I find the framing of the discussion errant and interestingly, errant due to the perspective of someone who clearly was not there at the time, let alone has any real context for when and where Google emerged. The problem Google had was not at all that the answers one would seek did not exist, it actually solve that problem better than all the other search engines that existed by finding more relevant and accurate answers.
What is often missed even by those who were around and paying attention in that context back then, is that most people were blinded by the "good enough" factor that rather mindlessly simply assumed that Google served up if not nearly, approaching perfect results ... that there was simply no better results available. A clear fallacy, as one could and especially today can prove on their own by simply taking some site and page with the most important or even niche information on a topic, and then trying to search Google for it. You will likely find that there is approaching no string of basic search terms that you can use to find that resource. Even if it is a page that is part of a major, mainstream site, it is immensely difficult to find information using general terms.
I would argue that all the censorship and corporatizing and centralizing of information and data has only amplified that problem even beyond the early days. As a life long user of Google search, even long before there were public discussions of what a google is and people still thought AOL is the internet, I feel like the peak of Google and search in general occurred some time around the mid aughts, so, 2003-2008.
I would love to hear from anyone with similar direct contextual knowledge.
The article is written by someone who's founded such a search engine, so they're of the opinion that Google is dead and [thing_im_doing] is the way of the future.
> Sari Azout is a founder of startupy.world, a search engine for tech and culture insights.
What is often missed even by those who were around and paying attention in that context back then, is that most people were blinded by the "good enough" factor that rather mindlessly simply assumed that Google served up if not nearly, approaching perfect results ... that there was simply no better results available. A clear fallacy, as one could and especially today can prove on their own by simply taking some site and page with the most important or even niche information on a topic, and then trying to search Google for it. You will likely find that there is approaching no string of basic search terms that you can use to find that resource. Even if it is a page that is part of a major, mainstream site, it is immensely difficult to find information using general terms.
I would argue that all the censorship and corporatizing and centralizing of information and data has only amplified that problem even beyond the early days. As a life long user of Google search, even long before there were public discussions of what a google is and people still thought AOL is the internet, I feel like the peak of Google and search in general occurred some time around the mid aughts, so, 2003-2008.
I would love to hear from anyone with similar direct contextual knowledge.