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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.

30 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. like bob ross by the+idoru · · Score: 5, Funny

    there are no accidents, just happy little trees.

  2. Damn bastards by tmark · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wish I was lucky enough to have such accidents. The only accidents I have usually involve me looking for a mop and bucket, or writing a big check.

    1. Re:Damn bastards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The only accidents I have are now the biggest financial burden of my life, and they still aren't even five ;-)

  3. So was I... by Da+Fokka · · Score: 5, Funny

    but I guess I'll never be as successful as google...

  4. Re:Thanks for the link to Google... by ChristTrekker · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah. We might have had to search for it.

    --

    Constitutionally Correct

  5. Mental Anguish by fo0bar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Great, now Google is going to grow up with mental problems, constantly wondering if its creators really love it. This will probably lead to Google going into a KFC 20 years from know and shooting up the place. I mean, how well would YOU do if your parents told you that you were an accident?

    1. Re:Mental Anguish by stephenbooth · · Score: 5, Funny

      My father told me, when I was 15, that I owe my existance to a combination of some very loud crickets and the impossibility of easily obtaining contraception in Cairo in 1969. My parents decided to "Risk it".

      This explains a lot about my life. I haven't shot up a KFC yet, although I do eat there a lot.

      Maybe this is the next /. poll?

      I was...

      • Planned
      • Unplanned, but my parents have figured out the cause.
      • Unplanned, and my parents still haven't figured out the cause.
      • Found under a bush.
      • Brought into this world by the gentle hands of CowboyNeal.

      Stephen

      --
      "Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
  6. Re:great inventions by banana+fiend · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Be careful how you refer to "accidental" inventions... the Newton apple story is considered definitely apocryphal

    There are quite a lot of "eureka!" stories about greek philosophers, again with no way of verifying whether they are true or not. It is likely that Newton arrived at his theories after some diligent thinking while at his relatives farm.

    In googles case, accidental application of a well-designed system is NOT the same as accidentally writing good code :)

    --
    Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
  7. In case it's slashdotted... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:_Uc4KUIPqXIC: www.google.com/+Google&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

    1. Re:In case it's slashdotted... by Soul-Burn666 · · Score: 5, Funny

      The funny thing is this quote from the page:

      "Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content."

      --
      ^_^
  8. Sue Sue Sue! by raile · · Score: 5, Funny
    Larry Page: "Lucas Pereira: 'You idiots, you spelled [Googol] wrong!' But this was good, because google.com was available and googol.com was not. Now most people spell 'Googol' 'Google', so it worked out OK in the end."
    It's time to sic the Google lawyers on googol.com for "brand confusion", or whatever they're calling it these days.
  9. A book on the subject by rednaxel · · Score: 5, Informative
    Accidents May Happen: 50 Inventions Discovered by Mistake

    Disclaimer: I'm not associated with this book in any way, just found it in, er, Google. Maybe the next edition will include this lovely search engine...

    --
    If you can read this, thank an english teacher.
  10. Re:accidents by Lord_Slepnir · · Score: 5, Funny
    If I wanted something, it would magically appear on the first link.

    Sounds like you're feeling lucky.

  11. Page has a big ego by wheeljack · · Score: 5, Funny

    why else would he have named Googles core technology "Page Rank"...

    1. Re:Page has a big ego by DeadSea · · Score: 5, Informative
      The parent post was modded up as funny, but PageRank was actually named after Larry Page. It was not called PageRank because it ranks web pages.

      Larry and others at google has said this in the past. Although I can't find proof on Google's web site (darn lousy search engine they use ;-), I did find this in an article on SearchEngineWorld:

      Google examines link structures all over the web. By doing so, it can give every page a popularity rating known as "PageRank" (named after Google cofounder Larry Page). When you do a search, URLs with high PageRanks are more likely to be listed first. However, this will only happen if the pages also match other criteria, such as containing your search terms or being identified as being relevant to your search terms by analyzing the context of links.

      According to this article, it was originally called "BackRub":

      Google began as a search engine called BackRub. It was so named for what was its, (at the time), unique ability to analyze the "back links" pointing to and from a given website as part of its algorithms to search results. This approach to link analysis gained BackRub a growing reputation among those who had seen the technology. Today this technology is know as Google's patented "PageRanks" technology.

      Another reference: http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem/2002/08/30/

  12. And Yahoo started as a Sumo resource by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Jerry Yang's original set of links was a Sumo wrestling enthusiast's page...that for a time was valued at $120 billion dollars (!).

  13. Re:really? by n.wegner · · Score: 5, Funny

    I do believe the cupboard was 'a rockin', not stationary.

  14. Another story by M.C.+Hampster · · Score: 5, Funny

    I heard another story about this web site that was supposed to be a discussion board featuring intelligent discussions on the subject of science and technology and instead turned into Slashdot.

    Ok, mod me down now.

    --
    Forget the whales - save the babies.
  15. First mention of Google from Google? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here in Google groups..

