Could you start your own business having nothing except a brilliant idea? Could you turn a two person staff into a 20,123 full-time employees personnel? Could you lead a small company with $100,000 start-up to a corporation with assets accounting for billions of dollars? Could you manage to diversify the manufacture with only one service to offer dozens of services and products? Could you work so hard as to move from an office in the dormitory to the huge campus area on Mountain View, California? Could you produce this very brilliant idea that in just 12 years would turn your invention into the worldwide used tool that is hard to imagine to do without? Two mere mortal scientists exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web could do all these and have done even more. Who are they?

The story to be narrated below should not be regarded as a eulogy to a famous company, rather it represents the truth recounted with due respect to the talent and labor of the young researchers who laid the foundation to the global network we use in everyday life.

The company out of a garage

Back in 1995 on a spring gathering of new Ph. D. computer science candidates there were Stanford University computer science graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, whose meeting on that event grew into a long-term friendship and team-work.

In January 1996 Larry Page started a research work as reported by the Internet sources, in search for a dissertation [img_assist|nid=11178|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=513]theme, Page considered—among other things—exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph. Having received an approval on the part of his supervisor Terry Winograd, Page focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information about that page (with the role of citations in academic publishing in mind). Eventually he was joined by Sergey Brin in their research project "BackRub", named for its unique ability to analyze the "back links" that point to a given Web site.

One authoritative source runs: “Page's web crawler began exploring the web in March 1996, setting out from Page's own Stanford home page as its only starting point. To convert the back link data that it gathered into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm. Analyzing BackRub's output—which, for a given URL, consisted of a list of backlinks ranked by importance—it occurred to them that a search engine based on PageRank would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page).

“Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine.”

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," a mathematical term coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. A googol, or google, represented a very large number and reflected the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite, amount of information available on the World Wide Web.

Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997.

In 1998 Page and Brin built their own computer housing in Larry's dorm room, a business office in Sergey's room, and Google had a new home. With no financial support from the major portal players of the day Larry Page and Sergey Brin went on their own having postponed their graduate studies and started looking for anyone to fund their project. The first investor of their future network was Andy Bechtolsheim, founder of Sun Microsystems, and friend of a Stanford faculty member. Having gained an insight on their concept he Bechtolsheim wrote a check to Google Inc. for $100,000.

Later with the incorporation of the company Page and Brin opened their new headquarters in the garage of a friend in Menlo Park, California. Their first employee was hired--Craig Silverstein, who later became Google's Director of Technology. 10,000 queries a day – that was the figure achieved by that time.

[img_assist|nid=11179|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=419]By the end of 1998 with an index of about 60 million pages Google still had its home page marked "BETA", but an article in Salon.com already argued that Google's search results were better than those of competitors like Hotbot or Excite.com, and praised it for being more technologically innovative than the overloaded portal sites (like Yahoo!, Excite.com, Lycos, Netscape's Netcenter, AOL.com, Go.com and MSN.com).

165 University Avenue in Palo Alto became another address of Google in March 1999 when the company moved to this home place to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. Eventually the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1999. Google has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex, a 1 followed by a googol of zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.

The global tree out of the small seed

Who could ever imagine that two ordinary engineers would change the whole world with their ingenious invention? Who can now imagine our life without global searching network based on the mathematical research started in a dormitory room?

In the course of its development within only one decade Google has been diligently working to find, create and buy the best ideas and innovations directed to make the World Wide Web more attractive, more friendly and more used instrument across the planet.

[img_assist|nid=11180|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=587]The search engine was improved with the introduction of the Google Directory, which was based on Netscape's Open Directory Project, and the ability to search via wireless devices. Thinking globally, in May 2000 Google also introduced ten language versions for search users.

A number of clients in the United States, Europe and Asia began signing up to use Google's search technology on their own Web sites. By launching a keyword-targeted advertising program, Google added another source of revenue. On June 26, the company's reputation was further solidified with the announcement of a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider. Other partners adding Google to their sites were China's leading portal NetEast and NEC's BIGLOBE in Japan. In an effort to extend its keyword-advertising to smaller businesses, Google introduced AdWords, a self-service advertising program that could be activated with a credit card.

