jimbeetle - 5:11 pm on Sep 26, 2010 (gmt 0)

One of the things I might have done back in the early days would be to consider some sort of get together with Inktomi, though I don't know if either would have been in a position to purchase the other.

Ink was the first SE to use links as one of its major ranking factors and had much more experience than G in fighting link spam -- and wasn't afraid to pull the plug on any sites that crossed the line.

It took a few years for Google to develop any expertise in this and whatever it deployed still seems at times to be applied in a hit or miss manner.