Larry Page is making huge bets on new technology

Broadly agree.

For what Google does in search, say, first-cut, keywords/phrases and results sorted by a measure of gross popularity, page rank, and date (but, for a second-cut, clearly now with a lot of refining tweaks), it seems to me that they are doing a terrific job.

But as far as I can tell, Bing is doing about the same.

So, if are looking for something, have a few keywords/phrases that fairly accurately characterize what want, then Google/Bing can work well. They can be just terrific. But that scenario does at best poorly on a significant fraction of ("safe for work") search.

For this fraction, there are a lot of approaches, Web sites, etc. but nothing very good.

For this fraction, I worked out some new techniques and wrote the corresponding software.

For where Google/Bing work well, and often they are just terrific, my work will usually not be as good and only occasionally better.

But for nearly all of the fraction of "at best poorly", my work should be quite good and much better than anything else. My work is different, very different, and I believe that being so different is necessary (clearly not sufficient) for success in the fraction I am attacking.

Currently I'm loading some initial data. Then ..., maybe people will like it.

Of course, with all the usual start-up advice, my work is doomed to fail because I'm a solo founder if don't count my kitty cats! And, I'm not a college dropout. I didn't even drop out of grad school and did get my Ph.D. And I'm past 30. So, right, doomed!

But being successful at what I'm attempting would be exceptional; so we have to expect that much of my project is not the usual. So be it. I have some fairly good reasons to believe that my work should be successful; no way am I doing this just "on a wing and a prayer".

What do you think? Announce a private beta test here on HN? Get feedback? Get it working well. Polish the UI/UX. Go live, get more publicity, run ads, grow?

First glance, the article seems to be to provide information to the readers, say, as in "this is what this really successful guy does that you, the reader, might learn from and find useful in your work in business". But my view is that this first glance is nearly totally wrong.

Instead the formula for the articles is not to provide useful, or even very solid, information at all. Instead, the formula is a manipulation of the reader: The reader is made to feel good about themselves.

How? The article makes the subject's work look simple, definitely like the reader can easily see themselves doing the same. Then the reader feels like they are on the right track, that is, already doing as well as the subject of the article. So, the article passes out a lot of simplistic insights, cliches, trivialities, etc. that any reader can agree that they could have done.

Really it is best for the formula if the reader comes away learning nothing at all; that is, part of the formula is to make the reader conclude that they are already on the right track, already know as much as the subject in the article, could easily do just what the subject does, and, thus, are on the way also to being worth billions. So, a main goal is that the reader learn nothing!

So, are making the reader feel good by confirming that the simplistic thoughts that they can easily already have really are the right stuff.

Or, such an article is vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment (VEFEEE).

And that's the article. The formula is to manipulate the reader into coming back for more, thinking that, "I'm reading Fortune and, thus, learning from the best Captains of Business; oh, oh, oh, I'm learning so much; and, since these guys are worth billions, I can be, too.".

I concluded all this long ago. I am surprised to see Fortune still following the same old formula. Heck, I kept reading to the end just to see if they had any significant content beyond their old formula -- they didn't.

So, net, I gave up on Fortune for years, and now I'll give up on the Web version for more years! What a big pile of nutten, deliberately, very carefully crafted, total nutten!

"Thoughtless" you say! How kind you are!

Actually we must let people make progress where ever they are interested.

After all the guy who built the first brick didn't know someday they would used to build pyramids.