[jsrn]

    > I bet whoever wrote it painfully had to swallow his words...
                                                      ^^^

her words, that is [it's by Kalpana Mohan] http://www.kalpanamohan.org/

and she doesn't seem to be particularly ashamed of her words: the article is listed in her list of writing samples: http://www.kalpanamohan.org/writing_samples.shtml

[sachinag]

Wait, even Google was admitting that they were sacrificing short-term revenue for long-term gain. Why should she have to eat her words?

It's very clear that the founders had to be talked into advertising only after the search appliance failed. (I'm almost positive only RedHat actually purchased one of the damn things, which makes sense since PageRank/BackRub isn't going to help you find Word documents in an intranet.)

[krakensden]

They had text-based ads back then, they even mention it in the article.

The critique the author was leveling was that they were resisting /banner/ ads, and therefore putting their scruples ahead of good sense. Definitely seems silly in hindsight.

[jsrn]

    > Why should she have to eat her words?

I didn't say that, the parent of my first comment did:-)