Google was founded in 1998. Within a short span of 10 years, it has become a world leader in internet, surpassed big giant of search engines, Yahoo, threatened Microsoft empire and reached global dimensions. The founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page started Google when they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University in computer science. Larry held the CEO title and Sergey was president and chairman, the arrangement made by the flip of coin. They both had a crazy idea to download entire information available on the internet.
According to John Hennesy, Stanford’s president, the environment at Stanford promotes entrepreneurship and risk taking research. In September 1998, when Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their search engine before Stanford university faculty and students, the senior professor Dennis Allison admired them for holding fast to their dream of changing the world. “They are really driven by a vision of how things aught to be and not to make money.” Allison said. “ The idea of digitizing the entirety of the universe and making it work is something nobody was willing to tackle but lots of people knew needed to be done.”
In. Page’s words ‘ Optimism is important. You have to be a little silly about the goals you are going to set. We should have a healthy disregard for the impossible. You should try to do things that most people would not. ”
Google’s success is the result of the untiring constant struggle of the founders against all odds to achieve a goal that was almost unconceivable but with a desirable and noble purpose of free knowledge dissemination at the core. Brin explained that research for about three years before actual launch of search engine led to development of page rank algorithm which was revolutionary as compared to normal search engines which relied merely on frequency of words. With this innovative idea of page ranking, the Google search engine became very effective in providing instant access to information on any subject available on the internet.
They started building the massive network of computers with stripped down ordinary PCs, disks and memory. They used free operating system Linux. As these machines did not have built-in-safeguards like super computer and were prone to failure, they devised software to bypass the nonworking machines. They also ensured redundancy by storing copies of information on different computer clusters.
Danny Sullivan’s online newsletter helped google to spread the word globally without spending money on advertising. Google ranked the advertisements on the basis of key words in relevance to subject of search, and limited the ads to text based ads locating them in right one third portion of main search result page instead of disturbing popup and animated ads. Google introduced image search as new feature. It struck a deal with AOL, Earthlink and Ask Jeeves. Instead of fixed rate for ad display, google started more realistic charge on the basis of number of clicks on the ad.
Google office provided 20% time for their employees to just explore and try new ideas. This helped to get bottom-up innovation. By utilizing this opportunity, Krishna Bharat of Google research group, developed application of his story bank idea to link online news items. Google pioneered search facility in different languages. Google search provided answers to all queries, even mathematical calculations.
With introduction of Gmail, google expanded the reach of advertisements in all the private messages also. Initially it created controversy as regards breach of privacy protection. Same thing happened when Google launched satellite mapping and navigation services.
Google has entered in the realm of Microsoft and is providing free document and spreadsheet services online. Microsoft has proposed to acquire Yahoo for gaining strength in internet field. But it seems Google is playing a major role in maintaining Yahoo’s independent status to keep its supremacy in internet world.
The Google Story is the living example of dedication and continued struggle of men who succeeded in achieving their magnificent goals.
The Google Story
David A. Vise with Mark Malseed
MacMillon ( 2005)
