StoryGoogle began in 1996 as a research project by two Stanford students - Larry Page And Sergei Brin. Colleagues and friends at that moment were working on the SDPL project - the Stanford Digital Library. They developed the most convenient, universal digital library, which was supposed to be unified.
The official history of Google as a company began September 4, 1998, when Page and Brin officially registered their creation in their friend Susan Wojcicki's garage in California.
Brief background
In the 2 years since the start of joint activities at Stanford and before the registration of Google Inc. Larry and Sergey have done a lot of work in the IT industry. One more search engine was not enough, a breakthrough was needed, and friends did it.
In 1996, Larry Page was choosing a topic for his dissertation. His choice, on the advice of Professor Terry Winograd, fell on identifying and structuring the influence of external links on a particular resource. This became the prototype of Page Rank (PR), one of the factors thanks to which Google gained leadership in its field.
BackRub
After Larry decided on a topic for his dissertation, he began a scientific project that went down in history as “ BackRub” . It was at this moment that Sergey Brin joined him.
Page Rank
In March 1996, for the first time, a search engine began indexing pages on the World Wide Web from Larry's home page at Stanford.
In order to better display the results of this indexing, friends developed an algorithm Page Rank, which took into account the authority of the page under study based on the number and quality of external hyperlinks to it from other pages.
The beginning of a unique search engine
Realizing that they were getting better results than other search engines thanks to their algorithm, Page and Brin actually made a revolution in the history of search engines. This is what gave birth to Google, a world-famous company.
At the beginning of its work, the Google search engine was located on the Stanford University website at - google.stanford.edu
Domain name google. com was registered September 15, 1997. "Googol" is a number equal to one followed by one hundred zeros.
Attitude to advertising
Colleagues did not want to turn their brainchild into a billboard with all sorts of pop-up windows and graphic advertising banners. They even wrote a scientific paper on this topic in 1998.
Until now, Google's interface is the most simple and “easy”, allowing it to load faster in the user's browser. Among the advertisements in search results, you can currently only find text advertisements (contextual advertising based on keywords), which first appeared in the search engine in 2000.
The beginning of the history of Google Inc.
Having received the first funding from Andy Bechtolsteim at the rate of $100,000, Larry Page and Sergey Brin officially registered Google Inc. – the history of the beginning of the number 1 search engine in the world began on September 4, 1998 and continues to this day.
By the end of that year, Google's crawler had indexed more than 60 million pages on the Internet. Its advantage over analogues has become generally recognized. At the peak "dot-com bubble" In the stock market, Google already had a huge lead over its competitors, being a private company.
Sales attempt
In 1999, Larry and Sergei realized that the company had so absorbed them that it was clearly interfering with their studies at the university. It was decided to sell to Google for 1 million dollars. The offer was made George Bell, who runs Excite, but he backed out of the deal.
Public IPO of Google Inc.
One of the significant days in the history of Goggle Inc. became August 19, 2004, when the company entered the NASDAQ stock exchange and became public.
Google offered investors 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share. The shares were sold through an online auction of a unique format, organized by the banks that underwrote the transaction. Morgan Stanley And Credit Suisse.
IPO proceeds of $1.67 billion meant Google's market capitalization was more than $23 billion. The vast majority of the shares remained in the company's control, and many of its employees instantly became millionaire stockholders. Yahoo!, a Google competitor, also benefited because it owned 8.4 million Google shares before the IPO. As of February 2014, the corporation's capitalization amounted to over 400 billion dollars!
In addition to being sold on the American market (NASDAQ stock exchange) under the ticker GOOG, the corporation is sold on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and has the ticker GGQ1 there.
Reorganization at Alphabet
After the Google Reorganization Alphabet in October 2015, all shares of the first were converted into shares of the second. They continue to trade on NASDAQ as GOOGL and GOOG ( class A- GOOGL, - with one vote, and class C- GOOG, - no voting rights).
Owners
There are also promotions class B, giving their owners 10 votes. The only holders of this class of shares are Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as the former CEO of the company Eric Schmidt.
Google services and acquisitions
Over its history, Google has acquired many companies, some of which have become the basis of the corporation's modern services. Some of them became Google subsidiaries, and some of them became independent branches.
