Google’s beginnings: Search engine development
In 1993, Sergey received with honors his Bachelor of Science at the University of Maryland. And initiated his graduate study in computer science at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship. During an orientation for new students at Stanford, Sergey Brin met Larry Page.
Given the similar academic backgrounds in both of their families, they understood the importance of citations in research papers. And together authored a paper titled “The Anatomy of a Large Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.”
From this point they developed the PageRank algorithm, and realized that it could be used to construct a search engine far superior to the existing ones.
Using Larry’s basic HTML programming skills, both boys set up a simple search page for users (they didn’t have a web page developer and thus couldn’t create anything visually elaborated).
As the search engine grew in acceptance in the midst of Stanford students, it required additional computing power to handle the searches, so they began using any computer part they could find to build up their servers. In August 1996, the earliest version of Google was available on the Internet. Pretty soon they had 10,000 searches a month.
Interesting note: Google’s name comes from intentionally misspelling googol that is the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros.
Despite the undisputable superiority of Google’s results, Larry and Sergey had difficulty selling their idea or funding their project, because at the time there was no business model attached to search engines. Nobody had yet come up with the idea of converting profit from search.
During this period, Excite even got to the point of almost buying Google, but finally walked away from the negotiations table.
Larry and Sergey decided to continue on with the project. They discovered a way to include ads with the search result (what we now call AdSense). The idea was first found on a site called Overture, and the boys came to a settlement with its owner. From there on, Google was catapulted to preceding heights.
WOW - you always do the most interesting trainings! ;-)
Thank you for the history about Google. I remember those early years - I didn't like Google at all and never used them. I preferred http://www.Mamma.com or http://www.AllTheWeb.com. Mamma's slogan was "The Mother of all search engines", but today they are only about coupons, it looks like. It also looks like AllTheWeb has been taken over by Yahoo.
I remember that I got a free sewing pattern from http://TuCows.com, which was a winner. But today, TuCows is a very different website than what it used to be.
And I loved your comics too - you are very creative! Although I sincerely hope you are wrong with your prediction to which extent Google will invade our privacy!
Much enjoyed - thank you, Henry!
Sharlee (Chocolate IceCream)
I didn't know all this.. I can understand Google more now.
Thank you... Ya, lol... I love your cartoons!!
Monica
Congratulations Henry-ll