Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

fighting14 t1_iu35xpc wrote

Another key but historically overlooked thing about Google search was that the search page was blank with just a search box.

Why was this important? Back in the day all search engines has masses of ads and articles on their search page.

This was a particular problem in the days of dial up. People had to wait tens of seconds for a search page to load up all the shit you weren't interested in, before you could enter your search query.

By having an almost blank search page, Google became synonymous with easy accessibility and a clean search experience.

Together with better search algorithms, this clean approach was a winner.

100

TheSquarecow t1_iu3w5ia wrote

So much this. I remember the time. Most search engines were self-declared "portals" cluttered with all kinds of stuff and search was just one feature among many. Most of this other stuff no one wanted or needed, but the search engines insisted on it, whether because it was making them money or they saw it as added value or the designer though a mostly empty page looked dumb or the managers were bored by their own core functionality...

Whereas google did just search, did it well, and did it fast.

26

oflimiteduse t1_iu4fznj wrote

Exactly, I think they were trying to cling to the aol model of their site being "the internet". Why would you need to search something when they had news, weather, email, chat etc etc.

8

Ancient-Wait-8357 t1_iu4p8jb wrote

They take every byte they that home page very seriously. Literally every byte.

For a page getting a few million hits every second, every byte matters.

3