Here are some of them:
GooglePlanetEarth– a service based on the startup Keyhole, Inc., purchased in 2004, whose product was then called Earth Viewer. The service stores photographs of our planet taken from a satellite.
YouTube– the most popular video hosting and search engine No. 3 in the world, purchased by the corporation in 2006 for $1.65 billion.
GoogleVoice– made on the foundation of the purchased company GrandCentral. The transaction amount, which took place in 2007, was $50 million.
Other popular services and products
Among Google's many developments, the most popular are Gmail(Post service), Google Maps(the most recognized integrated application is Google Maps), GoogleDocs(a worthy cloud replacement for office programs from), browser GoogleChrome with a wonderful bookmark synchronization function, operating system Android for smartphones and many others.
Partnerships and sponsorships
In addition to its own developments and acquisitions of companies for its own needs, Google’s management is always open to cooperation and even sponsorship with other companies in a variety of fields of science and production: ecology, space exploration, medicine, IT, automobile production (), smartphones, etc.
Today, Google, under the wing of Alphabet, is one of the leading companies in the IT industry. The history of Google continues and many more useful services and products from this company may be waiting for us.
Which Google products and services do you like best and why? Write about it in the comments below. If you liked this article, share it on social media. networks with your friends and subscribers.
Today, many of us simply cannot imagine a world without technology industry giants such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and others. Although, of course, there were times when these companies did not exist, and their founders were ordinary people, like you and me.
Of course, how they achieved success can be an interesting story with a happy ending that can teach each of us something. It is not without reason that many ordinary Internet users are so interested in the biographies of famous companies, and at the same time the people who stand behind them. It is for such people that this article will be published.
In it we will tell the story of the formation of one of the most famous brands in the world - a search engine whose name is written with two “o” (in English). And no, it's not Yahoo. Our story will be dedicated to those who are called “the founders of Google” - two business partners, one of whom has Russian roots.
Where it all started
Surprisingly, the development of the modern Internet giant began back in 1996. Then two graduates of Stanford University - Larry Page and Sergey Brin - worked on a common project. The purpose of the latter was to systematize information in the form of a catalog and its further processing. At the time of the creation of such a product, the founders of Google, of course, did not know what all this could lead to. These were, in fact, simple graduate students who came up with an original approach. He, in turn, justified himself many times over.
At the initial stage, as is known from many sources, the developers of the Backrub project experienced a significant lack of finances. For this reason, they often had to literally cobble together functional solutions from parts of outdated computers that had fallen into disrepair. Despite this, the founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, were able to show good results already in 1997. More and more people at the university began to learn about their system for searching information on the Internet.
Search for a buyer
Few people know, but in 1998, shortly after the start of development of their technology, the founders of Google intended to sell all the results of their work. There were several reasons for this - the guys did not want to continue working on the project; they understood that they could simply make good money on this innovation and start something new, more interesting. In order to find an interested buyer, they even created a special office. The founders of Google were able to establish some connections (in particular, with the founder of Yahoo, the largest search engine at that time). True, David Filo was not interested in the system at the level to invest in it. He advised the guys to further refine their search project (even then it was called Google), and if they succeeded, sell it ready-made.
First office
It is noteworthy that the first office space that housed three company employees was a garage. His guys rented it to Menlo Parennu (California). At this point, the service was already available on the Internet; Every day it was visited by about 10 thousand people who were looking for information of one kind or another.
The success that each Google founder achieved could be considered unlikely even at that time. This is evidenced by the fact that some reputable US publications placed the site in the “Top 100” ranking of technology portals in the world.
The dizzying growth continued. In 1999, the company processed about 500 thousand requests per day on its portal. The founders of Google, whose photos you see below, were able to attract several investments from leading funds totaling $25 million. The money was used to purchase servers and expand the capabilities of the search engine.
Larry Page
If we talk about this figure at Google, then after reading Page’s biography, you will not be surprised by his choice of profession. Larry's parents are a computer science professor and a programming teacher. He was born in 1973, and today, at 42 years old, Page is a dollar billionaire. This founder of Google is deservedly included in the top twenty of the Forbes.com ranking with his fortune.
