ogletree - 4:24 am on Jan 28, 2009 (gmt 0)

high quality search results is fundamental to its success.

That has nothing to do with their success. There were plenty of search engines that were doing fine before they came around. Google is a success because they made a search engine and only a search engine. They then figured out how to make profit with that. People keep saying that quality of search is what makes or breaks a search engine. That is only true if every search brings up spam. All the major search engines do a good job at bringing up results that are helpful. Very few people do complicated searches. Most people use google as an address bar to get to their fav websites. Did any of you study the aol data that was released. If you have a popular website you know that your top keywords are always your domain root. People type in company names. By letting wikipedia float to the top of every search google knows that will answer most questions typed in. Google does not care about advanced users all they care about is huddled masses that don't have much time for the Internet and just type in a few searches here and there. Those are the people that click on adwords and make them money. People in the search world think that everybody else searches the way they do. Google is at the top right now and will stay there as long as the vast majority of people keep "googaling" things. You can't watch tv or listen to a random conversation without somebody saying that.