You’ve heard of Moore’s Law, which basically says that computer power doubles every 18 months with respect to a given price point.
But what about Page’s Law?
Speaking last week at the Google I/O event, held in the United States, Google co-founder Sergey Brin casually dropped the term “Page’s Law” into an ad-hoc presentation he made at the conference.
So what exactly is Page’s Law? According to Brin, it’s a law coined by Google’s other co-founder, Larry Page, with respect to software performance. So how does this law go? “Every 18 months,” says Page, “software becomes twice as slow as it was prior.”
Google, said Brin, is actively trying to break Page’s Law. “No offense to Larry, [but] we would actually like our software to become increasingly fast over time, even using the same hardware.”
He said that the browser and web have become the platform, pointing out that five years ago there were lots of arguments over what was possible with JavaScript. Now no-one questions what can be done. “But I still think we have a long way to go, in particular in respect to performance,” said Brin.
This story is based on original raw reportage that appeared at www.searchengineland.com.