Google, the world’s most popular search engine, was invented by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They were two Ph.D. students at Stanford University when they developed the initial version of Google in 1996 as a research project.
The Origin of Google:
- Background:
- Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford in 1995 and shared a common interest in organizing vast amounts of online information.
- The Idea:
- The concept behind Google was to create a search engine that ranked web pages based on their relevance. This led to the development of the PageRank algorithm, which became Google’s backbone.
- Launch:
- Initially called BackRub (due to its focus on analyzing backlinks), the project was renamed Google in 1997.
- The name “Google” is derived from the mathematical term googol, meaning the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, symbolizing their mission to organize the immense web data.
- Company Formation:
- Google Inc. was officially founded on September 4, 1998, in a garage in Menlo Park, California, with a $100,000 investment from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
The Impact of Google:
- Today, Google has grown beyond a search engine into a global tech company offering services like Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and Android.
- Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s invention revolutionized how people access and interact with information online, making Google a cornerstone of the internet.
