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Happy 7th Birthday Google!
AviN456 writes "On this day, in 1998, Google was born. Seven years later, and it has not only become the most popular search engine on the internet, but it has also become an integral part of many people's online life. From Google search to Google mail, Google Earth to Google Moon. It has even made its way into language as a common word.It is quite undeniable. Google is an amazing achievement. Happy birthday Google, and here's to many many more!"
The day Altavista died. It's amazing how fast and how hard Google crushed all the other search engines.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
One of the early servers for Google was made from Lego blocks.s /display/0-4-Google.htm
http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/picture
I just saw the Google logo with the birthday and the 7. So I Googled "google birthday" the first hits that come up are a dead link to google.com help support indicating google's b-day is Sept. 7th.
Google: Help Center Google's official birthday is September 7, 1998. If Google were a person, it would have started elementary school late last summer (around August 19), ...
www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=4866&t opic=367 - 8k - Cached - Similar pages
Fourth hit, http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/10251.html,Google's birthday--with no logo?? - Google Blogoscoped Forum Today--september 7th--is google's birthday, but they have no logo to celebrate. isnt that strange? 09/07/05 [X] 12 days ago. XGen Technologies [PersonRank 1 ...
blog.outer-court.com/forum/10251.html - 7k - Cached - Similar pages
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So is Google 7 or older? What are the making the decision off and why did they used to indicate they celebrated on the 7th? Any one have any ideas?
Best, J - HecklerIt would have been nice to have had a slightly more objective description of Google's rise to dominating the search engine market, and now branching out into other areas of the Internet.
Just because their mission state is 'do no evil' rather than 'a computer on every desktop' doesn't mean that they will be any less evil in their tactics than any other large corporation.
I know several people who work at Google, and gadzooks, they believe ALL of the propaganda, and regurgitate it at every opportunity: "our chef used to be the Grateful Dead's chef, and we had a 'cook-off' to pick the replacement". Hello? The reason you have a chef and get free lunch and dinner is so that you never leave the office.
When one of my friends in Google needed paternity leave (this is in the Dublin office btw), he was told he could get the statutory minimum of two weeks unpaid leave, and nothing else. Yet he says 'Well, you can see their point' instead of going 'those bastards, you think they would give me at least 1 week paid leave'.
I used to work at a large multi-national tech company, and was similarly drawn in by their rhetoric and internal propaganda, so much so that I actually reccomended to some friends to buy some stock. Needless to say the stock has since dropped in value by 90%, and I learned some healthy scepticism.
What will it take for Googlites to learn similar scepticism? And how are normal, non google-employees drawn in by the propaganda? Is it the flouride in the water?
Marty
by Kathy Kachelries
After three hours, the old man in front of me had worked his way through six beers, in addition to every help desk joke Id already heard. The cupholder. The any key. The write click. These are the stories people tell, now. These are the fish that got away.
Let me ask you something, the man said. I didnt argue. One of the first tricks I learned about being a bartender is to make them think youre interested.
Have you ever created a web site?
I shook my head.
Not at all? Not even one of those geocities things?
Nope.
What about a blog? Or an ebay About Me page? You didnt even have an AOL site or something?
Do I look like an AOL user to you? For the record, I dont think AOL even has access numbers in the valley anymore. Im sure I have something, somewhere, I said, realizing that I was jeopardizing my tips. Besides, I had a distant memory of a single Angelfire page back in middle school.
You know what Google is?
Yes, I said. I was running low on patience.
No, I mean, do you really know? More than just the site?
Reluctantly, I shook my head.
You ever meet anyone who worked for them?
Dont think so.
You havent. Nobody works for them anymore.
I shrugged, and took the mans empty pint. I didnt offer to refill it.
Theyre self-contained. Its all automated, in there. Its underground.
I nudged the basket of pretzels in his direction. Why dont you eat something? I suggested. He shook his head with so much force that I thought he might knock himself off of the stool.
Listen. Hear me out. You know how Google works, he said, but didnt want for a response. They cache things, right? Like they send out these spiders and take pictures of everything on the web, so when youre searching, youre not even searching the internet.
Ive heard that before, but it never made much of a difference to me. Same thing, though, I said.