According to media information, he is married, lives in the USA and owns his own Boeing 767.
Sergey Brin
For us, Brin’s biography is more interesting, if only for the reason that this founder of Google is Russian. According to publicly available data, at the age of 6 he left Moscow, where he lived with his parents, teachers at Moscow State University (Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics). Later, Brin's father began working at Stanford, and his mother went to NASA. While studying for a master's degree at the same university, Sergei became interested in search engines, as a result of which he began the first steps to create Google back then.
At the moment, Brin is married and has a son. Like Page, he ranks in the top 20 of Forbes' wealth estimates.
The basis of success
As we can see, it was no coincidence that Google founders Sergey Brin (photo below) and Larry Page found success in the field of Internet search and development of online services. In fact, such a sharp rise was preceded by long work. Both were from an intelligent family of specialists in mathematics and technology. Both grew up in the USA - a land of technological opportunity at that time. Each founder of Google worked to improve search technology, with the goal of starting a company and making money being only the last in the line of goals. This is evidenced by the fact that a private company based on this technology was created after repeated testing. Moreover, the guys wanted to sell their work and “disperse” in their own interests. There are even rumors that in the early days of working together they couldn’t even tolerate each other because their characters were too different. However, as we see, fate decided differently.
Increasing positions
The growth of Google's presence in the Internet search market has become colossal. At that time, the undisputed leaders were Yahoo, WebAlta, AltaVista. As you know, today none of them can compete with Google in terms of capitalization. In a very short time, a little-known university project was able to bypass the “business sharks”.
Experts believe that the explanation that Google founder Sergey Brin and his partner Larry Page were able to consolidate their efforts so successfully lies in the idea. It was to develop the perfect search technology. At the same time, companies like Yahoo at that time paid attention to profits and income from other types of business. The direction of Internet search as of 98-99 was considered unprofitable and unpromising. Perhaps Page and Brin simply did not know about it.
Creation of new businesses
But today, when the Google search engine is the absolute and undisputed leader in search throughout the world, the development team is conducting completely different types of business. We can say that after a successful start in the field of searching and systematizing information, the founders of the system began to work in other areas.
In particular, this is the YouTube video blogging service (which is the leader in terms of the volume of videos posted on it); the most popular blogging platform Blogger.com, the Google Plus social network, Google Drive, Google Adsense advertising and much more. We will tell you a little more about each of these types of businesses from the search giant in separate parts of the article.
Social media
The most popular projects, as time has shown, are social networks. This is explained by the fact that people by nature are inclined to communicate, establish connections with each other, make acquaintances, and so on. One of the most famous in the world is the service launched by the search engine - it is called Google Plus. This is an identification platform that not only allows the user to find his friends and communicate with them, but also gives the opportunity to express his opinion about a particular resource on the Internet, leaving an appropriate “tag” - the so-called “plus”. This, in turn, helps to improve the mechanisms developed by Google to evaluate sites. Those that receive more “pluses” deserve a higher position in search results. As of 2013, the social network had more than 500 million registered users.
For the company, thanks to the merging of different services together, a single image is created, positions in different niches are strengthened solely due to the name. For the user, which is important, this increases convenience and comfort in work. A person, as already mentioned, does not need to switch from one account to another - for all this there is a unified authorization system. With it, there is no need to use third-party services - all tasks can be completed quickly and easily on one site, and this is Google.
Mobile platforms
Speaking about the achievements of the search giant, one cannot fail to mention the world's most popular mobile operating system. To be more precise, the history of Android began as just another startup that served as a platform for mobile devices. In 2005, it was acquired by Google. For many IT industry specialists, this was a real surprise - few could say why the search engine needed the development of a mobile OS. Today, years after that deal, everyone can say that this step was very successful. If you believe the platform's distribution statistics, in 2014 there were more than 1.6 billion devices in the world with this operating system, which accounted for about 75% of the entire market. With such indicators, even the leader in the production of mobile devices, Apple, which has its own iOS operating system, which is often opposed to Android, cannot compete for the market in this situation.
