I disagree. Larry and Sergei wouldn't have been on stage demonstrating PageRank. They would've been on stage demonstrating a brand new search engine that returns much more relevant results faster than anything out there. That would've been exciting and held people's attention. PageRank was simply the technology that helped power it. Therefore, I think the moral is, know your audience. If Larry and Sergei were to demo to others in Computer Science they may focus on PageRank and the technology around it. If presenting to news outlets and VC's you'd better find a way to show the power of your technology in a way that they can comprehend the value of that piece of tech.
For a case in point, consider CloudFlare. They made it to the final round in SF last year. Who is to say it is similar to PageRank, but when I heard what they did I instantly thought ... wow ... a company that does deep tech and has already implemented their infrastructure ... this is going to kick everyone's behind. I was shocked that the panel of judges didn't get it. What makes it worse is that cloudflare lost to Qwiki!
After I thought about this for a while, I concluded that perhaps that panel of judges wasn't equipped to evaluate a deep technology company.
