[rayiner]

> Google touches normal folks in far more profound ways than NASA's moon shot (How did that turn out? Are we still going to the moon? Oh)

Our GPS satellites wouldn't be in space without the rocket technology developed by NASA.

> and power of google search on it's own revolutionised the web and was a major spur to its uptake.

Google started separating itself from the Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, etc, pack around very late 1998 into 1999: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_history. That's roughly contemporaneous with "pets.com" which was an exemplar of the .com bubble that most people peg as starting in 1997. In comparison, Amazon was founded in 1994 and IPO'ed in 1997. Hotmail was purchased by MS for $400 million that same year. PG sold Viaweb to Yahoo! in 1998.

The uptake of the web was not only well on its way by the time Google got onto the scene, but the .com bubble was already well on its way by then.

> I mean, if you're talking about google being a mere ripoff of other products that 'came first', why not apply the same ruler to NASA (there were previous rocket programs)

There is a big leap from pre-NASA rocketry (in the U.S.) and post-NASA rocketry. There isn't a big leap (if at all) from iOS to Android. Arguably, MS Office to Google Docs is a regression. A lot of Google's tech is not only derivative, but doesn't even really advance the state of the art. V8 is like Lars Bak's third or fourth implementation of the same basic concept. Gmail didn't really do anything Hotmail didn't do, and the Hotmail acquisition by MS was a decade before Gmail went out of invite-only.

> And classifying a steelmaking company as a tech company is a bit far-fetched.

Steel-making on that scale was cutting edge technology for its time.

[vacri]

The uptake of the web was on its way, but google was an incredible catalyst for it. I remember search at the time and it was woeful - google made it an invisible task that let you get at content much more readily.

GPS is great, sure. Don't interpret me as saying that NASA is a minnow. But to be facetious, good luck using GPS without a map :)

but doesn't even really advance the state of the art

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. You deride gmail for being a ripoff of ye olde Hotmail, but it's a lot more than just 'a free webmail account you can sign up for'.

Steel-making on that scale was cutting edge technology for its time.

There's cutting-edge technology in making shoes, too, but that doesn't make a shoemaking company a 'tech company'.

[rayiner]

> The uptake of the web was on its way, but Google was an incredible catalyst for it.

By the end of 1999, Google was averaging 7 million searches per day: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/12/google-in-2000.html. This was an increase of from only 10,000 searches per day at the end of 1998. Alta Vista was at 80 million searches per day by the end of 1997. Google had less than 1% of the search market at the end of 1999: http://www.seo-expert-services.co.uk/blog/posts/search-engin...

Google probably didn't surpass Altavista until well into 2000, which would have been after the bubble popped in March 2000. How could Google be the catalyst for internet uptake when the dot-com bubble peaked before it became popular?

As of 2000, when Google had basically no market share, there were already almost 100 million internet users in the U.S., or about a third of the population. It's grown to 80% of the population now, but that's much more attributable to much cheaper computers, cheaper and faster internet access, and the popularization of smart phones making internet access accessible to lower-income people and children.

> You deride gmail for being a ripoff of ye olde Hotmail, but it's a lot more than just 'a free webmail account you can sign up for'.

What is it other than a free e-mail account you can sign up for?

> There's cutting-edge technology in making shoes, too, but that doesn't make a shoemaking company a 'tech company'.

The steel industry was the "tech" industry of its time. It absorbed all the highly talented engineers, made the billionaires, and developed the technology that defined the time.

[vacri]

Again, you're only giving credit to google for the first year of their product. NASA was nowhere near the moon in 1959. Where's the level playing field here?

Similarly 'access to the internet' isn't the same as use of it. Those 100 million weren't using the internet with any degree of the pervasiveness we see today.

It absorbed all the highly talented engineers

All of them? Wow.

developed the technology that defined the time

Sure, if you co-opt anyone who used steel at all into "the steel industry" and hence make them defacto members of US Steel for your argument.

made the billionaires

I guess I really am fighting a losing battle in calling Coke something other than a tech company...

[rayiner]

> Again, you're only giving credit to google for the first year of their product. NASA was nowhere near the moon in 1959.

Right. But the .com bubble was ending the first year of Google's product in 2000, while commercialization of space technology through things like Space X (which are leveraging NASA's developments) is happening 50 years after 1959. If you're going to give Google credit for internet uptake, you have to look at how relevant Google was at the time that internet uptake was happening. Something that wasn't relevant until into 2000's couldn't have been a "catalyst" for a phenomenon that roaring by the late 1990's.

> Those 100 million weren't using the internet with any degree of the pervasiveness we see today.

Because of Google? Or because of smart phones connected to internet 24x7, because of increased bandwidth making Hulu and the like possible, because of Amazon, because of Facebook, etc? I don't see why Google gets credit for all these things.

