A Google-less Day

A Google-less Day

 Honestly, where would we be with out Google today. Whether we looking for a job, a restaurant to have dinner , or even directions on how to get somewhere. Google is one of  "those" entities that we just can't live with out, like food and water basically. Ok that may be taking it to the extreme but for most of us it is a tool we use everyday multiple times. But how many of us know how Google started ? Or even when it was started ?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Google was started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin who meet at Stanford. Larry was considering the school and Sergey was assigned to show him around. This was back in 1995, in 1996 the two started working on a search engine called backrub. When backrub started taking up too much bandwidth on the university servers they decided it was time for a change. In 1997 Larry and Sergey decided to rename the search engine Google, which was a play on the word “googol" , which is a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. This they decided was an apt name as they were essentially creating a search engine that could organize the almost infinite amount of information on the internet.

1998, this was the "Big Bang", the big start of Google as it can be called. In August of 2008 Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to a company called Google Inc.In September Google officially sets up in Susan Wojcicki’s garage. By Decmeber 1998 “PC Magazine” reports that Google returns extremely relevant results, and recognise Google as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.

In 1999 the company just improves further, where in February they moved out of the garage into a proper office space. In May the first non engineer is hired to manage and handle sales, and shortly after in June the term googler arises , as those individuals who use Google. Google then moved again due to need of office space and they moved to Mountain View. The company was doing so well that in November Charlie Ayers joins as Google’s first chef. This then rounds off a rather successful 1999.

From this point on there is just constant development and expanding in every direction possible. Early in 2000 the team moved to various language versions of the search engines where they provided for French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish. In June 2000 they announced the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world’s largest search engine. To end off 2000 Google Adwords was launched in October and Google toolbar is released in December.

So as we can see Google inc never stopped growing. It shot up fast and just kept growing. I could keep on listing more and more achievements but you get the idea. Basically Google didn't exist and then it did. Just to close off this post I would like to give a few more interesting out of the blue highlights for Google that I really enjoyed discovering:

1. In February 2002 Klingon became 1 of the 72 language interfaces available for Google.
2. In April 2002 For April Fools’ Day, it announce that pigeons power Google's search results. 
3. In September 2005 Overlays in Google Earth illuminate the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina around New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Some rescue teams use these tools to locate stranded victims. 
4. In October 2006 Google announced its acquisition of YouTube. 
5. In December 2007 The Queen of England launches The Royal Channel on YouTube. She is the first monarch to establish a video presence this way.