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Larry Page: Google Was an Accident

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the the-best-laid-plans-of-mice-and-men dept.

DarklordJonnyDigital writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Google founder Larry Page has admitted that the Google project wasn't originally intended to be a search engine at all. "It wasn't that we intended to build a search engine. We built a ranking system to deal with annotations." ' Of course, happy accidents have often been the cause for advancement, technologically or otherwise.

11 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. This is what happens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    When you don't properly use birth control.

  2. Gravity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    You could say newton's discovery was... an Accident!

  3. This is Funny Because... by tealover · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    France was supposed to be a nation of courageous people.

    Unfortunately, they banned immigration.

    :(

    "Bon jour, you cheese eating, surrender monkeys"

    --
    -- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
  4. Its funny... by esconsult1 · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    My landlord's search engine of choice is dogpile.com. It's not that he doesn't know about google and all its merits, but he's used to using dogpile.

    Many other average Joes use and prefer other search engines too.

    So what's my point? Hmmm... I forgot.

    --

    Newsfollow.com

  5. Call me OT... by pVoid · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    but

    Larry Page: "Keynote would be really outstanding if you had a fast machine to edit your presentations on." Smart-Ass: "A machine faster than those at the disposal of the founders of Google?" Larry Page: "You know what I mean: a machine faster than this laptop here."

    This somehow reminds me of Kevin Spacey's character in the big Kahuna.

  6. IN SOVIET RUSSIA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    The ranking system deals with annotations by building YOU!

  7. Here's an accident for you, but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    he doesn't appear to be very happy.

  8. According to Google by xombo · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    A bit offtopic, but it has google in it. It seems noone else knows about the SciFi Smoke Girl as mentioned in the poll on /. I never saw smokegirl on scifi, and was looking for pictures.

  9. Meet Larry L' Page! by Carmody · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Am I the only one who remembers that Larry Page was the president/icon of the "Sticky Stuff Club" that appeared in ads for a certain brand of "glue-stick"?

    --
    God is real unless declared integer
  10. "Behind every great fortune ... by alphameter · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    lies a crime[, an accident, or technological shift]."

    Larry Page's statement is another data point supporting that statement.

    (Remember, the keyword is "great". I'm not referring to people working hard at their jobs and getting promoted to a $130k/year job.)

    Progressive taxation is fair!

    Unfortunately, Reagan dropped the top federal rate from 70% to around 36%. Is anyone surprised at the growing gap between rich and poor since then?

    I hope ./ers are as informed about economics as they are about technology. There are more important issues than whether it's legal to hack DVD encryption.

  11. Who needs a building. by tpaudio · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Before google I actually had to go to a library to do research for school. I have to say researching is much more fun in PJ's. (Yes i do go to the library sometimes to verify sources :P)