“There’s nothing more fun than doing that work (Search engine designing)”
Larry Page and Sergey Brin found the dominant, efficient, unbeatable web search giant company on the earth, in 1998, with an intention of putting together world’s information and making it easily accessible. There evolved a new definition for web search, which created a history. Their web search criteria revolutionized and ruled the Web. The base idea by which they created the search technology for Google mostly pivoted on a key point “Their technology analyzed the number of times a given website was linked to by other sites; assuming that the more links, the more relevant the site is and ranked the sites accordingly”. Today Google stands with pride with a yearly revenue of $6 billion and both Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the world’s richest technocrats. Recently the verb “to Google” made its place into Oxford English Dictionary.
Google achieved a path breaking success and was the most loved site of the customers through out the world, because of the fact that Google has a highly user friendly and simple interface. Other things that added upon for the success of Google were; paid links were clearly demarcated and identified, pop-windows or banner ads were not used and the homepage offered a clear logo and a single search box, where as the other search engines of that era were unbelievably saturated with sponsor messages. The major criteria that account to the huge success of Google other than technology are its site design and the mode of advertising.
Brin and Page met in computer science Ph.D. program at Stanford in the mid 90’s. Google started as a research project at Stanford University, created by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively. Brin and Page first began with BackRub software and re-launched it under the name Google, chosen as a play on words of ‘googol’ a mathematical term meaning ‘one’ followed by 100 zeros. They used Stanford University website to host their program, with their website being google.stanford.edu.
Both friends together started working on the revolutionary search technology since 1996 and in 1998 they dropped out of Stanford and they started Google at a garage office, at Melano Park. Later in 2004, they took the company public.
Page ran Google as co-president along with Brin until 2001, while they hired Eric Schmidt as Chairman and CEO of Google. In January 2011, Google announced that Page would replace Schmidt as CEO in April the same year. Both Page and Brin earn an annual compensation of one dollar. On April 4, 2011, Page officially became the chief executive officer of Google, while Schmidt stepped down to become executive chairman.
Tech journalists, Android journalists and Android enthusiasts thinking about moving to Mountainview California to be closer to the Googleplex, fuggedaboutit. Google has closed a deal worth $1.8 billion dollars, purchasing an entire city block in New York City.
Although they are keeping their campus at 1600 Ampitheater Parkway in Mountainview California, Googlers on the east coast now have a new address, 111 8th Avenue New York, NY. The collossal structure only fit for a king, or well Google, sits between 8th and 9th avenues and 15th and 16th strees, blockwide. It’s in the Chelsea neighborhood.
The Googleblock, as we’re going to call it, is 3 millon square feet. At the rate of Google’s growth they should have no problem filling the space.
Let us see how Google, started as a research project in a dorm room and then a cramped garage, has now become the largest internet company in the world.
On September 13, 1997, www.google.com was officially registered. One year later, Brin and Page incorporated Google as a private company, on September 7, 1998. It is an amazing fact that over 10,000 people viewed Google everyday at its very beginning stage, just by word of mouth advertising and continued to grow at the rate of 20% per month. In spite of many people using Google, Brin and Page did not have enough resources like computers to provide outstanding services to the customers. As they wanted everyone in the world to use Google search engine, they were desperately in need of capital, when the co-founder of Sun Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a check for $100,000 to an entity called Google Inc, which had not come into existence yet, in August 1998. In September, Google was incorporated in California, and Page and Brin opened a new bank account on the company’s name in which Andy’s cheque was deposited. They nearly bought 120 hard drives for a good deal, using all credit cards of their friends, and had a massive credit card debt. They felt some relief when private investments from Stanford came through.
The company later shifted from the dorm to a friend’s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park. In December 1998, Google was recognized as top 100 web sites of choice, as a search engine providing extremely relevant results, by Times magazine. Brin and Page soon came to know that they had hit something big. As some potential partners like Yahoo! showed little or no interest to license their technology, they decided to grow the company by themselves.