    Now can someone find the first mention of searching Google looking for the first mention of Google in Google?

  16. Well yes and no by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What it really serves to point out is that the technology of search engines was based on flawed premises. That is, they didn't really understand what they were trying to accomplish.

    These guys didn't accidentally invent a good search engine. They accidentally *discovered* that what a good search engine *was* was an annotation ranking method.

    A subtle difference, but a critical object lesson for others trying to "invent" things.

    KFG

  17. Re:Before google by GGardner · · Score: 5, Insightful
    What's laughable (now) is that the previous search engines all where trying to optimize the wrong problems. Altavista bragged about how DEC Alpha CPUs, with their 64 bit CPUs returned results faster. Others bragged about covering more of the web. Others hyped the fact that they returned the most results.

    Google reminded them all that the most important thing in a search engine isn't how fast it runs (though that's important), but that it returns the most relevant results first.

    I think that this lesson holds for many projects and companies today.

  18. Alimony by siskbc · · Score: 5, Funny
    yeah, alimony's a real bitch, aint it?

    Well, it's recipient usually is...

    --

    -Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat

  19. For those who don't read the articles: by fishdan · · Score: 5, Funny
    Larry Page: "Google has been profitable since the first quarter of 2001. Why did we make becoming profitable such a priority? It's good that we did, because we might well be gone if we hadn't. The real reason is that we became profitable in the first quarter of 2001 because Sergey Brin made it a priority. You see, Sergey would try to go out on dates. He would call up women. And to impress them he would say, 'I'm the president of a money-losing dot-com.' But in Palo Alto in 2000, a huge number of people were presidents of money-losing dot-coms. And so they would not call him back. And he thought, 'If only I were president of a money-making dot-com, things would be very different...'"

    What I need to know is has more advancements in science come as a result of an accident or as the result of some guy trying to impress chicks. And what is the overlap?

    --
    Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
  20. This is a great argument... by masq · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... for NOT cutting the funding on "pure" research.

    I mean, Google's cool, but *peanut butter* was an accident as well, and I couldn't LIVE without my PB&J.

    Who knows, maybe someone will stumble across the next peanut butter by accident while researching a cure for cancer or something - then I can die happy.

    Well, a cure for cancer would be good too.

  21. Re:Before google by Beltza · · Score: 5, Informative
    Altavista bragged about how DEC Alpha CPUs, with their 64 bit CPUs returned results faster.

    This was exactly what AltaVista was designed for! AltaVista was created to promote DEC equipment; to show what powerful applications could run on their machines. And it did this job really good.

    --
    Brain Tags |
  22. I once took a course with Dr. Linus Pauling by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It was one of those extra credit, summer seminar thingies where the topic wasn't a particular subject, but rather the "creative process."

    Dr. Pauling told me the story of how he, and dozens of others that he knew of, had "discovered" penecillin before Fleming.

    You see, he walked into his lab one day and found his cultures had been infested with mold. Naturally he was upset. His experiement was ruined even before it had begun. All this mold was killing off his cultures. He had to dispose of them and start over. It seems this was a common occurance in bio labs all over the world if you weren't careful.

    It took a particular *mindset* for Fleming to look at his cultures, and instead of getting upset that they had been ruined thinking, " Hey, ruining bacterium cultures is one of the things we're trying to *DO*."

    Discovery is often in *how* you look at things, not what you look at.

    KFG

  23. My Lucky Accident... by Sun+Tzu · · Score: 5, Funny
    This reminds me of the time I was trying to write a data storage system and accidently invented a combination compression and encryption algorithm far faster and more space-efficient than anything the world has ever known. Currently, it is one-way only ... but when I get the decompression / decryption working, I'll be rich!!! Muahahahahahahahahaha!!!

    Send us your Linux Sysadmin articles.

    --
    Geeky modern art T-shirts
  24. Wha's the big deal about google? by tundog · · Score: 5, Funny

    It would be cool if that "i"m feeling lucky" button actually took you to a web page, but I tried it a couple of times and it seems its broken on my client. Every time I'd do a search for a "search engine" the page would just reload.

    --
    All your base are belong to us!
  25. There is something other than Google? by AsmordeanX · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A friend of my brother-in-law was suprised to hear that there were other search engines in existance.

    He thought that Google was just a standard, like HTML, FTP, Gopher, or NNTP.

    That was quite the little accident they had.

  26. In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bill Gates: Windows Was An Accident
    from the packaging-pure-evil dept.

    Bill Gates writes: "Microsoft® Windows® wasn't originally intended to be an operating system at all. We were trying to put pure evil into a software form. After we finally got a working build, we executed it. First nothing seemed to happen. Then the PC rebooted - and loaded Windows®. Our precious had replaced the operating system on the disk with itself, and immediately we realized we had succeeded in our mission. This was going to make us rich, rich, RICH!"

    ( Read More... )