To grow its search platform in the late ’90s, Google focused on one thing: being great at search, which we measured along five axes—speed (fast is always better than slow), accuracy (how relevant are the results to the user’s query?), ease of use (can everyone’s grandparents use Google?), comprehensiveness (are we searching the entire Internet?), and freshness (how fresh are the results?). The company was so intent on getting users the right answers, that Google search results often included links to Yahoo, AltaVista, and Ask Jeeves at the bottom of the page so users could easily try those
...more
