Luke_A_Somers comments on How much was creating Google worth? - Less Wrong

3 Post author: JonahSinick 02 June 2013 04:56AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (48)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 02 June 2013 03:17:35PM *  3 points [-]

When I switched to Google, the improvement over Yahoo felt modest (for the searches I was making). Barely enough to change my bookmarks.

Comment author: David_Gerard 03 June 2013 11:25:48AM 1 point [-]

I found the difference remarkable and spectacular.

Comment author: gjm 03 June 2013 03:59:27PM 0 points [-]

Did the two of you switch at different times? (If so, that might give some information about how long it would have taken for someone else to improve as much as Google did -- though they might have improved slower with less competitive pressure.)

Comment author: David_Gerard 04 June 2013 01:37:07PM -1 points [-]

I started using Google in early 1999, when it still had "Stanford search" on the front.

Comment author: ThisSpaceAvailable 04 June 2013 10:05:21PM 1 point [-]

At one point, Yahoo was actually using Google to create its searchable index.

Comment author: gjm 04 June 2013 04:00:54PM 0 points [-]

When did you switch? (See my reply to David_Gerard for why I'm asking.)

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 04 June 2013 04:55:50PM *  0 points [-]

Hmm. I'm pretty sure it was late 1999.

I think it's more likely that my searches were either really easy or nearly impossible, so the difference in performance didn't stand out.

Comment author: gjm 05 June 2013 09:45:10AM 0 points [-]

Oh well. Another beautiful hypothesis slain by an ugly fact. So it goes.