Google: ten years of creating history

BANGALORE, INDIA: When Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two university peers, joined hand to launch their dream search engine, they would not have thought that they were setting their feet on a path of revolution that would change our concept of surfing the Net, searching the Web and much more.

But that was what was going to happen.

The venture that they began from Larry's dorm room, which became Google's first data center, is now a global giant, a household name in the arena of IT.

It was in September 1998 (though the exact date of birth is still a subject of discussion) that Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, California.

Though a simple startup venture that the venture capitalists and entrepreneurs looked at with suspicion and apprehension, it had a perfect game plan to take on to all the criticisms and cynicism. 

Even at the beginning stage the office of Google offered several big advantages, including a washer and dryer and a hot tub. It even provided a parking space for the first employee hired by the new company: Craig Silverstein, now Google's director of technology.

Lary and Brin knew to gain the faith of the techie brains a pleasant atmosphere is a must. Work should almost like an extension of their hobby, workplace the extension of the university campus. Perhaps it is this youthful thinking that gave a distinct identity to this global venture in no time.

In the initial stage Google was answering 10,000 search queries each day, which was a great achievement considering the shoestring budget of the company and the not-so-luxurious infrastructure. Remember, all that they had was a US$100,000 funding that they somehow managed.

But in the span of a decade Google has grown beyond the wildest of imagination of anybody.

What made Google a great success story? Of course it is the revolutionary youthfulness of their vision. Google takes you to what you are looking for. And for that they had their own innovative ideas.

The idea of PageRank, which treated the number of times a site was linked to as a rough measure of its authority, and the initiation to automate the process to cope with the increasing number of sites gave the search engine a new boost.

"That people were concentrating on other things was crucial," says Craig Silverstein. "It's very possible that if someone had been truly interested in our technology, we would have just sold to them."

Though the venture capitalists were more or less pessimistic about the future of the venture, Larry Page and Sergey Brin had no fear as such. They were confident that they were on the paths of success. Their ambition to "organize all the world's information" bore fruit, maybe rather faster than they thought.

From Orkut and YouTube to the recently launched browser, Google Chrome, the IT giant is galloping to future, a bright one at that. Google Maps, Google Street View, Google Earth… the Google dream has no limits. And now they are all set to take on to the free online encyclopedia, the Wikipedia.

A model of amazing success, Google is noted for its ambition, it’s guts to take on the rivals without bothering much about their might. In that respect Larry and Brin are the smartest of the smart.

“Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction,” what Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice in Wonderland is more than true if one look at the lives of these youngsters.

When the Democratic presidential candidate of the US, Barack Obama was asked whether he lacked political experience to run up for the post, he preferred to compare himself with the founders of Google, who realized their dreams in the wink of an eye.

And that comparison of Obama is enough to underscore the universal success of the university peers who dreamed big.

Incidentally the Google search engine and blogging service have a lot to do with the popularity chart of Obama, which rose to new heights.

Simply speaking Google is the universe in a nutshell in the cyberspace, where no dream is wild. It’s more real than we expect.