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Kevin Kelly, Wired's past in-house futurist, has given an interview in which he makes the seemingly ludicrous claim that Wired could have been Google. The New York Observer has a giggle at Kelly's statement that "from the very beginning, Wired believed in 'search.'... I believe that had Wired not been divided and sold that we might have actually arrived at the same place that Google had." But was Kelly really that far off? Watch the whole video and see

Not especially. In 1996, Wired's online arm, HotWired, had launched a search engine, HotBot, using technology from Inktomi, now part of Yahoo. In the spring of 1997, I briefly worked as a freelancer copyediting marketing materials in which HotWired pitched advertisers on buying keyword advertising. Had Wired managed to go public in 1996, as it hoped, instead of being sold off in pieces to Condé Nast and Lycos, might it have raised enough money to build HotBot out? Possibly. Google didn't launch until 1998, after all.

But it's an academic point. Few of Google's ideas were wholly original; timing, execution, and clarity of vision played greater parts in its success. Not to mention luck. Wired always had more of that in chronicling the digital revolution than in living it.