mattg3 - 1:06 am on Oct 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

I am not talking about Page and Brin here. These guys were genuine visionaries

I think you fell victim to spin here.

The algo existed and worked in a University setting, IE University of Berlin. The guys that gave us our search at that time did exactly the same thing, backlinks. It's a short term strategy that works in an honest world. Game theory see hawk and dove.

The genius was if at all with the guy that gave them money and certainly in their determination and implementation. While the one guys in Germany tried to struggle to convince some university officials to give them more money the others had some serious money and risk takers behind them. Maybe their genius lie in asking the right person. That's still not a vision.There is doubtlessly a perfect exploitation of human psychology, easy search box, with no frills attached, no brain needed as in altavista, speedy etc. No intrusive ads, clever doubtlessly but still no vision.

The only vision I heared is that they want to prepredict everything you search.. hmm ..Well 1984 was written a lot earlier ..1945-48.

So hmm vision hmm collect and order all information and prepredict everybodies behaviour then control them into behaviour I want for my bosses, shareholders, adwords customres. Reminds you somehow of an intelligence service, old ideas ..

That privacy moaning will work in Googles favour. They will say we are nice cuddly Googlers give you a button to opt out and all that haven't opted out are exactly the easy manipulated sheep that drive a large proportion of commerce.