NYTimes.com Article: In Searching the Web, Google Finds Riches

[Jeff Bone]

On Monday, Apr 14, 2003, at 09:05 US/Central, Russell Turpin wrote:

> I'm not sure people realize why Google is so
> neat. Google succeeded because it killed
> search spam.

On a slightly more abstract level, one of the other really neat things 
about Google is that it killed a bunch of cognitive spam that had 
accreted around other "search engines."  I.e., the whole "portal" 
notion that all the other engines scrambled to achieve during the 
bubble basically adds up to noise and hinders the user experience if 
your primary purpose is finding stuff on the Web.  If I'm looking for 
the latest papers on parametric complexity, I don't need to see how my 
stocks are doing, find out about the latest super-mini X10 camera, see 
the sports scores, read my horoscope, etc.  In fact, presenting me with 
all of that stuff is likely slow me down at best, at worst to 
completely distract me.

Google has held hard-and-fast to this notion that they're going to be 
the best at search and all directly-related search things, and that's 
all they're going to do.  Their triumph isn't just a technical one, 
it's an astoundingly impressive example of product management.  What 
they've done in maintaining this singular focus at all levels of their 
offering is (from a business / marketing / operational perspective) 
very, very, very difficult.  And IMHO it's paid off wonderfully for 
them.

jb