
Coincidences that made Google successful - python_kiss
http://shuzak.com/Personal/Article.php?Article-Title=Coincidences-that-made-Google-successful
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jwecker
Alternate premise: businesses that survive and thrive are simply the ones that
avoided really dumb mistakes. http://www.insearchofstupidity.com/ I loved this
book.

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python_kiss
Good point! But I feel that most businesses attribute much of their fortune
simply to coincidences. Randomness is a sign of complexity beyond human
comprehension. We like to think we have control over our "destiny" but
sometimes that just isn't the case.

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lupin_sansei
The fact that the Banner market advertising collapsed is beside the point.
Little guys could never afford banner advertising in 1999, as Yahoo's minimum
cost was something like $10,000.

Google offered something which little guys could afford, was more relevant to
readers, and attracted higher clickthroughs, so Google's Adsense would have
done very well even if it did compete with Doubleclick in 1999.

To use a cliche, Adsense gets the "long tail" of advertising.

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lupin_sansei
Also is there any evidence that Google picked up lots of out of work engineers
after the Bubble? On the contrary Google seems to have attracted people away
from other companies.

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danielha
John Battelle's book had some really good stories that have stuck with me. How
does "The Google Story" compare?

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python_kiss
Yeah, I read both these books before writing this article. "The Google Story"
is history of Google while "The Search" is really a history of search itself.
Between the two, I would recommend "The Search" since it covers a larger
spectrum, and is written more recently.