Although the site is open-sourced (some device manufacturers can create their own modifications of this OS), Google’s earnings on it are significant due to, for example, the same Google Play - a content store. In addition, producers using the platform must pay licensing fees.
Prospects
It is difficult to assess the full breadth of prospects that are open to such a strong player in the IT market as Google. The company is growing every day by expanding its catalog of businesses, constantly buying up the most promising startups. It is now difficult to imagine that any other brand could beat Google in the field of Internet search. We can safely say that for now, the position of this giant remains unshakable for any of its competitors, including the popular search engines Bing, Yahoo, Aol, Yandex, Baidu and others, due to certain circumstances. All over the world, the Google brand is known as a leader, and this will not change soon.
In general, you know who the founders of Google are and how they managed to create this empire. For each of us, this story can be a good lesson that everything in this life is possible. The main thing is to strive to achieve your goals and constantly work on yourself.
Rusbase invites readers to take a look at the story of two Stanford students - Larry Page and Sergey Brin - who together created a website that changed the world.
Hot-tempered acquaintance
In the summer of 1995, 22-year-old Larry Page visited Stanford to enroll in graduate school in computer science. His tour guide turned out to be Sergei Brin, a 21-year-old mathematical genius who had already received a graduate degree. Despite common interests, Brin and Page did not like each other the first time - their acquaintance began with heated arguments.
Later, in an interview with Wired magazine, Page admitted that Sergei seemed to him to be a rather hot-tempered person: “He spoke sharply on many topics.”
Brin also felt mutual hostility upon meeting, but drew attention to something else: “The disagreements were not that serious. In fact, we spent a lot of time talking to each other, which was saying something."
What if it's not Google?
Page was accepted into Stanford. By 1996, he and Brin had become best friends and were developing a project called Backrub. The guys wanted to study in detail the process of moving to web pages using links. They soon realized that the best way to improve web search was to help people find the sites they were looking for through an incoming link, as long as it was safe for the user.
Today it is hard to believe that Brin and Page, wanting to successfully complete their graduate studies, were ready to sell their ideas and developments to another company. The guys tried to cooperate with Yahoo!, Infoseek, Lycos, AltaVist, but entered into negotiations only with Excite.
Paige: “There were a lot of offers, but for little money. So we gave up and returned to Stanford to continue our development."
Where did the name Google come from?
Failed deals prompted Brin and Page to create their own company. The name Backrub was not suitable for such purposes. Starting from Whatbox, they were inspired by the term "googol", which means a number with a hundred zeros.
To make the name easier to remember and type, Page changed several letters. Thus, in 1997, Google.com was born.
The word “google” turned out to be easier to pronounce than “back up” or “votbox”.
How Playboy almost deprived Google of its place on the stock exchange
After Google filed its securities registration documents with the SEC, the law required them to conduct only “normal business activities and provide only financial information” until the commission deemed the filing “effective.” In finance, this condition is called a “waiting period.” His idea is for investors to make stock buying decisions based on bare facts and numbers. If there is no unnecessary and distorted information about the company, then there are no unjustifiably inflated share prices.
However, long before this “lower-water-quieter-grass period,” Brin and Page managed to give an interview to Playboy magazine, the release of which coincided with the time they were waiting for registration. The SEC could well consider the interview a violation of the conditions, could withdraw the application for publicity and deny the IPO. In order to be on the safe side and not conflict with SEC rules, Google sent them a prospectus with the full version of the Playboy interview attached.
The Playboy article was uncontroversial but provided interesting material, as do most articles with a photo on the cover.
Disregarding the wisdom of Steve Jobs
Both before and after its IPO, Google had the desire and ability to expand as needed. Attempts to expand included launching Gmail, creating Google Maps, digitizing books, purchasing the Android operating system and YouTube. In 2011, the company launched Google+. Of course, some projects were more successful, others less.
Page had to argue with Steve Jobs, who believed that Google was grabbing at everything. Brin answered in this regard: “We invest in all companies that are potentially profitable for us. I understand that this is risky, you can miscalculate a thousand times, because only some of the projects pay off. But the more bets, the greater the chances.”
