FWIW, PageRank is a relatively minor component of the ranking algorithm (I dunno why people latch onto it...maybe because it's a public, patented, easy soundbite), and the core Google ranking algorithm was entirely rewritten by Amit Singhal in 2001. The ranking edge that most people associate with Google wasn't even written when Google got its funding, and its inventor hadn't yet been hired.
I'm saying that PageRank isn't the ranking edge that Google is famous for, and that if you applied the ranking algorithm as invented by Larry and Sergey to the web (even the web at the time, before everyone started to game Google), it would suck. It might suck a bit less than AltaVista, which was why they got funded, but it's not at all the quality that people have come to associate with Google.
