Let me narrate a simple story. Once upon a time, TeeBee Lee discovered a planet, and called it Planet Wyeb. The conditions on this planet were just right for any kind of inhabitation, and Mr. TeeBee Lee decided to form a single nation on Planet Wyeb, called the E-Majee Nation, where all inhabitants would exist together in peace, with healthy co-operation and competition.
Mr. TeeBee Lee also decided to supply the raw material for most of the construction work. The inhabitants were called Con Tents, and most of them preferred to dress themselves up in HT Emmel, Mr. Lee's brand of apparels, provided for free to any Con Tent who wished to dress itself. This species did not have any 'sex' ( pun very much valid and intended ), but were generated or imported by mother E-Majee Nation.
The Con Tents had very rudimentary homes to live in, but soon The Patchers' Association decided to build better homes for them, and most of the Con Tents moved to houses made of A Patchy material ( a grade A product, hence the name 'A Patchy' ).
Soon, the population of Con Tents started to grow beyond bounds, and they found it hard to sustain themselves. Some Con Tents could sustain themselves because of their better genetic characteristics. Humans from Earth found such Con Tents great sources of information, and called them Authorities. Some other Con Tents were famous because they provided a lot of information about such Authorities, and hence the Humans visited them often to get a comprehensive list of Authorities. Agents called Hyper Links led the Humans from such Con Tents to the Authorities. Such Con Tents were called Hubs.
The other Con Tents are contented with their way of life, and somehow sustain themselves. Many are self-centered, and have some characteristics of the Authorities as well as Hubs. Some are content living all by themselves, with support from Humans in general. They form the hoi polloi. The planet Wyeb was starting to get messy. It was getting hard to locate individual Con Tents.
Then, came the class of Con Tents which had active servants belonging to the CG Eye class, and made the Con Tents highly active. An important class of Con Tents that emerged was the one supported by the CG Eye and Search Engine classes, a highly opportunistic class which realised the needs of the Humans to do a Yellow Page like search for specific Con Tents on planet Wyeb.
Well, to cut this story short, many Yellow Pages were born, quite a few died, some are still hanging on to dear life, very few still sustain, and the current Authority Yellow Page class of Con Tents are provided by the Google household. They are neat, clean and quite fast.
Humans are an impatient lot, and they don't like to wait for long periods. And that, dear reader, has helped Google sustain itself, although mother E-Maajee Nation has produced other illustrious Yellow Page Con Tents which are more accurate and interesting as compared to the inhabitants of the Google
On a parallel track, Mr. TeeBee Lee, learning from his past mistakes, decided to have better addressing schemes for the location of Con Tents, and hopefully better ways to recognise Con Tents by their apparels. He created another brand of apparels, the brand being called the Seam Antic Wyeb. But the Con Tents are so comfortable in their HT Emmel apparels because they provide so much comfort and breathing space that they are not yet ready to buy Seam Antic Wyeb apparels, which will drastically reduce the freedom of Con Tents to gather flab and be unorganised. Mr. TeeBee Lee is busy marketing that brand, hoping that the Con Tents will realise the benefits sooner than later.
( To be continued ... the planet Wyeb is still alive, kicking, and growing. The story will grow too, supported by the kind of research we are trying to do ... )