My love affair with Google began in my second year of University when my New Media professor had asked us to select a book from the list he had provided for a reading assignment. As I scanned the list, David A. Vise’s The Google Story caught my eye. Little did I know that it would quickly become the best book that I have read to this day. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are beyond inspirational. I’m amazed that two young men were able to transform the way we access information. In the past, skilled researchers were the only ones who could extract information from the Internet. How far things have come thanks to Google!
If you haven’t yet read The Google Story, I highly recommend you do. In celebration of Google’s next chapter, I have put together a few facts that you may not have known about the search engine’s early days.
- Google was started as a research project while the guys were attending Stanford University.
- When Brin and Page pitched their idea to existing search engines, every single one refused.
- Google’s growth took place entirely by word of mouth instead of advertising.
- The co-founders had avoided going public as long as they could because they wanted to keep their modest lifestyles.
- The Google boys accepted a joint investment from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins who each invested 12.5 million dollars into Google.
- Many Microsoft employees, including the most significant technologists, left Microsoft to join Google’s team.
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