In December 2000 the Google Toolbar, a highly popular innovative browser plug-in, was introduced. It's a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.

Reaching the 100-million search mark per day in 2001, Google acquired the assets of Deja.com and integrated all the data in Deja's Usenet archive dating back to 1995 into a searchable format. Google PhoneBook was launched, providing publicly available phone numbers and addresses search results.

Dr. Eric Schmidt joined Google in May 2001 as chairman of the board of directors and would eventually become CEO. Schmidt had previously served as chairman and CEO of Novell and CTO of Sun Microsystems.

In early 2002, Google announced the availability of the Google Search Appliance, an integrated hardware/software solution that extended the power of Google to corporate intranets and Web servers. It is a yellow box that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents.

At the same period AdWords Select was launched, an updated version of the AdWords self-service advertising system with new enhancements, including cost-per-click-based pricing.

More and more products and services widened the scope of Google’s industry. Eventually the company introduced its Froogle (later called Google Product Search) to allow users to search for stuff to buy. Google announces a new content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google's vast network of advertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, the company acquired Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense). Google Grants, an in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause launches. In late 2003 they launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book Search), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results. Next year they introduce Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps, and directions. (Later, Local is combined with Google Maps). Google SMS (short message service) launches; users now can send their text search queries to GOOGLE or 466453 on their mobile device. Later Google Desktop Search is introduced: users can now search for files and documents stored on their own hard drive using Google technology. Besides, the company launches the beta version of Google Scholar, a free service that helps users search scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports. Then it acquires Keyhole, a digital mapping company whose technology will later become Google Earth.

[img_assist|nid=11181|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=488]In 2005 Google launches code.google.com, a new place for developer-oriented resources, including all of their APIs. Then the first Google Maps release in Europe geared to U.K. users. Soon after this Google Maps features satellite views and directions. Google Local goes mobile, and includes SMS driving directions. My Search History launches in Labs, allowing users to view all the web pages they've visited and Google searches they've made over time. Google releases Site Targeting, an AdWords feature giving advertisers the ability to better target their ads to specific content sites. Later they launch Blogger Mobile, enabling bloggers to use their mobile phones to post and send photos to their blogs. In June 2005 the company unveils Google Earth: a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search. Then they introduce Google Talk, a downloadable Windows application that enables Gmail users to talk or IM with friends quickly and easily talk using a computer microphone and speaker (no phone required) for free.

Thus time passed and more branches grew out of the existing tools offered by Google but the creators were not content. They went further initiating and financing new projects and researches.

On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a 1-million square foot R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center. NASA and Google are planning to work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing for Google engineers.

In October 2006 together with LitCam and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning, Google launches the Literacy Project, offering resources for teachers, literacy groups and anyone interested in reading promotion.

In May 2007, with an eye toward bringing solar power into the mainstream, Google switched on 9,212 solar panels at their Mountain View headquarters – one of the largest corporate installations in the United States. Then, to encourage the commercialization and adoption of plug-in vehicles (and reduce CO2 emissions, cut oil use, and stabilize the electric grid) Google.org launched the RechargeIT initiative in June 2007. During the same month, the company also announced the formation of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI), an industry consortium working to make the design and use of computers more energy-efficient.

[img_assist|nid=11182|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=598|height=640]This year the company introduced its open source browser Google Chrome. T-Mobile announces the G1, the first phone built on the Android operating system. At the same time, Google releases a new Android Software Developer Kit, and the Open Handset Alliance announces its intention to open-source the entire Android platform by the end of 2008.

And quite recently Google has launched a new experiment aimed at improving the accessibility of its search results for blind and partially-sighted web users.

Undoubtedly Google is leading the world with its most innovative and indispensable technologies helping millions of people across the globe to find the information they need to travel, to make purchases, to talk to each other, to view the world geography, to make researches and on and on.

Thinking about all these achievements made within a decade of their existence you cannot help admiring the persistence and indefatigability featuring those young scientists behind all these developments we are taking as a matter of course today.

Certainly our article doesn’t cover every item and every project initiated by the Google team, yet these mentioned here are enough to acknowledge that the job done is a modern wonder.