Technology Reviews

History of a Search Engine

Google is one of the most well-known and most used search engines in the world, but did you know that it started its life in a garage? You can be sure that they would have locked their invention up securely to prevent it from being stolen, and it is possible to secure any garage with the support of a Garage Doors Bristol company such as www.upandoverdoorsltd.co.uk/.

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Google is the invention of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It was originally set up in 1996 as BackRub and was an algorithm that was used on the Stanford University private network. The algorithm that they created was known as Page Rank, and it ranked search results based on their linking behaviour.

By 1998 the pair had begun to realise the potential for the algorithm to grow as the internet grew and that the possibilities for the search function were almost endless. They incorporated their company and renamed it Google after the mathematical term googol, which is a one followed by one hundred zeroes. It was during this time that they used the garage of Susan Wojcicki to work from. They received angel funding from Andy Bechtolsheim totalling $100,000, to further their project.

In 2001 the pair employed Eric Schmidt as CEO of Google as they noted that they needed to have someone in place to help with the day-to-day growth of the company. During the ten years that Schmidt worked at Google, he helped to oversee its expansion, the introduction of Google Docs, Gmail and the acquisition of YouTube.

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During Schmidt’s working life at Google, Yahoo tried to acquire the company for $3 billion, but the offer was turned down by the board as they felt the offer was too low. Later on, in 2002, Google released Google News which helped to transform the way people accessed and consumed their news. By 2004 the company released Gmail to the public. Google Maps made an appearance in 2005, and the company acquired YouTube in 2006. By 2008 they had released the Chrome Browser, with the Chrome OS launch occurring in 2011.

The company has continued to grow and expand its offering switch Google Classrooms and Suite, enabling people to use the company’s assets in a number of different ways.

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