Google's success was due to marketing and the opportunity to do so at massive scale (wide reach of and frequent media coverage). Even PageRank's mention was marketing, though the world at large had no idea what it meant.
Most latched on to Google due to marketing surrounding and due to their IPO. Many heard and understood: money, billions, billionaire, slides and bicycles, etc.
After, continued marketing kept it all going. Powerful illusion. Google is the embodiment of candy coated BS. Even now, they mainly continue due to continually marketing themselves as greatness..
..and paying for Chrome, Android, and first placement on iPhones.
They even had internal studies showing that while they are pervasive (most use at least one of their products), there isn't any stickiness. That is, if some other search engine had first placement on iPhones, the majority would be using that one. It's like the site that previously appeared when searching for a definition (dictionary.com?): while many used it and did so frequently, they often didn't even realize where they were.
The world (and internet, even) at large is very different from the handful who think themselves aligned with the masses (ie, source of revenue). It's even funnier, as most thinking anyone cared about PageRank don't buy anything. No spending = you don't exist. Anything else is a coincidental nod, stupidity, or coincidence.
Disagree. Google just had way better results than every other search engine. Secondly, it had a much more streamlined and simple interface (they had a simple search box with a "Search" Button -- no page directory, no email, no banner ads -- during that time period search engines had giant directories of pages by category when you first opened them up) . People would often refer novice users to Google because there were less points of confusion. By the time the company IPO'd they were already on an exponential tear.
I agree they were organic'ish (ie, word of mouth and ZDTV) in the beginning (1998-2000 or so). As for search quality, you're seeing their growth from the point of view of a higher-than-norm-IQ-intuitor-type-rational than from the median/typical/pervasive point of view. The majority of internet/Google users aren't the "early adopter" types. They mainly use Google because that's what's there on there phone.
Look, I'm certainly not a Google fan as of today, but you are so wrong, probably for being very very young or very very misinformed; probably both.
I tried Google 1st time when it was an university project that didn't even have its own domain (that is, it was a Stanford subdomain), and I was literally blown away by the huge difference compared to all other search engines. At that time my favorite was Altavista though back then doing multiple searches on different search engines was normal as all of them had their very different crawlers and algorithms, so I usually went at least also through Yahoo and Lycos after Altavista. But when Google came out it set up a huge improvement in search reponses, and I mean orders of magnitude faster, nobody did anything even comparable to that before, and soon it became clear that all of us would end up using just one search engine - guess which one. They developed that from scratch with no funding at all, and of course they got money after that but it came because of the great product they had developed, not the other way around.
Google started as the project any hacker would dream to be part of, even for free. What it became after all that money changed it is a different story.
Are you reading the same thing I'm writing? Is that why you think Google is used by the masses, rather than marketing and control of first placement (on Chrome, Android, and iPhones)?
Most people just use what's there and that happened to be Google's search engine. It's especially the case after massive growth of internet users due to mobile (ie, there were only ~300 million internet users in 1998 versus the billions online today).
Have you seen Google's growth chart? It was meteoric. All these things you mention came in or after 2007. Google was already a behemoth by the early 2000s and that was because it was just way better than anything else.
Yeah, this is completely wrong. I watched Google grow up having worked in the area and they didn’t have any marketing at the beginning. They first became the best search engine many years before they started adding ads and well before their IPO.
Just as significantly, the search results were also uncluttered, and "good enough".
This approach was absolutely critical when they started out, when people would most often be using 56k modems, where every byte had a real impact on the end user experience.
Yes, every byte mattered. I was there. Only "early adopter" types were "in it for the speed." Everyone else used what was there. Everyone that was online, as most weren't.
They got larger maybe because they also kept going (didn't have a choice; tried to sell early on for pennies, though they spin the story to distract from what happened). The other engines were bought or sold out.
The death of many companies during the bust also made room for them and they were likely the face of a group effort to "keep it all moving." Facebook was a similar face.
It's funny how knowing makes it seem you don't know. You sound naive and brainwashed. But all it does is once again show how powerful an illusion can really be. I'd (and did) say similar things if I didn't dig deeper.
Being the best search engine was irrelevant to their rise. It's just a thing that happened to also (supposedly) be there.
Supposedly, as its ranking algorithm was so heavily gamed by 2007 (already risen; popularity incentivized effort to game) it was a complete joke. Powerful illusion again, as they just covered it up and moved on. Also, internal tests from around 2009-2010 showed Bing was seen by users as producing better-quality results.
Not only did they not have much marketing at the beginning, they also didn't have many users.
No, you are entirely wrong. There's no part of your "analysis" that has any relation to reality. I don't understand why you keep insisting.
(I worked for two of Google's competitors in the years where they grew from a student project to a huge business. I had the opportunity to take a peek of the code of two other competitors. Many of my former colleagues helped build Bing. I also worked at Google for a few years. I was there so I would know something about it)
No, it had nothing to do with marketing. It had everything to do with focus on building the best search experience.
I don't understand why you are raving on about Chrome and iPhones. The iPhone was almost a decade away when Google started getting traction, and building a browser wasn't even at the idea stage.
I did a single search on Google back in the '90s and never left. The quality gap was enormous, and it has stayed like this ever since. What world do you live in ?
It is naive to think the belief in this skewed, biased, self-referencing, curated group is representative.
The general internet user is different, much less concerned with the underlying tech or anything else, and about other things. The general internet user thinks Facebook is the internet, don't realize they are online, and only use online services to text and take/post pictures.
Android phones have a camera icon. Ever thought about the camera app associated with it? Not really if an Android user. You just use it or use it as a backup. If it were another app, you'd be using that one. Wouldn't notice.
Most people don't spend time digging, unless it's something they are really into. Most also don't read reviews or research, though that's been changing over the years. They just go with whatever, unless important (to them).
Most latched on to Google due to marketing surrounding and due to their IPO. Many heard and understood: money, billions, billionaire, slides and bicycles, etc.
After, continued marketing kept it all going. Powerful illusion. Google is the embodiment of candy coated BS. Even now, they mainly continue due to continually marketing themselves as greatness..
..and paying for Chrome, Android, and first placement on iPhones.
They even had internal studies showing that while they are pervasive (most use at least one of their products), there isn't any stickiness. That is, if some other search engine had first placement on iPhones, the majority would be using that one. It's like the site that previously appeared when searching for a definition (dictionary.com?): while many used it and did so frequently, they often didn't even realize where they were.
The world (and internet, even) at large is very different from the handful who think themselves aligned with the masses (ie, source of revenue). It's even funnier, as most thinking anyone cared about PageRank don't buy anything. No spending = you don't exist. Anything else is a coincidental nod, stupidity, or coincidence.