Second face of Sergei Brin - Batman
Today, Brin and Page's collaboration continues to go from strength to strength. In 2011, Page became the company's CEO. However, the company's co-founders unanimously decided to remain "under the wing" of the head of the board of directors, Eric Schmidt.
As for Brin, he enjoys overseeing special projects at Google X, a top-secret research laboratory. Like Batman, he sits in the latest technological stronghold, but only in reality.
Brin has already released Google Glass and is preparing a second version of the glasses. He also hopes to "revolutionize the world's transportation system" with self-driving cars. And like James Bond, another character in love with technology, Brin is caught in his own love triangle. In 2013, he was forced to separate from his wife Anne Wojcicki due to an affair with Google Glass marketer Amanda Rosenberg.
The future of Google: robots and artificial intelligence
Despite all the achievements, Page and Brin still want to create something more. They have invested heavily in artificial intelligence. Brin is confident that one day they will be able to create intelligent machines that will think and act better than humans.
Based on the success of the company's previous moves, people may need to be prepared for the coming of Google's robot overlords.
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November 3, 2009
"Googol" is a mathematical term for one followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was first described in the book Mathematics and the Imagination by Kasner and James Newman. Google's use of this term reflects our goal to organize the vast amounts of information on the Internet.
The Google search engine was founded by two Stanford University graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, a native of the former USSR. Their main job was to search for the necessary information in data sets.
In 1996, they began collaborating with the search server BackRub, which worked on the principle of “back links” (so-called back links). This formula determined the number of links leading to a given site. The creators rightly decided that a popular and interesting site would be referenced much more often than a boring and half-dead resource.
Already in September 1998. Page and Brin, having collected about one million dollars of investment, register the Google search engine as a legal entity. Even in the beta version, the Google search engine processed 10,000 queries per day, showing high relevance to the queries. The further history of the development of the Google search engine, in its rapidity, resembles the takeoff of a rocket.
February 1999 - 500,000 requests per day. The Internet mastodon AOLNetscape drew attention to the popular search engine by choosing Google as its search server. The Google search engine has broken the barrier of 3 million queries per day. On June 26, Google and Yahoo announce their collaboration, resulting in 18 million searches per day. By the end of 2000 - 100 million.
The Google interface contains a rather complex query language that allows you to limit the search area to individual domains, languages, file types, etc. For example, searching intitle: Google site:seo-miheeff.ru will return all articles located on this resource, in all languages, in in the title of which the word appears.
The company's assets include cooperation with the largest Internet corporations, many awards, and the love of users. There are three components to the success of the Google search engine.
The first is a highly relevant search algorithm. Unlike most search engines, Google does not use meta search programs. It analyzes the entire content of each web page, the font and the location of all given words. If you request a phrase that carries a semantic load, you will receive a link to the main page of the site dedicated to the specified topic. And not just articles containing individual words from the query text.
Secondly, the interface is extremely user-friendly. A user visiting the Google search engine website for the first time will be surprised by a blank window containing nothing except a search bar. This allows it to load much faster than competing search engines. Following modern traditions, Google allows anyone to view the source code of its software and suggest improvements.
Third, the Google search engine is an emphatically non-commercial project. It was conceived and created without any business plan; advertising was never the main source of income. Always speaking very unobtrusively and contextually. And the main goal of the creators of the Google search engine was and remains a dream - to create an infinitely huge database for search.
On August 19, 2004, the Google search engine began selling its shares on the stock market (IPO), that is, it became public. Nearly 20 million shares traded for a total of $1.67 billion. Google itself only received $1.2 billion. The company has not sold all of its securities: the Google search engine still has more than 250 million shares, which it is free to dispose of at its own discretion. Google has issued two types of shares: ordinary (Class A, total 33.6 million shares), which are now resold in the NASDAQ system, and preferred shares (Class B - 237.6 million shares), the circulation of which is limited by the company. Each preferred share can be voted against ten ordinary shares. On August 30, 2004, trading in Google options began on specialized trading platforms.
For the convenience of users, Google is constantly creating new plugins and services, here are some of them:
Google Toolbar for IE - This plugin for the Internet Explorer browser is a panel for the Google search service. In addition to Google search, Toolbar adds other useful functions to the browser: automatic filling of web forms, highlighting of results found when searching on an open web page, blocking pop-up windows. Search by category (graphics, software, music, etc.). You can customize the panel at your discretion, add or remove buttons from it, and select a search region.
