A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#1

Post by nachopg » Thu, May 03, 2012, 4:51 PM UTC

A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi
diegobasch.com

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#2

Post by chrisacky » Thu, May 03, 2012, 5:08 PM UTC

I had no idea that that Diego worked on Inktomi. Although it makes sense why IndexTank worked fantastically.

If I had to pick one reason why Google triumphed (and you can only pick one), I think it would be their Page Rank algorithm. It added that extra bit of awesome-sauce to and already tasty stew.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#3

Post by darrellsilver » Thu, May 03, 2012, 5:14 PM UTC

Another lesson from this article: If your engineers refer to those who make decisions as "the execs" instead of "we": Quit.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#4

Post by gaius » Thu, May 03, 2012, 5:15 PM UTC

Not competing with your customers is a not-invalid reason, tho' there are real-world examples that go either way.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#5

Post by zmmz » Thu, May 03, 2012, 5:16 PM UTC

Relevant: http://youtu.be/E91oEn1bnXM

It's a recording of a very very good talk by Inktomi co-founder Eric Brewer called "Inktomi's Wild Ride - A Personal View of the Internet Bubble"

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#6

Post by diego » Thu, May 03, 2012, 5:17 PM UTC

zmmz wrote: post #5

Relevant: http://youtu.be/E91oEn1bnXM It's a recording of a very very good talk by Inktomi co-founder Eric Brewer called "Inktomi's Wild Ride - A Personal View of the Internet Bubble"

Yes, that talk is excellent. Deserves its own submission.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#7

Post by paulsutter » Thu, May 03, 2012, 5:18 PM UTC

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 early on

- strong focus on controlling costs from the beginning (Altavista's use of the DEC Alpha was a huge handicap.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#8

Post by gruseom » Thu, May 03, 2012, 5:22 PM UTC

I remember why I switched to Google: 1. speed, 2. simplicity. Relevance, meh. Never noticed much difference there. This led me to believe that PageRank was more about marketing (brilliant marketing) than technical edge.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#9

Post by diego » Thu, May 03, 2012, 5:25 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #4

Not competing with your customers is a not-invalid reason, tho' there are real-world examples that go either way.

True. In this case, I forgot to mention that not having a world-facing UI deprived us of vital signals that Google used to improved their experience. We had query logs, but we had no idea of what our customers' users were doing within a session, no user history, etc.

Re: A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

#10

Post by FilterJoe » Thu, May 03, 2012, 5:27 PM UTC

According to a friend of mine who worked on the search team, Inktomi shifted its (management and CapEx) focus away from search and onto other projects. He thought at the time that even with the constraints of not competing with their own customers, there were things they could have done to better compete if management had chosen to do so.

Edit: fixed typo