The first question most people is: "What the hell is a" Google? "This is a play on the word" googol ", which is the mathematical figure 1 followed by 100 zeros. Depending on the level of his love for mathematics, this is the biggest name of a frivolous or search engine. In Anyway, the smart kids at Google have made it a cultural standard.

The principle

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google co-founder in January 1996, then known as BackRub. The boys were in the early twenties and classic computer geeks. Sergey was born in Moscow, alum of the University of Michigan and Stanford visit. Larry was appointed to be his guide. During this visit, it is obvious that today nobody fell or give a hoot about linking strategies.

Although the two men and the name "BackRub" may raise some questions, the name actually refers to a method for the production of search engines. Specifically, the BackRub search engine was designed to analyze the "back links" to a site. Although BackRub developed a following with those who know, not much happened for a few years.

1998

As with most new businesses, children need some serious money. The bronze Yahoo was interested, but it happened at first. Sun Microsystems, all companies, provided a response. Andy Bechtolsheim was one of the founders of Sun and, therefore, had the deep pockets needed. $ 100,000 later, the search engine company back on the road to stardom.

A new name

According to legend, BackRub became Google for a reason quite humorous. Apparently, Bechtolsheim accidentally made the $ 100 000 check payable to "Google Inc." You can make your own guess as to which one of the boys said, "Hey, I have an idea for a new name." In September 1998, Google opened a small office in Menlo Park, California. The rest as they say, is history.

Today, Google is based in Mountain View, California. Google prefers email communication, but you can get a live voice at (650) 623-4000. If you really want to talk to them, rejecting a company by the credit card used to Adwords. Will be contacted very quickly!

The company went public in 2004 [Symbol: GOOG] and has a market capitalization of about $ 250 per share. Larry and Sergey are filthy rich. One can assume that Andy Bechtolsheim is also doing well.

The future

In the past year, Google has certainly received its fair share of criticism. PageRank is almost useless in regard to placement in search results. At the time of this writing, PageRank has not worked for three days, which means a change, shuffle, dance or whatever you call it is coming.

In the face of competition, things are a bit murky. It seems that a week is not without a patent lawsuit filed against the company. MSN and Yahoo have begun to raise the level of competition and more coming to be. Reliance on Google in AOL as a traffic source is also a bit worrying, given the continuing loss of market share by the company that brought about by Time Warner. Gmail is pursued by patent issues, not to mention questions about violations of the privacy of users. All and all, things are not so rosy compared to some years ago, but it can hardly be called bad.

Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to predicting whether Google will become a search engine. Personally, I think it will, but not because of any of the above. In contrast, the evolution of the Internet suggests that there will be a next "big thing". Who knows, maybe Google will get a Grub [Grub.org] in its Nutch [Nutch.org].