Soon they began approaching angel investors, venture capitalists and tried hard to raise money and had been successful, because most of them were convinced to invest for the great and worthy product they had in hand and everyone were using it. They managed to raise nearly $1million in all.
In 1999, Google finally moved into an office at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, California, with just eight employees. By this time, Google was answering over 500,000 searches each day. The same year, Google got its first commercial search customer, Red Hat, and managed to secure $25 million from two leading venture capital firms, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, in Silicon Valley. As Google started hiring more number of people, Google’s headquarters was shifted to its current location 2400 E. Bayshore, Mountain View, California. Companies such as AOL/Netscape selected Google as its search engine, pushing Google’s users into millions.
In the year 2000, as many as 15 language versions of google.com were released (French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean). Google forged a partnership with Yahoo! and announced first billion-URL index to become world’s largest search engine.
In the year 2001, Google had a partnership with Universo Online (UOL), making Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans and its index size increased to 3billion web documents. In 2002 the first Google’s hardware was released, Ad words were released on new cost-per-click basis, A set of API’s were released enabling developers to query more than 2 billion documents and program them in their favorite environment including Java, Perl and Visual Studio. A major partnership with AOL was announced to offer Google search, for more than 34mn customers using CompuServe, Netscape, and AOL.com. Google’s R&D team released Google labs a place to try beta technologies.
In the year 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger. Google launched, content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google‘s vast network of advertisers. Google Print was also launched. In 2004, the company moved to “Googleplex” at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, with a big campus to accommodate 800 plus employees. Orkut was launched to enter sphere of social networking. Google search index hit 6bn items, including 880 million images and 4.28 billion web pages. The company went public offering 19,605,052 shares on Wall Street, at $85 per share, on August 18, 2004. Google index reached nearly 8bn.
Likewise, over the consequent six years, Google continued to grow and expand its services. It introduced innovative advertising programs, improved its own benefits,went international and partnered with other corporate giants. Today, Google became the only website, available in more than 35 languages and is used by over 380 million people worldwide. There is no surprise to say that people of all age groups cannot live without Google.
More about Sergey Brin
Born :Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin
August 21, 1973 (age 38)
Moscow, Soviet Union
Alma mater :University of Maryland (B.S. 1993)
Stanford University (M.S. 1995)
Occupation :Computer scientist, internet entrepreneur
Residence : Los Altos, California, U.S.
Nationality : American
Marital Status :Married
Children : One
The founder of the great company Google, Sergey Mikhailovich Brin was born on August 21, 1973, in Moscow, Russia, to Jewish parents, Michael and Eugenia. Brin immigrated to U.S.A, when he was just six years old along with his parents and younger brother, Samuel, due to increasing discrimination in the U.S.S.R, at that point of time. Sergey Brin’s father, Michael Brin, is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland. Brin’s mother was also a mathematician and civil engineer, who worked at NASA as a specialist.
Knowing Brin’s growing interest in Mathematics and Computers, Brin’s father provided him with his first computer, a Commodore 64, when he was nine years old. He attended Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland, followed by Eleanor Roosevelt High School. Brin graduated from the University of Maryland with an honors degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, in the year 1993. As Brin received a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, he got a chance to pursue his Master’s degree in Computer Science at Stanford University, which was completed in 1995. Brin had intent to pursue Ph.D., but a project, with fellow Stanford student Larry Page, distracted his attention.
Brin married Anne Wojcicki in May 2007 in The Bahamas, a biotech analyst and a graduate of B.S in Biology, at Yale University. She had a profound interest in health information and co-founded the firm “23andMe" which lets people analyze and compare their own genetic makeup. Brin and his wife run The Brin Wojcicki Foundation.
Although Brin dropped from Stanford, he is officially still on leave from Stanford. Brin is quite active on Google Plus and posts many updates every few days. Brin is also known as a person who likes adventures, it is not surprising that he posts a lot of travel related photographs in his Google Plus updates. 164,126 Google+ users have him in their circles as of now.
