Happy Tenth Birthday Google!
Posted: Monday, September 08, 2008
by Laura Trahan
Google celebrates its tenth birthday this month and geeks everywhere are rejoicing at the company's success.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. on September 7, 1998, with four computers and an investor's $100,000 bet on their belief that an Internet search engine could change the world.
The two were working out of their dorm room. The origin of Google is just as information rich as its search function.
Internet search was considered such a low priority at the time that Page and Brin couldn't even find anyone willing to pay to buy their technology. Instead, they got a $100,000 investment from one of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s co-founders, Andy Bechtolsheim, and filed incorporation papers so they could cash a check made out to Google Inc.
The origin of their name even has a story. In a nod to their geeky roots as children of computer science and math professors, Page and Brin had derived the name from the mathematical term "googol" -- a 1 followed by 100 zeros.
Even after Google became an official company in 1998, the business continued to operate out of their Stanford dorm rooms.
Page's room was converted into a server room for the three computers that ran the search engine, which then processed about 10,000 requests per day compared with about 1.5 billion per day now. The headquarters were in Brin's room in a neighboring dorm hall, where the founders and Silverstein wrestled for control of another computer to bang out programming code.
Within a few weeks after incorporating, Google moved into the garage of a Menlo Park, California, home owned by Susan Wojcicki, who became a Google executive and is now Brin's sister-in-law (Google bought the house in 2006).
Look how far Google has come. In ten years time, they have become a household name, occupies a 1.5 million-square-foot headquarters called the "Googleplex" as well as two dozen other U.S. offices and hubs in more than 30 other countries, and its search engine believed to index at least 40 billion Web pages now runs on hundreds of thousands of computers kept in massive data centers around the world.
Google owns YouTube which is revolutionizing video on the web and has just released its own browser this month called Chrome.
Everything the company touches turns to gold. Page and Brin are said to be worth $19 billion each at the young age of 35.
Google raked in $48 billion from Internet ads since 2001. The company has paid $15 billion in commissions to the Web sites that run its ads during the same period.
The company has also been voted one of the top places to work for with perks such as free food and snacks, bringing pets to work and countless other perks such as pools, volleyball courts, etc.
I was honored to attend a party put on by Google last month. I can honestly say I have never experienced anything like it and probably never will again. You see in my mind, there is no corporation better at this time. There company motto: "Don't Be Evil" is so far-fetched for Google because without a doubt Google is the farthest thing from evil and will always be that way in my eyes. Yes, that appearance is do to unbelievable marketing and relentless gifts at that party, but hey it worked.
So Happy Birthday Google! I can't wait to see what the next ten years brings!
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Hi Laura.I saw a segment about Google on CBS's Sunday program and thought, "Wow, here's a company that's got it right!" And all that from such humble beginnings.Great article,DianneExactly! Thanks for commenting!
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