[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.