

522. Is Google Getting Worse?
64 snips Nov 17, 2022
Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo and an early Google innovator, and Liz Reed, VP of search at Google, dive into the transformation of Google’s search engine. They discuss the initial magic of search versus its current perception as mere trickery. The conversation explores the balance between monetization through ads and user experience, the challenge of misinformation, and the idea of an ad-free search option. They unpack the implications of these changes while questioning whether the decline in search quality is due to Google or shifting user expectations.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Infoseek Loyalty
- Marissa Mayer used Infoseek religiously for research papers.
- Even after joining Google, she compared both search engines for a month.
PageRank Insight
- Early search engines struggled to rank results effectively, showing seemingly random lists.
- Google's PageRank aimed to prioritize useful pages like a newspaper prioritizes front-page news.
Backlinks as Citations
- PageRank used backlinks as a proxy for importance, mirroring academic citations.
- More backlinks from important pages meant higher ranking in search results.