Awards and Accolades
Brin had many honors and accolades in his account, for his best entrepreneurship with scientific, creative, and innovative use of technology. Some of them are mentioned below
- In 2002, Brin was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
- In 2003, Brin received an honorary MBA from IE Business School for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses.
- In 2004, Brin received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering", and was elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University.
- In 2004, Brin received the Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award, in Chicago.
- In 2004, Brin was named "Person of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight.
- In November 2009, Forbes magazine declared Brin as fifth most powerful person in the world. Earlier that same year, in February, Brin was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, which is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.
- According to Forbes, Brin is currently named as the 24th richest person in the world with a personal wealth of US$19.8 billion in 2011.
More about Larry Page
Born :Lawrence Larry Page
March 26, 1973 (age 38)
East Lansing, Michigan, U.S.
Alma mater : University of Michigan (B.S.) Stanford University (M.S.)
Occupation :C.E.O of Google
Residence : Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Nationality :American
Marital Status :Married
Children :One
he co-founder of Google, Lawrence Edward Page was born in Lansing, Michigan, on March 26, 1973. Page’s father, was a computer science professor at Michigan State University and his mother, Gloria, was also a computer-programming teacher. Page recalls that he fell in deep love with computers, at a very tender age of seven and Page was always the first student at his elementary school to turn in a word-processed homework assignment. Before Page earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan, he attended East Lansing High School. After his bachelor’s degree he went to Stanford University to earn his Master’s degree.
Page is very fair minded and he admits that the doctoral program was scary. Page met Brin while he was pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Stanford, they soon explored a common interest in data-mining and retrieving relevant information from large data sets and together, they wrote a paper entitled, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” which has today become the tenth most accessed scholarly paper at Stanford.
Page married Lucinda Southworth, a research scientist and sister of actress and model Carrie Southworth, in the year 2007, at Richard Branson's Caribbean island, Necker Island. He has one child. Larry is not that active as his friend Brin on Google Plus and he has publicly posted only twice in the last month. 239,349 Google Plus users have him in their circles as of now.
Awards and Accolades
Larry Page has won many awards and accolades for his highly knowledgeable engineering brain which has invented a great technology for use of millions of people around the globe. Here are few of them
- In 2002, Page, was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
- In 2002, the World Economic Forum named Page a Global Leader for Tomorrow.
- In 2003, Page received an honorary MBA from IE Business School for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses.
- In 2004, Page received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering," and got elected as Fellow of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University.
- In 2004, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering .
- In 2004, the X PRIZE chose Page as a trustee for their board.
- In 2004, Page was named "Person of the Week" by ABC World News Tonight.
- In 2005, Page was elected as Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
- Page received an honorary doctorate from the Michigan University in 2009 during graduation commencement ceremonies.
- In 2011, he was ranked 24th on the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires and as the 11th richest person in the United States
Larry Page:
“We have a mantra: don't be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing”.
“Basically, our goal is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful”.
“The ultimate search engine would basically understand everything in the world, and it would always give you the right thing. And we're a long, long ways from that”.
“If you have a product that's really gaining a lot of usage, then it's probably a good idea”.
“If you can run the company a bit more collaboratively, you get a better result, because you have more bandwidth and checking and balancing going on”.
“The dream as conceived 25 years ago has not been achieved. Until software becomes the ultimate tool for collaboration, productivity and efficiency, the work is not done. And there's nothing more fun than doing that work”.
“The ultimate search engine... would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want”.
“Our company relies on having the trust of our users and using that information for that benefit. That's a very strong motivation for us. We're committed to that. If you start to mandate how products are designed, I think that's a really bad path to follow. I think instead we should have laws that protect the privacy of data, for example, from government requests and other kinds of requests”.
Sergey Brin:
“As we go forward, I hope we're going to continue to use technology to make really big differences in how people live and work”.
“Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted, and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world”.
