I still remember the day when I read the Slashdot article announcing this new incredible search engine called Google. I was an AltaVista user at the time, along with most IT professionals, and for those who don't know, it essentially had its own search query language. The claim was Google returned back even better results WITHOUT having to specify all those query parameters.

I tried it - it was unbelievable! A simple search box, type in your keyword(s) you're interested in, no query syntax and - voila! Good, relevant results! It was simply amazing! AltaVista essentially died overnight.

But really, Google's biggest technology was AdSense. It's how they make their money. It's why all their other services, save for gmail and google docs, have come and gone. Search has become less and less relevant in today's world. But there was a time when it seemed magical!