> In one sense, this is the classic path trodden by people who listen to all the good advice available here. The idea of page rank was worth very little. What Larry did was learn enough programming chops to build a prototype, then used then prototype to prove the idea worked, then iterated better and better versions as the requirements became more clear and as the bottlenecks became apparent.
Yes, he had to build a prototype, prove the idea worked, and iterate and address bottlenecks. But take the page rank idea away, and Google would not have been anywhere near what they are today. I don't see how the idea can be dismissed as being worth very little.
For sure, "page rank" ended up being a great idea, but Google was built on the idea _and the execution_.
Ideas are really really common. Sme of them are great, some of them are just OK, lots of them are bad ideas. Mostly, you can't reliably tell a truly great idea without a working example. My contention, and the view that I see expressed all the time in here, is that the idea _without_ the execution would have been worthless (and I suspect Larry wasn't the first only person to have the same idea, but much like the Winklevosses, anybody else who thought of it got out executed by Larry, and Larry succeeded I. The execution, not the idea.)
Yeah, you need an idea. But ideas are not that hard to come by. Execution requires some work, and as Einstein said "opportunity is missed by most people because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work."
Yes, he had to build a prototype, prove the idea worked, and iterate and address bottlenecks. But take the page rank idea away, and Google would not have been anywhere near what they are today. I don't see how the idea can be dismissed as being worth very little.