A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi

Re:A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi by avichal on Thursday May 03, 2012 @01:57PM (#3924939)

I just realized that Google won on search the way Apple has won on smartphones. They control the full stack -- frontend, relevance, indexing, advertising -- and tightly couple these pieces. Inktomi couldn't control the user interface the way Google can't really control the interface on Android.

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Re:A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi by dwc on Thursday May 03, 2012 @02:04PM (#3924969)

You are right, but IMO you miss the real point. Both Google's search and Apple's iPhone were about delivering a wholly satisfying product/service, and controlling the whole stack was needed to do that for those cases. This is not always true (though it often is).

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Re:A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi by avichal on Thursday May 03, 2012 @02:21PM (#3925038)

Yeah, it's pretty hard to know when it is and isn't. Vertical integration is as old as business.

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Re:A Relevant Tale: How Google Killed Inktomi by MaysonL on Thursday May 03, 2012 @09:58PM (#3926667)

Of course, Google's search was about that, while the iPhone still is. And the iPhone has been improving a lot faster than Google's search.

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