How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web
Steven Levy, writing for Wired:
This is the hard-won realization from inside the Google search engine, culled from the data generated by billions of searches: a rock is a rock. It’s also a stone, and it could be a boulder. Spell it “rokc” and it’s still a rock. But put “little” in front of it and it’s the capital of Arkansas. Which is not an ark. Unless Noah is around. “The holy grail of search is to understand what the user wants,” Singhal says. “Then you are not matching words; you are actually trying to match meaning.”
If you haven’t read John Batelle’s The Search, Levy’s piece is the next best thing to help the (relative) layman understand the staggeringly complex engineering that lurks behind the search box. Recommended reading about a technology that’s becoming as commonplace as your microwave.
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