Google history and the first Google presentation 1996

Google began as a research project in January, 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University.[5]

Google in 1998

They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques which essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page.[6] It was originally nicknamed “BackRub,” because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site’s importance.[7] A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.[8]

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 University website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998 at a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California.

In March, 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company settled into their current home in a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, in 2003. Silicon Graphics leased these buildings to Google.

The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users. They were attracted to its simple, uncluttered design — a competitive advantage to attract users who did not wish to enter searches on web pages filled with visual distractions. This appearance, while imitating the early AltaVista, had behind it Google’s unique search capabilities. In 2000 Google began selling advertisements associated with the search keyword to produce enhanced search results for the user. This strategy was important for increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of hits users make upon ads. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click. This model of selling keyword advertising was originally pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture, then Yahoo! Search Marketing).[9] While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature and generated revenue.

U.S. Patent 6,285,999 describing Google’s ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on September 4, 2001. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.

Corporate culture

A license plate seen in the Googleplex parking lot

Google adopts a relaxed corporate culture, reminiscent of the Dot-com boom. Google’s corporate philosophy is based on principles like “You can make money without doing evil”, “You can be serious without a suit” and, “Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun.” A complete list of corporate fundamentals is available on Google’s website.[18] The company encourages equality within corporate levels. Twice a week there is a roller hockey game in the company parking lot. Google’s relaxed corporate culture can also be seen externally through their holiday variations of the Google logo.
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“Twenty percent” time

All Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them. The time can be allocated to one day a week, or pooled into a month. Some of Google’s newer services, such as Gmail, Google News and orkut, are said to have originated from these independent endeavors.
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Googleplex

Welcome sign to the Googleplex
Main article: Googleplex

As a further play on Google’s name, its headquarters, located in California, are referred to as “the Googleplex” — a googolplex being 1 followed by a googol of zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf. multiplex, cineplex, etc). The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, and a real-time projection of current search queries. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus, and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, Foosball, a baby grand piano, a pool table, and ping pong. In addition to the rec room, there are snack rooms stocked with various cereals, gummy bears, toffee, licorice, cashews, yogurt, carrots, fresh fruit, and dozens of different drinks including fresh juice, soda, and make your own cappuccino.[19]
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April Fool’s Day jokes
Main article: Google’s hoaxes

Google has a tradition of creating April Fool’s Day jokes such as Google MentalPlex, which featured the use of mental power to search the web. In 2002, they claimed that pigeons were the secret behind their growing search engine. In 2004, it featured Google Lunar, which featured jobs on the moon, and in 2005, a fictitious brain-boosting drink, termed Google Gulp, was announced. In 2006, they came up with Google Romance. One can find other pranks hidden between Google’s pages. Additionally, in the languages list one can find the Bork! Bork! Bork! version, imitating the Muppet Show’s Swedish Chef. They also offer versions in Pig Latin, Elmer Fudd, Klingon, and a Leet (or h4×0r) version of Google. Some people thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004 around April Fool’s Day (as well as the doubling of Gmail’s storage space to two gigabytes in 2005) was a joke. In 2005, featured on the Gmail homepage, was a comedic graph depicting Google’s goal of “infinity plus one” GB.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American multinational software corporation, first incorporated as a privately held corporation in September, 1998, that specializes in search engine, information retrieval technology and online advertising. With a market capitalization of US$118.32 billion as of June 2006, Google is the largest internet search company in the world, almost twice as large as rival Yahoo![1] The company employs approximately 6,800 employees[2] and is based in Mountain View, California. Eric Schmidt, formerly chief executive officer of Novell, was named Google’s CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.

The name “Google” originated from a misspelling of “googol,” [3] which refers to 10100(a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Google has become well known for its corporate culture and innovative, clean products, and has a major impact on online culture. The verb “to google” has come to mean “to perform a Web search”, usually with the Google search engine.

Google’s services are run on several server farms, which, in 2004, consisted of over 30 clusters of up to 2,000 PCs per cluster. Each cluster contains one petabyte of data with sustained transfer rates of 2 Gbps. Combined, over four billion web pages, averaging 10 Kb each, have been fully indexed.[4]