エリック・シュミット
字句解析器生成プログラム lex の共同開発者でもある
2001年3月にGoogleの会長

The problem was fixed, Singhal says, by a breakthrough late in
2002 that utilized Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theories on how words
are defined by context. As Google crawled and archived billions
of documents and web pages, it analyzed which words were close to
each other. “Hot dog” would be found in searches that also
contained “bread” and “mustard” and “baseball games”—not
“puppies with roasting fur.

As late as 2002, the founders still sounded bitter when
explaining why Schmidt was hired. “Basically, we needed adult
supervision,” said Brin, adding that their VC investors “feel
more comfortable with us now—what do they think two hooligans
are going to do with their millions?” The transition was rocky,
but as the years went by, Page and Brin seemed to genuinely
appreciate Schmidt’s contribution. Page would come to describe
the CEO’s hiring as “brilliant.”