Google Search - A Nearly Perfect Invention - ICQ 281

Google Search created an inflection point in human civilization by offering an elegant solution to finding relevant search results. That sounds like hyperbole. It’s not. That’s why Google is Google (or Alphabet as the case may be). Prior to Google Search, getting relevant information was hit and miss. Users would try sites like Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo and others and still not find what they were looking for. The PageRank algorithm created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin changed everything: one search at one site provided more relevant information in 10 seconds than an hour of banging around any of the alternatives. The polite technical business term for this level of innovation is that it’s a Big ___ Deal.

Google made knowledge in every field of human endeavor immediately accessible and has become the starting point for research for everything from how to fix a leaky faucet to learning about quantum mechanics. When it was launched people wondered how Google would make money. There seemed to be no revenue model. But, in one of the few instances where early Internet business concepts proved correct, Google got eyeballs and eyeballs could be turned into money via advertising, lots and pots and heaps and mounds and foothills and mountains and continents and oceans and planets of cash.

Unsurprisingly, Google blows the Inventicator™ away. The reasons are not just the level of innovation, the size of the market, the profitability and the impact on society, but also the fact that the market, while today comprising everyone, began with a huge but well defined target. Google’s initial users were people who shared the following characteristics: college education, 20-40 years of age, desktop computer users, Internet users, interested in research, early adopters and, significantly, influential to their peers. Google Search smacked a big fat sweet spot and hit a grand slam at the World Series of the century.

You can read about the history of Internet here:http://www.wordstream.com/articles/internet-search...

And the history of Google here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google

- Mike Marks