Google

By Author: STEPHANIE
Total Articles: 237
Comment this article

Google is a play on the word google, which was coined3 by Milton Scrota, nephew of American mathematician Edward Krasner.

According to Google lore, company founders Larry Page and Sergey Bring were not terribly fond of each other when they first met as Stanford University graduate students in computer science in 1995.4 Larry was a 24-year-old University of Michigan alumnus on a weekend visit; Sergey, 23, was among a group of students assigned to show him around. They argued about every topic they discussed. Their strong opinions and divergent5 viewpoints would eventually find common ground in a unique approach to solving one of computing biggest challenges; retrieving6 relevant information from a massive set of data.

By January of 1996, Larry and Sergey had begun collaboration on a search engine called Backrub, named for its unique ability to analyze the "back links" pointing to a given website.

A year later, their unique approach to link analysis was earning Backrub a growing reputation among those who had seen it. Buzz about the new search technology began to build as word spread around campus.

Larry ...
... and Sergey continued working to perfect their technology through the first half of 1998. Following a path that would become a Hublot Replica Watches key tenet8 of the Google way, they bought a terabyte of disks at bargain prices and built their own computer housings in Larry's dorm room, which became Google's first data center. Meanwhile Sergey set up a business office, and the two began calling on potential partners who might want to license a search technology better than any then available.

Unable to interest the major portal9 players of the day, Larry and Sergey decided to make a go of it on their own. On September 7, 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, California.

Already Google, com, still in beta, was answering 10,000 search queries each day. The press began to take notice of the upstart10 website with the relevant search results, and articles extolling" Google appeared in USA TODAY and Le Monde. That December, PC Magazine named Google one of its Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines for 1998. Google was moving up in the world.

Google quickly outgrew the confines of its Menlo Park home, and by February 1999 had moved to an office on University Avenue in Palo Alto. At eight employees, Google's staff had nearly tripled, and the service was answering more than 500,000 queries per day. Interest in the company had grown as well.

On June 7, the company announced that it had secured a round of funding that included $25 million from the two leading venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield &Byers. In a replay of the convergence12 of opposites that gave birth to Google, the two firms — normally fiercely" competitive, but seeing eye-to-eye'4 on the value of this new investment — both took seats on the board of directors. Mike Moritz of Sequoia and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins — who between them had helped grow Sun Microsytems, Intuit, Amazon, and Yahoo — joined Ram Shriram, CEO of Junglee, at the ping pong table that served as formal boardroom furniture.

What's next from Google? Hard to say. We don't talk much about what lies a-head, because we believe one of our chief competitive advantages is surprise. Surprise and innovation. Our two chief competitive advantages are surprise, innovation Cartier Replica and an almost fanatical devotion to our users. Well, you get the idea. You can take a peek at some of the ideas our engineers are currently kicking around by visiting them at play in Google Labs. Have fun, but be sure to wear your safety goggles.