Things I Didn't Know About Google (also: the worst VC decision ever) | Hacker News Reader

Things I Didn't Know About Google (also: the worst VC decision ever)

jamesaltucher.com

79 pointsjaltucher19 comments

False history.

The Applied Semantics software was not needed to "generate 99% of its revenues at IPO time". They owned the trademark "AdSense", but the actual software used by Google was written by Google. Also, the product known as AdSense (at that time) was just for content targetted ads, not the search ads which produce most of the profits, so his bit of trivia is actually double wrong.

Any idea if PageRank was named after Larry rather than Web Pages?

Rumor has it that's true, unless Google itself is lying:

http://www.google.com/press/funfacts.html

I'm fairly sure the name is a deliberate pun.

I guess Larry Page was inclined to create something with web pages the way people like Dennis are inclined to become dentists :-)

s/like Dennis/named Dennis/

This is from an article about the Google press release when they bought A.S.: " Google said that Applied Semantics' products and engineering team will strengthen Google's search and advertising programs, including its "fast-growing content-targeted advertising offering"" . At the time, Applied Semantics had a license deal with Overture, which was also doing content-targeted advertising and AS software was used to enable it." My guess is whatever Google had in place was significantly enhanced by the A.S. software.

Your guess is wrong.

That's like saying that not buying the winning lottery ticket was a bad decision. You did the best with the information you had at the time.

Drinking and driving is a bad decision. Putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad decision. Passing on a given investment opportunity is just everyday business for a VC.

But making investment decisions while playing Defender is harder to justify.

Although I will add that Defender was the all-time best game. Angry Birds vs Defender? I'll take Defender any day.

"it was about how the jews control Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, etc. The funny thing about this particular site is that it had Google Ads all over it."

I actually thought about this the other day in the context of how important Facebook was during revolutionary activity in Arab nations and the action Facebook took to protect people's passwords and privacy during the civil unrest in Tunisia.

My first thought was that maybe that would take the wind out of the sails of the "Jewish Zionist World Conspiracy" types.

Then I realised that those types probably don't read. Or think. C'est la vie.

You realized? Obviously you don't need to check your realizations with the facts. If you did check a conspiracy forum or subreddit, you would've 'realized' most ppl think these protests are orginized by the zionists/CIA.

Conspiracies are simply a replacement for religion. Just as religious people see God's will in any event, conspiracy theorists on Reddit see CIA/Mossad/etc behind everything. By definition, you can't disprove them.

Interesting trivia. One of the inspirations for Page Rank was undoubtably the Science Citation Index. Which was ultimately inspired by a 1945 article called As We May Think by Vanevar Bush.

HTML is inspired by the idea of hypertext, which was inspired by the idea of a memex machine, which was invented in a 1945 article called As We May Think by Vanevar Bush. Yes, the same article.

In other words Google lives in the intersection of two ideas whose history both trace back to the same essay. An essay written before most of us were alive. With that in mind it is interesting to read http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-ma... to see how it lead in both directions.

Thanks for this. It's really interesting to find the source of ideas

You're welcome.

I learned this tidbit from an essay called In Oldenberg's Long Shadow. It has disappeared from its original location, but http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20040204224231/http://www.a... still has it.

Please rename to "Unusual Things I Didn't Know About Google (also: the worst VC decision ever)".

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: I appreciate that you are participating more on HN.

Edit2: To those who are downvoting: can I ask why?

I didn't downvote, but the value of HN is that it usually doesn't have this type of self-promotional claptrap or borderline content farm BS.

Maybe users should be able to block certain domains/contributors.

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