[marcofloriano]

In a word, maybe. I think algorithms is like the treasure map ... the way to get your insight , idea, solution done. Everybody, everyday, everywhere have ideas, good and bad ones, brilliant and stupids ... but what makes the difference between what will works, make money and more important, get done, is the way you implement your idea. I have a personal notebook with dozens of insights but i have no idea how to implement most of then ... so what´s the point on having just the brilliant idea ? But when you have an good idea and then write a good algorithm, you can get your idea very close from reality and that´s the most important thing. So maybe, yes, the algorithms is kinda kings in a world where "get something useful done" is extremely urgent.

[J_McQuade]

Good comment.

Saying that algorithms are the secret to the success of Google and the like is like saying that tunnelling machines are what made the London Underground popular - not quite true. Obviously, once they'd had the idea for the Underground, designing and building the machines for its construction became an absolute necessity which allowed them to create a far more wide-reaching network than previously thought possible - but this ignores the fact that people would still have used it if it had remained a hand-dug tunnel between King's Cross and Paddington.

In short, one could say that insight makes things popular while implementation makes them excellent - and that you should really be aiming for both.

[coderdude]

I'm not sure that's a good analogy. People would not use Google if it had "hand-dug" search results. It's that algorithmic edge that makes Google useful for finding things.