I heard about this through other channels, but felt a need, like a fish making its way upstream, to come back and throw in a little something.

Yes, I'm one of those early UIDs. I still remember Chips and Dips, and I still remember when one CmdrTaco announced on IRC that we should all check it out. Later, that we should all create accounts. I eventually did so, as have... well, millions of others in the intervening 14 years. (Has it really been 14 years now?)

I've not been reading so much lately, but for a long time Slashdot was a hub of geek culture for me. The passing of the founders out of its good graces, and back into the mass of us "little people", will not be forgotten. Things have changed, but Slashdot lives.

Rob, if you're looking for a place to waste some spare time, #linuxOS is still around. We won't give you too much crap about ignoring us since the olden days. (Well, we'll try not to.) And we won't put any stickers on you. I can promise that much.

Seriously? The idea is to go for yet another rewrite? And it sounds like it's going to be a half-assed database backing (SQLite? Is this right?)? Why not just move to an abstracted storage backend, and let the admin pick what works for him (or write his own backend plugin)? You know, like PowerDNS has been doing for awhile now. Seriously, guys, let's just stop using BIND and move to a better nameserver; it really seems like ISC is going to be rewriting BIND until the heat death of the universe.

Why do you care so much about Microsoft over Google? What's the angle? Besides, don't you have enough money?

And, as others have pointed out, Google got where they were because they're (arguably, anyway) better than anything else out there. Why would the top 1000 sites take a one-time $1m payoff, knowing all the search-driven traffic they'd lose, which if they're a top 1000 site, would probably quickly overshadow that $1m? It doesn't make any sense. It'd be like cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

How about, oh, making a better search engine? That might beat Google. Or maybe Google's just done so well, no one will ever beat them. (Yeah, right.)