I found this 3 years ago:

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-was-initially-annotation-system.html

The Google Weblog found this 6 years ago (I still figured it's kind of interesting...):

http://google.blogspace.com/archives/000839

Every 3 years, a Google-related blogs finds the quote. I found it accidentally.

They should have stayed with annotation. PageRank has done nothing but harm the Web, given how much incentive it created for Web spamming.

And it doesn't do anything to improve the quality of their search results anyway.

10 years ago I told Larry:" you are not gonna make a search engine in the next 5 years, trust me".

Michael:
Neither of your points is true. PageRank has created initiative for spamming, but it has also created initiative for creating useful text, articles, documentation, and migrating vast amounts of data to the web. Now we have heaps of content, a part of which is spam, but still much better than if we didn't have it at all.

Second, just try to view SERPs organized without PageRank, and you'll see that there is a world of difference. Try Altavista, for example. :-P

> PageRank has done nothing but harm the Web, given
> how much incentive it created for Web spamming

Michael, I think you've forgotten history!

Before PageRank, spammers did their evil deeds within their own web pages (by meta tags, keyword stuffing etc).

PageRank made life much harder for spammers. Now they needed to distribute their spamming across multiple web pages, not just the page they wanted to boost.

Sure, the spammers came up with link exchanges, anchor text bombs, wiki sandbox spam etc, but the problem would have been far greater with pre-PageRank results ranking.