A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi • Hacker News Board

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#71

Post by goochtek » Fri, May 04, 2012, 12:53 AM UTC

nirvana wrote: post #51

This was a very interesting read. I was working for a vertical search engine in this very same period. I, and the other engineers, also attempted to get our management to recognize what google was doing right. Unfortunately, we were delayed greatly by bad technology choices forced on us by venture capitalists (e.g. "build your search engine on top of Oracle! they say they have full text search, it will save you time!…

As you haven't mentioned what exactly your search engine will focus on, I'll just throw this idea out there. I would love a search engine that returned results equivalent to Google, yet offered me the privacy level that I desired. With Google, currently I am the product. I know this. I understand this. Thing this is, I don't want to be the product any more. I want to pay for the product on say a yearly fee which guarantees me I won't be sold ads or have my search habit information sold.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#72

Post by squeed » Fri, May 04, 2012, 1:29 AM UTC

wavesplash wrote: post #45

Inktomi killed Inktomi long before Google helped put the nail in the coffin. What the article doesn't say is Inktomi had a dual sided business. One side was in Caching Proxies the other was licensing a search API. Inktomi decided to focus on the caching proxy business and de-emphasized their search product, only to watch the proxy business evaporate as internet bandwidth became cheaper/better. The focus on a shrinkin…

Indeed. Inktomi also tried to position themselves as an arms supplier to the CDN business. It didn't help that the CDN business basically disappeared from 2001-2004, and that CDNs, to this day, rarely buy software.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#73

Post by MaysonL » Fri, May 04, 2012, 1:58 AM UTC

dwc wrote: post #22

avichal wrote: post #18

I just realized that Google won on search the way Apple has won on smartphones. They control the full stack -- frontend, relevance, indexing, advertising -- and tightly couple these pieces. Inktomi couldn't control the user interface the way Google can't really control the interface on Android.

You are right, but IMO you miss the real point. Both Google's search and Apple's iPhone were about delivering a wholly satisfying product/service, and controlling the whole stack was needed to do that for those cases . This is not always true (though it often is).

Of course, Google's search was about that, while the iPhone still is. And the iPhone has been improving a lot faster than Google's search.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#74

Post by cabalamat » Fri, May 04, 2012, 2:02 AM UTC

If the stock went from 25 G$ to 250 M$, that's a decrease of 99% not 99.9%.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#75

Post by bitops » Fri, May 04, 2012, 2:29 AM UTC

lacker wrote: post #63

It was clear that Yahoo.com was the definitive result for the query "yahoo" so it would score a 10. Other Yahoo pages would be ok (perhaps a 5 or 6). Irrelevant pages stuffed with Yahoo-related keywords would be spam. As someone who worked on search quality at Google for some time, this bit jumped out at me as a terrible mistake. The correct way to judge results for the query [yahoo] is: (a) Where is yahoo.com? At th…

Can you elaborate a bit more on this? I think I understand your point but a few more details would be great. Thanks!

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#76

Post by paulsutter » Fri, May 04, 2012, 2:48 AM UTC

InclinedPlane wrote: post #58

paulsutter wrote: post #7

Great article. One note: Google's dynamic abstracts were not only very useful, they also improved perceived relevance because they let users see why the pages were selected. When I was at Altavista, we were also blocked from doing dynamic abstracts by cost. Google's main advantages were: - managed by the founders with a total focus on search and measurable results - google's hiring process produced a very strong team…

Close. Lots of other companies were also hiring pretty high tier talent as well, and had intense focus. Google's success came down to effectively executing across typically disparate disciplines. You have hard core research level CS eggheads, you have top tier software engineers, and you have state of the art data center operations. In a typical organization these groups have competing interests, they fight amongst t…

I agree, but I'd ascribe that to Google being run by technical founders rather than MBAs. The main benefit of technical company leadership is the ability to "see" across and coordinate the disparate areas.

Infighting and begrudging compromises only happen when the leadership is blind to the details.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#77

Post by paulsutter » Fri, May 04, 2012, 2:54 AM UTC

minimax wrote: post #53

gaius wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Altavista launched, it was an impressive showcase of the DEC Alpha's power. Intel only became usable for serious servers (with the exception of exotic stuff like Sequents), as did Linux, years later. Google had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time, when Lintel became a commodity in the datacentre. 5 years earlier, they'd have been on Sun probably.

Initial versions of Google at Stanford ran on a mix of both Linux and Solaris. http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html

I'll bet you a dollar that Larry and Sergei never actually bought a Sun server to run the search engine, but rather that they may have used some free resource available to them at Stanford.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#78

Post by aidenn0 » Fri, May 04, 2012, 3:40 AM UTC

Inktomi engineers using Google reminds me of TI engineers using HP calculators. TI banned them, which apparently just moved the calculators under the desk

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#79

Post by JamesPeterson » Fri, May 04, 2012, 4:20 AM UTC

goochtek wrote: post #71

nirvana wrote: post #51

This was a very interesting read. I was working for a vertical search engine in this very same period. I, and the other engineers, also attempted to get our management to recognize what google was doing right. Unfortunately, we were delayed greatly by bad technology choices forced on us by venture capitalists (e.g. "build your search engine on top of Oracle! they say they have full text search, it will save you time!…

As you haven't mentioned what exactly your search engine will focus on, I'll just throw this idea out there. I would love a search engine that returned results equivalent to Google, yet offered me the privacy level that I desired. With Google, currently I am the product. I know this. I understand this. Thing this is, I don't want to be the product any more. I want to pay for the product on say a yearly fee which guar…

I imagine the opportunity for Google to offer this sort of "private search" (perhaps w/ complementing premium features) via mass licenses to (nervous) big corps would be one worth perusing. I imagine also it might be worth those big corps' money.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#80

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, May 04, 2012, 4:40 AM UTC

Ok, so the timing on this is really amazing. Techcrunch, reporting on Facebook's S1, mentioned that Yahoo! has suggested another 12 patents they may try to throw against Facebook and their Open Compute project. The Yahoo! letter is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/92280387/TechCrunch-Letter-From-Ya... and the source of many of these patents? Inktomi!

Is that crazy or what?