Russian version of Google Toolbar for IE.
Google Toolbar for Firefox.
Google Deskbar.
LostGoogles - this small program significantly expands the functionality of the most popular search site. Not only does LostGoggles provide more information, it also shows photos of the pages you're searching for. It is 300 KB in size and installs on IE 5.0 or later browsers.
Google Earth is a model of planet Earth created using satellite images.
Picasa is a program created by Google for working with digital photos. An analogue of Adobe Photoalbum, Elements, but the main difference between Picasa is that it is free.
Google Talk is an Internet messenger and Internet phone.
Google Maps is a mapping service provided by Google at http://maps.google.com/. The service is a map and satellite images of the whole world (as well as the Moon). A business directory and a road map are integrated with the service. Includes route search covering the US, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, China, UK, Ireland and parts of Europe.
The history of the Google search engine, like the history of any other large company, is associated with a large number of scandals. Of course, most of these scandals are purely advertising purposes, but that is the history of almost all search engines.
On January 29, 2004, Google's lawyers sent a letter to the owners of the search engine Booble demanding that the parody service be closed. In a statement, Google representatives said that Booble violates the company's copyrights. Booble is a search engine for erotic sites and products, the interface of which exactly replicates the Google interface, with the exception of the logo, which, although reminiscent of the Google logo, is made to reflect the search engine. The site design does not imitate Google at this time.
On July 20, 2004, former Google COO Brian Reed accused the search company of age discrimination. In February of this year, Reed was fired, he claims, due to the fact that he did not fit into the company culture, the main elements of which are youth and energy. Reed, now 54, didn't fit into that picture. By losing his job, the manager lost a salary of $200,000 a year, as well as 119,000 options that could be converted into shares at a rate of 30 cents per share. Considering that the price of Google shares at the auction will be from 108 to 135 dollars per share, Reed has lost a good fortune, so in his civil suit he asks the court to oblige Google to compensate him for the material and moral damage caused.
On April 7, 2004, the new Google email service, not yet having time to really start working, was faced with claims to its own name. The Gmail brand has been used by one English company for 2 years. Market Age representatives say that they began using the Gmail brand back in June 2000. Due to the obvious advantage in the right to own the name, the English company is going to defend it until the trial. This circumstance, however, does not confuse Google lawyers at all. Before opening the mail service, they carefully studied the issue of registration, and did not find that the Gmail brand was owned by any company.
In May 2004, a lawsuit was brought against the company by relatives of the American mathematician Edward Kasner, who coined the term googol, denoting the number one followed by one hundred zeros. It is from this term that the name Google comes from.
July 6, 2004 - A legal battle continues between search giant Google and small software firm Affinity Engines over the rights to use certain software technologies. Former Affinity Engines employee Orkut Buyukkokten, now working at Google, is accused of using software code he previously developed to create the social network Orkut.com. This service is owned by Google and is designed for online communication. As evidence, the plaintiffs cite similar text lines in the design of Orkut.com and in Affinity Engines products. About 10 technological errors were also noticed that coincided with errors in Affinity Engines products. Meanwhile, Google representatives claim that they have repeatedly proposed attracting independent experts to analyze program codes. However, Affinity Engines never agreed to this proposal.
On March 23, 2004, California resident Michael Bradley will have to stand trial on charges of extortion. According to Silicon.com, the man demanded payment of 100 thousand US dollars from the search giant Google. If the requirements were not met, the suspect threatened to send spammers a program that would generate fake clicks on Google advertising banners.
On March 31, 2004, a little-known company, Digital Envoy, sued Google, accusing the Internet search giant of violating its 2000 license agreement. The lawsuit was filed earlier this week in North Georgia District Court. The Digital Envoy company develops and sells software through which the owners of certain web resources can determine their geographic location using the IP address of visitors (the term Geolocation). This allows you to dynamically change page content and display ads that are relevant to each specific region.
