tedster - 4:02 am on Sep 11, 2006 (gmt 0)

The Google of 2002-2003 is not the Google of 2006.

And neither is the web of 2000 the web of 2006. The blog explosion, social networking, and many other sea changes. Sometimes I feel like we want Google to be perfect no matter what gets thrown at it. Yes, I agree that some of the bugginess in past months is a bit hard to handle, and the public avoidance of certain critical issues seems worthy of a candidate for high office.

But I really do understand. A lot of sites flow past my eyes in a week, and I'm amazed that the SERPs are as good as they are. I remember search engines in the 1990's -- the results really SUCKED. If I did a search on AV sometimes I had to be happy if there was even one url in the top ten that was anywhere near relevant.

If I were to sum up my current disposition, I would say that Google came on the scene and blew us all away. Since then, they keep dazzling us here and there with their further promise, but delivering on that promise is proving to be a big challenge. They (and the web) may be approaching a nearly unmanageable level of complexity.

Hey, at least they've got network TV using Google Earth for graphics!

I was talking with a friend last night about complex systems, and our discussion got around to honeybees and their hives and behavior. Any given bee begins its work with a nearly random flight, and sooner or later it usually finds a decent source of nectar. In future flights, this worker bee than makes a "beeline" for that source a lot of the time, but it never cuts out random flights from its pattern.

There is great natural wisdom here for both webmasters and Google alike. Any source of nectar will eventually dry up -- so we need to keep exploring other flight paths if we intend to stay around. A little randomness needs to be built in.

[edited by: tedster at 2:31 am (utc) on Sep. 20, 2006]