

Google's first press release  - rokhayakebe
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/pressrelease1.html

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tsally
Wow, a valuation of several billion? What a joke. They have no revenue stream,
they're just giving away search for _free_. I don't see how this startup could
ever be successful.

~~~
NathanKP
Your point is obvious: Twitter could very well be the next Google.

But back to the original article, all I have to say is that Google sure has
changed a lot since those early days. ;)

~~~
igorgue
Is there a "next Google", I don't think so

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unalone
Not a "next Google", but certainly another site that'll be as big as Google.

As I've said before, my money is on Facebook. People my age use it like it's
the Internet. To them, that's all there is. And they click its ads.

~~~
dcurtis
Facebook is already there.

What makes you think they click ads? I've heard the opposite.

~~~
unalone
I don't _think_ they click ads, I _see_ friends checking out ads all the time.
Particularly music ads. I'd imagine that it's not just a small-time thing,
considering they're in the green now, but perhaps that money's coming from
something else.

Their ads are also a lot better than they were a year ago. They target more
effectively, within reason. (My ads are screwy since I list no information
about myself, but they used to try and sell me Arrested Development t-shirts
and they almost succeeded on multiple occasions.)

~~~
rokhayakebe
Almost selling is not selling.

~~~
unalone
I clicked the ad. I didn't buy the shirts, because last year was the year I
grew out of buying t-shirts.

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Timothee
"Google, a start-up dedicated to providing the best search experience on the
web"

Google is one of these less common start-ups who started doing one thing and
ended up successful (to this day) with that specific idea. Yes, they extended
their reach a lot, but the core is still the same as on the first day.

~~~
dcurtis
Not really. Google is an advertising company now. When they started, they had
no idea that's what they would become. Search is being leveraged for eyeballs
to sell advertising space.

Google still does search, but it's business has nothing to do with search
directly.

~~~
paul
That's like saying that Walmart's business is cash registers.

If I could aquire either Google's search business, or their ad business, I
would take search, no question. The ad part could be rebuilt on search, but
the opposite is not true.

~~~
stanleydrew
It's more like saying NBC is an advertising company. No, they create content
and sell ads beside it. Google gives us great search results and sells ads
beside them.

~~~
patio11
And 1/3rd of their revenue comes from the Content Network, which has little if
anything to do with search per se. (Realistically speaking the Content Network
is a second bite at the apple from someone coming off a search result to a
page which doesn't address their need, but it is in approximately no one's
interest to admit that.)

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daleharvey
back in the days when you mentioned being on the board of webvan with pride

~~~
dotcoma
and eToys, @Home, WebMD...

~~~
josefresco
WebMB failed?

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hooande
Did they really list the "I'm feeling lucky button" as a time saving feature
in their first press release? I've spent a lot of time writing documents like
this recently and I can only imagine how people would scold me for including a
such a minor detail in a press release.

~~~
kierank
Bear in mind the time it would take to load the results page on a dialup
connection.

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euroclydon
"PageRank is computed by solving an equation of 500 million variables and two
billion terms."

Does it take 500 million variables to compute my Pagerank of 3 when there are
only 32 sites that link to it? How many of those 500 million variables are 0
or null?

~~~
jacquesm
Pagerank is a funny algorithm, think of it as a problem in gravitation, every
page affects the pagerank of every other page.

You compute the equilibrium and then normalize the results.

There are a bunch of optimizations that you can apply in order to speed things
up bit it is still quite computationally expensive.

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NathanKP
Is somebody eventually going to notice the misspelling in the title of this
item and correct it? ;)

~~~
NathanKP
Good, it got taken care of.

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prakash
Interesting, Sequoia & KPCB started in 1972.

