You weren’t around pre Google were you? The only thing Google learned from other search engines is what not to do - like rank based on the number of times a keyword appeared and not to use expensive bespoked servers

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dheera 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I was around pre-Google.

Ranking was Google's 5% contribution to it. They stood on the shoulders of people who invented physical server and datacenter infrastructure, Unix/Linux, file systems, databases, error correction, distributed computing, the entire internet infrastructure, modern Ethernet, all kinds of stuff.

	▲	raw_anon_1111 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		And none of that had to do with learning from other search engines…
	▲	golem14 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Eh ... I question that 5% ranking is google's only contribution, even if it was important. Everyone stood on the shoulders of file systems and databases, ethernet (and firewalls and netscreens, ...) Well, maybe a few stood on the shoulder of PHP. Google did in fact pretty much figure out how to scale large number of servers (their racking, datacenters, clustering, global file systems etc) before most others did. I believe it was their ability to run the search engine cheap enough that enabled them to grow while largely retaining profitability early on.
	▲	ashirviskas 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah, I remember the moment search engines invented computing, I cannot look at sand the same way anymore /s