Why Google Beat Inktomi: the Inside Story From Former Engineer
- Instead of snippets, we had algorithmically-generated abstracts. Those abstracts were useless when you were looking for something like new ipad screen resolution. An abstract wouldn’t let you see that it’s 2048×1536, you’d have to click a result.
Google realized that it’s not all about displaying hundreds of results to the user but more about “satisfying the need for information.” As it turns out, Inktomi engineers preferred using Google more than the product that they were building.