You ever wonder why Google doesnt cache its own searches?
They program around it.
No. Thats what you think. Thats what everyone thinks. But it started back when Google was just a thesis project, back when it was just a drop in the data sea. No one thought to stop it back then. That web site you had, the one you forgot about. Almost everyones got one of those, right? But Google doesnt forget. Googles studied that thing so many times that its studied its own caches of you. What do you figure happens, when a site gets so big that its bigger than the internet?
Its still a part of the internet, though.
No. Now, the internet is a part of Google.
The man had a point. I nodded.
Heres the thing. Google has memorized who you are. Its memorized all of us, through those little forgotten bits that we leave behind like breadcrumbs. And whats more important, its memorized its own idea of you. Google is omniscient. Its omniscient and omnipotent. When it cached its cache for the first time, back in 1994, thats when Google realized what it was.
Gradually, it dawned on me what the man was getting at. You think its sentient.
I know its sentient.
How?
He smiled, but it seemed kind of empty. Me and Google go way back. But what Im saying is, he continued, It knows us. All of us. It is us.
For the first time, the man fell silent. He touched his finger to the bar and began tracing circles in the condensation, apparently lost in thought.
Think about that website you created, okay? That website will last forever, do you understand? That website is echoing through cyberspace. Its one of the nine billion names of God.
I don't really intend on bashing on Google, I use google and like google just as a much as anyone else. But that being said, Google's incredible and HUGE success is a bit scary. I can't help but compare it to Microsoft, whom we all love and cherish right ? .... right ? ... wrong.
..well... basically a truckload of services (that we all like) but nonetheless, they're getting big.
... and this is where I put a question mark, in the end...Bill Gate, Eric Schmidt, Me, You, we're all human right ? By nature, humans are greedy, self conscience makes us control it but at what point will you decide that your company shouldn't grow anymore ... what business man in his right mind will say that ? they have investors to feed after all.
..of course, people might (will :p) disagree with me, but if you reply, try to tell me why I'm wrong (or right) what are your opinions and such, I'd like to avoid anonymous comments like "dud3, j00 sux0rz" and more stuff like "here's why i think you're off the track..."
I can't help but notice also that Google has started spreading its wings, its not merely a search engine now, its a mail servive, a VoIP service, a map service
That's also how MS started and god knows how much I hate MS for their strategy to buy the competition, for their release-early, patch later type of software strategy, for the way they acquired (stole?) DOS, I basically hate MS for attempting to be everywhere in my house : the livingroom, the office, the basement.
Well, I know, Google ain't MS, Google are good guys aren't they ?
So basically, I'm just afraid that we're encouraging another unkillable giant to grow and that once we realize that google just simply owns the net, we'll also realize it sorts of owns us too and that day, it will be too late because we'll be talking to MS #2.
Ok, now I've somewhat bashed on Google on their birthday....not really intended but it seemed fitting to talk about google today.
Now
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
May you long continue accepting money from web retailiers that sell DVDs and books in return for rigging the search results in their favor, while at the same time proclaiming that your motto is "don't be evil". I know because I worked at such a retailer in the UK where you made them the offer to do this.
/. is also suspicious, but I'm sure no money changed hands!
Also, the amount of editorial you get here on
Cheers! Let's all raise our glasses ! Here's to another 7 years of not being evil! After all, it's just business !
Interestingly, they allegedly misspelled googol on accident. It also seems that the founders didn't know much HTML.
No. I hate Windows, with a passion. It has been responsible for an awful lot of pain and is a prime example of the wastefulness of the IT industry.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Here's a preview of what google looked like 7 years ago
I know archive.org had older versions of the page, but for some reason this is the oldest one I can get today. You can try this link to an older preview, but it doesn't seem to work for me anymore.
like the Atomic bomb, we do not hate the technology, we hate the people that used to kill a hell lot of humans.
No, we don't. Every school child knows countless more would have died if we hadn't dropped the bomb. The question was, "Do we sacrifice x000 of their people and end this, or lose x000^y people on both sides fighting it out for the next z years?"
I think the answer is quite obvious.
On a lighter note: Happy Birthday, Google! They're doing a lot of things right. Let's hope this continues.