Dec
14
Google is more than a search engine these days, now it has become a part of speech. I can’t tell you how many times a day I along with millions of others say “Well, did you Google it?” when asked a question that we cannot readily answer. That is the power of this major player in the internet of the present day. In spite of the fact that there are other search engines out there, we never say “Did you Bing it?” or “Did you Yahoo it?”
The history of Google is actually similar to the story of Microsoft and Apple. A couple of regular guys, just like you and me, started working on a project that would one day open a whole new world for the rest of us.
In 1996, Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin started working on a research project that they called BackRub. The idea was to rank the more relevant web search returns according to how many times a page was linked to other pages on the internet. Ironically, if the name had not been changed in 1997, we might be asking “Did you Backrub it?” The name Google is actually taken from a mathematical term, although I didn’t know that when I started my research. A googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, and here I always thought they just made up a new word.
In 1997 Larry and Sergey changed servers and changed their search engine’s name to Google, registering as Google.com, and after receiving a $100,000 check in 1998 they formally incorporated. The business, was housed in a garage in Menlo Park, California. By December of the same year Google had hired their first employee and was recognized as the search engine of choice for PC Magazine’s Top 100 Web Sites.
By February of 1999 Google needed a real office and had grown to 8 employees. Google would continue to grow to forty employees before year’s end, even hiring a chef! In 2000 they captured our imagination by playing their first April Fools Day joke, Mentalplex. The hoax had searchers believing Google could read your mind. This would become a Google tradition. New features were added, such as 10 languages, Adwords and Google toolbar.
In 2001 Swedish Chef was added as a search language and by year’s end they launched Image Search and indexed 3 billion web documents. In 2002 Klingon would be added as one of 72 language choices, and they released their first hardware, a yellow box for businesses called Google Search Appliance. Google News, and Froogle, a shopping search were also launched. Froogle is now Google Product Search and I use it almost every day.
Google has since released G mail, Google Buzz, Google Trends and more. They have acquired Blogger and YouTube. The list goes on, and is too extensive to list here. They have offices all over the world, employing over 19,800 people by the end of 2009. Their offices offer 5 star chefs and areas for their employees to take naps.
Google’s growth now includes their own web browser, Google Chrome, I use no other, and Google Maps as well as Google Earth. You can now view seven continents at street level, and yes I have looked at my house, as well as the home that once housed Google in it’s garage, 232 Santa Margarita Ave, Menlo Park, CA, 94025. I have eagerly awaited Google’s own operating system, Chromium which has been released but is a web based system at this time. According to reviews, it only works while you are on line.
