8 Can't Miss Predictions... for 1998

alphadogg-nw writes "Tired of being wrong too often, a Network World pundit applies 20-20 hindsight to this list of prognostications for 1998, which if he's right will turn out to be quite a year. Among the forecasts: The U.S. Department of Justice will go medieval on Microsoft, Compaq will buy what's left of DEC, AOL likewise Netscape, Apple will introduce something said to look like an Easter egg ... and then there's the deafening buzz about this new search engine called Google."

Altavista

[hey!]

Y'know, I liked Altavista a great deal. It was a rare case of a great product getting its block knocked off by an even better one. Still, for some time I found Altavista's more bells-and-whistley approach useful for triangulatin Google results, at least until Google engineers seemingly perfected their MROIPP (Mind Reading Over Internet Protocols Protocol) technology.

Re:Why modded Troll?

[ericspinder]

Should Slashdot just redirect to digg and get it over with? How is this news?

Why was this one modded 'troll'?

Troll [wikipedia.org] - "is someone who posts controversial messages in an on-line community such as an on-line discussion forum with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response." I think it fits, and would meta moderate it as such, if given the opportunity (and taking it).

Seriously, Taco, you're letting the quality of /. slip below Digg.

While I agree with you that /. editors could do a better job with some of the summaries and occasionally a particularly poor submission creeps in (slownewsday is often an appropriate tag for such stories), but it's hardy the mess that I've seen on Digg.

Re:Altavista

[Vellmont]

Y'know, I liked Altavista a great deal. It was a rare case of a great product getting its block knocked off by an even better one.

I liked Altavista too, and had a similar reaction about it being better than Google until about 2000.

The only quibble I have is that AltaVista died because they started thinking they were a portal like Yahoo, and not a search engine. They didn't figure out targeted ads, turned their site into a Yahoo clone, and did a "me too!" with email. If they'd done what Google did, focus on the search technology, give away better email than Yahoo was giving away at the time, and stop trying to beat Yahoo at being Yahoo, I think Google would still mean "a really big number".

Re:Wow! That was easy.

[Your Pal Dave]

That sounds about right.
Actually, LEDs and those super-cool bluish neon tube thingies. Not nixies, the little ones. What the hell were they called?

Probably early vacuum fluorescent displays (VFD) [wikipedia.org]. I built a digital clock kit back in the '70s using them, they came as individual 7 segment displays packaged in what looked like small vacuum tubes with long solder leads.

Re:Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

A priori, all of them. You can't prove a negative, so the burden of proof is on you to show prior art for each item.

Heavens, man, think! A link to "everything that Google is playing with or has thrown into the wild recently" as a proof that Google innovates is of the same order as waving in the direction of the Vatican's archives for proof that God exists. "The burden of proof is on you to show that everything there in favour of God's existence is false."

Considering only completed projects, we have:

1. Google Transit - any number of integrated public transport route planning services, such as Transport for London.
    
2. GOOG-411 - search for businesses WITH MY VOICE? My goodness! Thomson Local directory? Or is the feature that I never get to speak to a human who can actually understand what I'm saying? Combining "voice recognition" with "directory enquiries" is not innovation.
    
3. Google Reader - is an RSS reader.
    
4. Google Notebook - TextHelp R&W.
    
5. Google Docs - see grandparent.
    
6. Google Video - now you're just insulting me.
    
7. Personalized Search - browser history, stored online. Wowsers.
    
8. iGoogle - how Google becomes like Altavista/Yahoo of the '90s without fucking up the homepage.
    
9. Google Maps - Streetmap, Multimap, etc.
    
10. Google Scholar - a searchable database of journals, you say? If only I'd had that in my formative years! Oh wait, I did.
     
11. Google Desktop - BeOS? Windows Vista pre-alphas? Hell, htdig.
     
12. Google Groups - nee dejanews, now non-usenet forum goodness. Do I really need to give prior art on "web discussion forums"?

I'm bored now. Either you were being lazy to the point of dishonesty when you posted, or you're an idiot. Aggregation of similar databases so that they can be searched from one form is not innovation. Slapping an HTML interface on old tech is not innovation. Google is a UI company - and it does not even innovate in the UI space.