Do a thought experiment. Say we don't have Google, or its clones like Bing, etc. And say we don't have a replacement. Say we just have Altavista-level search technology. How much of your daily internet usage is still possible? Probably most of it. Most internet usage is on sights that everyone knows that are wildly popular: Facebook, Twitter, etc. Now, do the same thought experiment for the iPhone, again assuming nobody "would have invented it anyway." Say we just still have Palm Treos. What's the impact on Facebook, Twitter, etc?

> Sure, if you co-opt anyone who used steel at all into "the steel industry" and hence make them defacto members of US Steel for your argument.

You're co-opting everything that has happened on the internet since 2000 and attributing it to Google for your argument. And U.S. Steel is arguably a much better example--they invented a lot of the core steel production technology that made all the other uses possible/practicable. Google's search technology didn't make Facebook or Twitter possible.

[ghshephard]

I was with you right up until you wrote this:

"Do a thought experiment. Say we don't have Google, or its clones like Bing, etc. And say we don't have a replacement"

You must be a very different knowledge work than I am. Every 3-5 minutes I'm typically typing something into the my URL bar to get the appropriate page on the internet to solve my questions. Google has become an extension of my mind - I guarantee you that AltaVist/AskJeeves/Excite/Yahoo never provided me that kind of ability.

Aside from that nit, I'm totally enjoying your general theme about putting Google's contributions in context though.

[rayiner]

> You must be a very different knowledge work than I am. Every 3-5 minutes I'm typically typing something into the my URL bar to get the appropriate page on the internet to solve my questions.

I do that with Westlaw. Apparently it's been around in digital form since the 1970's, though it was a dial-up service back then.

[makomk]

> Now, do the same thought experiment for the iPhone, again assuming nobody "would have invented it anyway."

That's a really big assumption, but even assuming no-one else invented it we'd still have portable, pocket-sized computing devices with full web browsers and a whole bunch of apps, and they'd still be a lot more capable than Palm Treos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N800. Nokia wouldn't be alone either - Android was well into development when the iPhone launched.

It's possible that they'd still use a stylus and a keyboard even now, but that's doubtful too - we'd just started to see the introduction of capacitive touch screens to mobile phones when Apple announced the iPhone (it was the second mobile with capacitive touch by a couple of months).

But OK, assuming that those don't take off either, what then for Facebook and Twitter? Well, I can tell you that here in the UK at least there were a whole bunch of mobile providers who spent a fortune on 3G bandwidth and were desperate to make money. They'd be quite happy to come to a deal with companies like Facebook and Twitter to include support for them on their featurephones if it sold upgrades and data bundles.

[zarify]

"And say we don't have a replacement. Say we just have Altavista-level search technology. How much of your daily internet usage is still possible?"

Possible? Sure. But I have pretty clear memories of searching through _many_ pages of results in Altavista. I have very few memories of searching for things in Google, which arguably is the point.

It's interesting that the argument being made against Google here is much the same argument that fans of Google often make against Apple :) I think there's plenty of merit to saying that Google is a pretty amazing technology company purely because we don't have to think about what we use their products for, which in turn lets us use them more (whether that be navigation, search, etc).

[vacri]

Do a thought experiment.

Sure, do one of your own. Have the developers of all your things use only the resource searching of the mid-90s. Watch all those technologies slow down considerably. This is part of what I mean when I say catalyst. Got a weird problem? I hope you happen to be in just the right group or forum that happens to have a willing expert.

Personally, I like how you completely disallow me any influence of Google on any other company, but you are more than willing to subsume any steel-using work into the provenance of US Steel. Apparently other steel companies - even other countries, don't exist. Your bias is beyond belief. I called Google a catalyst, not directly reposible for 'everything', unlike your mention of the steel industry.

[rayiner]

> This is part of what I mean when I say catalyst. Got a weird problem? I hope you happen to be in just the right group or forum that happens to have a willing expert.

A catalyst, in common parlance, is something that gets a reaction going under circumstances which it would not otherwise proceed. Google cannot be a catalyst if the "reaction" was already roaring by the time it had any influence.

Does Google make life easier? Sure. But I'm not sure how that earns it the title of "greatest tech company in history."

> but you are more than willing to subsume any steel-using work into the provenance of US Steel. Apparently other steel companies - even other countries, don't exist.

I think you underestimate the total domination U.S. Steel and how instrumental its production was to building the U.S. as we know it today. Controlling 2/3 of all steel production is somewhat more significant than controlling 2/3 of search engine traffic.

That's the heart of the distinction I'm trying to make. Google is something that makes life online easier, but U.S. Steel was something that made industrial America possible.