January 29, 2004. Another trial has been launched in the United States regarding the advertising technology of the Google search engine, which provides for the display of advertising in search results for certain keywords. This time, a lawsuit was filed to protect trademark rights by the American manufacturer of wallpaper and blinds, the American Blind and Wallpaper Factory company. This company, like others in similar lawsuits, is unhappy that Google search results for the keywords American Wallpaper and American Blind display advertising from competing companies.
Currently, the Google search engine registers about 50 million search queries daily and indexes about 8,168,684,336 web pages. Google can provide information in 101 languages. At the end of August 2004, the company consisted of 132 thousand machines located in different parts of the planet.
Google Directory (http://www.google.com/dirhp). Built on the basis of the ODP directory - Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org) This is the largest moderated directory on the Internet and practically the only way to get into the Google directory. ODP is also interesting because its editors are volunteers, i.e. people for whom this activity is a hobby. If you wish, you can become editors in this catalogue. Resources in the Google catalog are sorted by PageRank and have a title and description, with the title being a text link. Compared to the influence of the Yandex and Aport directories, the influence of the Google directory can be called less significant. Only the title of the resource, which is actually an ordinary text link, has an effect, and this influence entirely fits into the link ranking scheme. Another small argument for registering in the catalog is the presence in the search results under the link to the resource of a link to the catalog category and part of the catalog description, which can positively influence the user’s decision to follow this link. Resources are added exactly in the section in which they are to be located. Find the category that's right for you and follow the link at the top of the "Suggest URL" page.
It is simply impossible to be an Internet user and not know what this is, because this search engine is one of the most popular in the world. But not all users know that it grew out of an ordinary student project. It is interesting that those who created Google did not initially count on any kind of profit, but set up a kind of experiment, which then grew into a full-scale and very profitable project.
Who invented Google?
When it comes to who is the creator of the Google system, advanced users most often remember one name - Sergey Brin, completely forgetting about his partner Larry Page. Probably the reason for this neglect is the great media activity of Sergei, who appeared mostly on TV and in the media, trying to promote his brainchild, while his co-author delved into scientific research and study. But, be that as it may, the Google system was really created by two people, so when talking about the history of both the search engine itself and the company of the same name, the contribution of both partners to the common cause should be fairly highlighted.
It all started back in 1996, when both future billionaires studied at Stanford University and had to pass an annual scientific project. It became the Back Rub search engine, which a year later grew into the Google search engine itself, and a year later became the Google corporation. It is noteworthy that the birthday of the new system is celebrated on September 15, but sometimes it is celebrated a week earlier or later. The creators came up with a brand name for their product using a play on words: they took the English name 10 to the hundredth power, which is written as googol, and distorted it a little, making it unique and recognizable.
After receiving a patent for the Google.com domain, the partners began to think about creating their own company in order to be able to develop their brainchild. To do this, we had to look for investors, and as soon as the first financial injection of $100 thousand was received, the new enterprise immediately received permanent residence and official registration in a garage in the town of Mento Park, which belonged to one of Sergei and Larry’s friends. However, a year later, the partners moved to Palo Alto to the Mountain Beau complex, and since then this place has been called nothing less than Googleplex. The head office of a world-famous corporation is still located here.
How do the creators of Google live today?
Currently, 43-year-old US citizen Sergei Brin lives in California, in the town of Los Altos. It is noteworthy that his homeland is the USSR, from where his parents took him at the age of 5. In 2006, he married Ana Wojcicki, a biologist by profession, they had a son and a daughter, but the couple divorced in 2013. In 2016, the authoritative Forbes magazine named Sergei 13 in the TOP of the richest people on the globe, but the young billionaire does not boast of his wealth and lives quite modestly, donating huge sums to charity and scientific projects. 
He actively publishes in American and foreign academic periodicals and willingly takes part in various scientific and technical forums, and also appears on television.
Another Google creator, Larry Page, also recently celebrated his 43rd birthday and was ranked by Forbes as the 14th richest person in the world. He is happily married to Lucy Southworth, has two children and lives in a large house in Palo Alto. He also actively spends money on charity and various research projects, for example, on developing a way to blow up asteroids approaching the Earth, and also finances the publication of books for children.
