[andres]

In terms of the product itself, "Kayak of electronic parts" might be a better description.

In terms of technology, the first thing we did was actually take a Google-like approach to the part search problem. For example, before we started working on Octopart, you had to use separate search boxes to search part numbers and descriptions. In order to implement search across multiple fields simultaneously we abandoned mysql in favor of a full-text search engine. So, there's probably more overlap with Google search than you would expect looking at our search results.