They and a small group of other young people see organizing the Internet as a fun puzzle instead of a nightmare akin to Sisyphus rolling his heavy rock uphill and watching it fall back down. No one knows who has the best shot, but as with the mythical Sisyphus, what's interesting is how each approaches a seemingly insurmountable task. We are trying to bring something better to the world and make it easier for people to find information. While directories organize sites into categories that can be browsed, search engines compile a gigantic index and scan it for relevant sites every time someone makes a query. Increasingly, major Web portals use both strategies, combining directories with a search engine that kicks in when users can't find what they want in a directory.
Some experts believe both strategies fall short.
Yahoo's directory, for instance, has become so cluttered with categories and subcategories that users often click through a maze before reaching an actual Web site. Yahoo does not reveal its size, but competitors estimate the directory lists between 2 million and 4 million sites. Srinivasan's team of surfers adds 1,000 to 2,000 sites to Yahoo each day, while thousands more are submitted daily for evaluation. To help electronic-commerce sites deal with the backlog, Yahoo gives expedited reviews for a fee. The widening gap between what's on the Web and what's retrievable does not worry Srinivasan, who gave up long ago thinking her team could catalogue it all.