History of Google - Early history

History of Google

This article covers the history of Google, the popular web-based search engine.

Early history

Google began as a research project in January 1996 by Larry Page, a Ph.D. student at Stanford.[1] Larry was soon joined in his research project by Sergey Brin a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student and close friend. Larry Page hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page).[2] It was originally nicknamed, "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance.[3] A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.[4]

Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California.

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol,"[5][6] which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros. Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, "google," was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."[7][8]

In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[9] After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1999.[10] The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex, a 1 followed by a googol of zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.[11]

The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing
number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[12] In 2000,
Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.[13]
The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and
to maximize page loading speed.[13] Keywords were sold based on
a combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting
at $.05 per click.[13] This model of selling keyword advertising was
pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture Services, before being
acquired by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing).[14][15][16]
While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace,
Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.[13]

A patent describing part of Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was
granted on September 4, 2001.[17] The patent was officially assigned
to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.

Google's declared code of conduct is "Don't be evil", a phrase which
they went so far as to include in their prospectus (aka "red herring"
or "S-1") for their IPO, noting, "We believe strongly that in the long term,
we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways —
by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo
some short term gains."

The Google site often includes humorous features such as cartoon
modifications of the Google logo to recognize special occasions and
anniversaries.[18] Known as "Google Doodles", most have been drawn
by Google's international webmaster, Dennis Hwang.[19] Not only may
decorative drawings be attached to the logo, but the font design
may also mimic a fictional or humorous language such as Star Trek Klingon
and Leet.[20] The logo is also notorious among web users for
April Fool's Day tie-ins and jokes about the company.


Source :
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia