STOP TO SMELL A ROSE
Use something several times a day, everyday for half a decade or more, and you can't but help take it a bit for granted. I'm talking here about Google Search, which so many of us have become so addicted to in living our daily lives.
For that reason alone, it's interesting to note this blog post by Udi Manber, who leads Search Quality at Google, as their VP of Engineering, re-introducing us all to what Google Search is all about, and how it works behind the scenes. That it works at all is a wonder, considering the scope of the task at hand:
"A few hundreds of millions of times a day people will ask Google questions, and within a fraction of a second Google needs to decide which among the billions of pages on the web to show them -- and in what order."
Peel that simple idea back to see the scope of the problems being solved, all revolving around core ranking, and it becomes even more amazing that it can be done at all:
"Ranking is hard, much harder than most people realize. One reason for this is that languages are inherently ambiguous, and documents do not follow any set of rules. There are really no standards for how to convey information, so we need to be able to understand all web pages, written by anyone, for any reason.
And that's just half of the problem. We also need to understand the queries people pose, which are on average fewer than three words, and map them to our understanding of all documents. Not to mention that different people have different needs. And we have to do all of that in a few milliseconds."
And of course do it in so many languages. It also needs to be done with a bit of secrecy, as Udi goes on to explain:
"For something that is used so often by so many people, surprisingly little is known about ranking at Google. This is entirely our fault, and it is by design. We are, to be honest, quite secretive about what we do. There are two reasons for it: competition and abuse."
He goes onto talk about the constant battles Google fights with web-spam.
The whole piece is worth reading, if only to step back for a few minutes, and remind ourselves how much life has changed in the last decade and a half for us all. A whole host of innovations, and entrepreneurial companies have brought us to this point. And some of them have even figured out how to make a little profit while providing a "free" global service.
Google, like Yahoo! and so many others long before it, is but one of so many companies that'll continue to perform seeming miracles in the services they provide to billions around the world. Yes, today's accomplishments will pale in comparison with what tomorrow will bring, but it's nice to pause just for a post, and remember how far we've come.
Comments