There really was nothing like it at the time. We had good ideas for implementation, so we proceeded. I think it was an excellent solution to the reliability issues with existing search engines.

Traditional search engines are good at searching what's on the Web.

Search engines compile a lot of data on what we search for and much of what we search for is personal. Many people fear that the government wants to do data mining. It'll be interesting to see how much of all this ultimately becomes a political issue.

The way you want to be treated is a lot like how Google wants to be approached. Play nicely. Mean what you say. Don’t try to deceive. Share good stuff. Be authentic. Be precise with your words.

My guess is (it will be) about 300 years until computers are as good as, say, your local reference library in search.

Much of the lifeblood of blogs is search engines - more than half the traffic for most blogs.