“We believed we could build a better search. We had a simple idea, that not all pages are created equal. Some are more important”.
“To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone”.
“It's clear there's a lot of room for improvement, there's no inherent ceiling we're hitting up on”.
“We deal with all varieties of information. Somebody’s always upset no matter what we do. We have to make a decision; otherwise, there is a never-ending debate. Some issues are crystal clear. When they’re less clear and opinions differ, sometimes we have to break a tie. For example, we don’t accept ads for hard liquor, but we accept ads for wine. It’s just a personal preference. We don’t allow gun ads, and the gun lobby got upset about that. We don’t try to put our sense of ethics into the search results, but we do when it comes to advertising”.
“We collect input. I think we do a good job of deciding. As I said, we believe that “Don’t be evil” is only half of it. There’s a “Be good” rule also”.
“Your mind is tremendously efficient at weighing an enormous amount of information. We want to make smarter search engines that do a lot of the work for us. The smarter we can make the search engine, the better. Where will it lead? Who knows? But it’s credible to imagine a leap as great as that from hunting through library stacks to a Google session, when we leap from today’s search engines to having the entirety of the world’s information as just one of our thoughts”.
Great Lessons by Google Guys Page and Brin to Lead an Organization
Don’t Be Evil
“We have a mantra: don’t be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for every one.“says Page. “Therefore, I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing". From its search technology to its advertising to its own charitable foundation, Page and Brin have striven to create Google after the fashion of their own morals. The company refuses to place advertisements for hard liquor and donates 1% of its profits to charitable causes all in an effort to not “be evil”.
Overall, Page and Brin want Google to continue to be a company that can be proud of, not only because of its financial success but also because of its positive contribution to the society. “We believe that ‘Don’t be evil is only half of it,” says Brin. “There’s a ‘Be good’ rule also."
Look To the Future
“We are targeting innovation,” says Page. “The dream as conceived 25 years ago has not been achieved. Until software becomes the ultimate tool for collaboration, productivity, and efficiency, the work is not done. And there's nothing more fun than doing that work.”
Despite their lofty goals and their seemingly unstoppable ambition, Brin admits that there are limits to the achievements of Google. “We are currently not planning on conquering the world,” he jokes. With four out of five Internet searches taking place on Google, Brin and Page have however undoubtedly conquered their industry.
Establish a Strong Vision
“Basically, our goal is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful,” says Page. “That's our mission.”
“When you grow, you continually have to invent new processes,” says Page. “We’ve done a pretty good job keeping up, but it’s an ongoing challenge.” By establishing a clear and single vision and staying committed to this throughout the course of the company’s life, Page and Brin have allowed Google to become a leader in its field. Many Internet companies do many other things well, but none can do precisely what Google does as well as Google does it.
Take Care of Your Team
“Our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything,” Page explains to his company’s investors. “Google is organized around the ability to attract and leverage the talent of exceptional technologists and business people. We have been lucky to recruit many creative, principled and hard working stars. We hope to recruit many more in the future. We will reward and treat them well.”
Page believes that it is the significant employee ownership of the company that has made Google what it is today. “Because of our employee talent, Google is doing exciting work in nearly every area of computer science,” he says. “Our main benefit is a workplace with important projects, where employees can contribute and grow.”
Focus on the User
“Serving our end users is at the heart of what we do and remains our number one priority,” says Page. Despite being perhaps, the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have its customers leave its website as quickly as possible, Google is no doubt committed to making those customers as satisfied as possible.
“From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible,” says Page. “While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site.”
But, perhaps the most significant evidence that Google’s priority is on the user lies in the fact that it is the users themselves who determine the search results. In contrast to its predecessors, Google’s revolutionary technology prioritized websites based on the number of links that linked back to a website. Thus, internet users were, in effect, able to lend their vote to Google search results. “In general we’re trying to use the web’s self-organizing properties to decide which things to present,” says Page. “We don’t want to be in the position of having to decide these things. We take the responsibility seriously. People depend on us.”
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