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The Google.com Success Story

Google originated from the mispronounced word "googol," which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. Initially Google was merely the subject of Larry Page's dissertation; today it is a company with a turnover of $16.6 billion and 19,604 employees.

In 1996, at Stanford University, Larry Page, searching for a dissertation topic, arrived at the idea of using a fundamentally new mechanism for information retrieval. The idea was as follows: if page A contains a link to page B, then page B is more valuable. Such backlinks [2] directly participate in forming a page's rank.
Shortly afterwards, Sergey Brin joined the project.

It should be said that at the time there were already several search services - yahoo.com, excite.com and others - but all of them had two shortcomings:
1. Information was evaluated by how many times keywords were repeated on a page
2. Pages from top to bottom were crammed with advertising banners.

It is notable that yahoo.com also originated in 1994 at Stanford University. [5] Excite.com also in 1994 and also at Stanford University. [6]

So google.com set out to fix these two shortcomings. Initially the idea of a new search engine was far from appealing to potential investors. As a result, the first Google was hosted in a dormitory room at Stanford University. True, the traffic to the site was so great that the university administration asked the determined young men to immediately vacate the university's hospitable premises.

On 15 September 1997, the domain google.com was registered, and shortly afterwards, on 4 September 1998, the company Google Inc. was founded. Investments, however, were not forthcoming. Both young men went to their former professor David R. Cheriton for advice, who in turn connected the future Google with investor Andy Bechtolsheim, who instantly wrote a cheque for $100,000. This and other investors' contributions made up the initial capital - approximately $1 million.

The next successful turning point came in 1999, when the Google founders met potential investor John Doerr, who, after brief deliberation, invested $12 million in the company. Other investors followed this example, and Google now had substantial capital - ~$32 million.

But... there was still no idea of how Google would generate profit, as both company founders were unwilling to use advertising banners. As with many ideas in Silicon Valley, the idea for advertising was also "stolen" from the company "IdeaLab".

The idea was as follows:
If a user enters a keyword, for example "cars," a corresponding advertisement is displayed for that keyword. True, the advertisement is separated from the search result. This type of advertising was named AdWord. With this, Google's triumphal march could begin.

Google originated from the mispronounced word "googol," which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros (10^100). The company's chairman - Eric E. Schmidt - had previously been the head of Novell. The administrative building (the building complex - Googleplex) is located in Mountain View, California, USA.
In 2007, turnover was $16.6 billion, of which profit was $4.2 billion. The company employs 19,604 people.

Interestingly, adjacent to the Googleplex are companies such as the Mozilla Foundation and Microsoft Corporation's Silicon Valley research complex.

The range of Google's services / products:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products

A few notable facts about both founders:

Larry Page (full name: Lawrence Edward Page).
Born in Lansing, Michigan, USA. Father - professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State University. Despite his mother being Jewish, Larry was raised in a non-religious environment. Holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University. [3]

Sergey Brin.
Born in Moscow into a Jewish family. Both father and mother are mathematicians, graduates of Moscow State University. The family emigrated to the USA when Sergey was 6 years old.
Holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and mathematics from the University of Maryland and a master's degree from Stanford University. Enrolled in doctoral studies but did not complete them. [4]