[thomasd]

"Life is a series of failures punctuated by brief successes". That's the most precise way of looking at life I've ever seen.

The example of Google can further be boiled down to just aligning your interest with your users. Google did fantastically well because they send users to other sites as fast as they can (doesn't matter that a user spend less time on Google as a result). And they make sure PageRank algorithm does just that.

That is also why dating websites won't be as successful. Dating websites rely heavily on repeat users. That means, their users dates have to go badly for them to return. Their interest and the user's interest don't align.