource their core product there is a huge problem.