What’s the difference between Google and other search engines?
Silverstein: Our technology is our primary differentiator. We have a scalable architecture designed to cull the plethora of Web pages, newsgroup messages, images, news items and shopping-related information and to deliver the most relevant results quickly and easily. We do this on a large scale, handling more than 200 million inquiries a day. According to Google’s search algorithm, popularity counts. Doesn’t this support average search behavior? Silverstein: Popularity is not the only criterion for our ranking system. The secret is that the system takes into account not merely popularity, but also reputation. If, on my homepage, I provide a link to a Web page saying, “This is the best Web page ever,” this has little effect on Google, unless I can convince other Webmasters to share my opinion and they then link their Web pages to mine. So, far from having average results, Google ends up with the cream of the crop—websites that are so good that Webmasters the world over are willing to st
