Old enough to remember pre-google, young whippersnapper! When the idea went round in 2000 that pagerank wasn't the key to google's success, I checked: there was

Old enough to remember pre-google, young whippersnapper! When the idea went round in 2000 that pagerank wasn't the key to google's success, I checked: there was a difference, but not enough to really matter, in the searches I tried. Why would people use google? It was cool and new, had a great story... and made all tradeoffs in favour of letting you get on with searching, without a whole lot of portal BS/spam, fitting OP's criterion. Google's biggest advantage today is speed - esp google suggest is unbelievably fast. It required a huge investment and knowhow that its less profitable competitors just can't match. But the "some" was one of my PhD supervisors, who didn't mind a bit of thought-provoking... unlike today's HN, sad to see.