(Google is huge, and does real tech, i.e. advances in deep learning. The following only applies to their search startup phase.)
PageRank was innovative, and had great "market fit" (or "user fit", prior to ad revenue), but wasn't very deep as technology goes.
Google's (original) business success came from leveraging that into a three-way network-effect as the middleman connecting web content users, web content providers, and web advertisers. Even today, PageRank's successor algorithms appear to be aimed more at ad revenue optimization than improving search as a technology.
Likewise. Netflix, Facebook, Expedia, Spotify, Uber, Airbnb, ... use tech as operations, it is not the product. Their primary defenses are not unique technology, but network effects, customer information lock-in, and other market-side moats.
They have great technical people doing great work. But a high proportion of their innovation is aimed at their own operations, customer engagement, etc., not creating and offering new technology.
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Technology first companies typically end up as part of a supply chain.
nVidia is a good example They have become huge, but are still a parts maker in a lot of ways. They have created a sticky ecosystems, but their primary work and moat remains keeping up a relentless technological cadence.
Another example was Amazon. They started by adapting others' tech to create an online store. But instead of simply optimizing that, they fully developed distributed computing as a service, and spun that out as its own business. Now they are a provider in other companies' supply/resource chains.
AFAIK, the Markov chain page ranker existed before Google (Jon Kleinberg's papers, e.g.), what Google paper added were some smaller bells and whistles, like using the text description of the hrefs.
PageRank was innovative, and had great "market fit" (or "user fit", prior to ad revenue), but wasn't very deep as technology goes.
Google's (original) business success came from leveraging that into a three-way network-effect as the middleman connecting web content users, web content providers, and web advertisers. Even today, PageRank's successor algorithms appear to be aimed more at ad revenue optimization than improving search as a technology.
Likewise. Netflix, Facebook, Expedia, Spotify, Uber, Airbnb, ... use tech as operations, it is not the product. Their primary defenses are not unique technology, but network effects, customer information lock-in, and other market-side moats.
They have great technical people doing great work. But a high proportion of their innovation is aimed at their own operations, customer engagement, etc., not creating and offering new technology.
--
Technology first companies typically end up as part of a supply chain.
nVidia is a good example They have become huge, but are still a parts maker in a lot of ways. They have created a sticky ecosystems, but their primary work and moat remains keeping up a relentless technological cadence.
Another example was Amazon. They started by adapting others' tech to create an online store. But instead of simply optimizing that, they fully developed distributed computing as a service, and spun that out as its own business. Now they are a provider in other companies' supply/resource chains.