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Google Turns 10
Ian Lamont writes "It was on September 7, 1998 that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc., aiming to provide a better search engine. You can see what it looked like here. Google had a relatively good search engine technology that succeeded in burying many late 1990s competitors, and it eventually developed a successful advertising model and pledged to operate on a 'don't be evil' philosophy. The company now has nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market value, and has been acquiring or developing a host of groundbreaking technologies. When did you start using its search engine? Is the world a better place because of Google?"
For those curious, like I was, here are the original Google server pictures missing from the Wayback Machine's archive.
you had me at #!
I started using Google when it bought Deja News which was the only good place to find a broad selection of technical information on the web. I guess I just defaulted to Google as a search engine after that.
Google AND the Big Lebowski make the scene in that fateful year. Coincidence? Hmm.....
I don't know about Google, but the world is definitely a better place because of the Dude.
Careful What You Wish For....
Of all the search engines, Google was the best name to use as a verb.
"All this time I thought 'Googling yourself' was the other thing."
-- Marge Simpson
I remember back in school, when I would go to yahoo, ask jeeves, and other places that I can't remember before I searched on google when researching for reports.
I don't remember when I started to use just google. But it's been years since I've not been able to find something on google.
I'm happy with google as long as they continue to "do no evil".
-Echo
I don't know, well before 2002. I'm sure they know the exact date!
todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
I started using Google when it gave me www.theville.org as the first result when I typed in the ville as a search string. Altavista doesnt even have www.theville.org on its first page for that same search string.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
In late 1999 I heard buzz from my fellow geeks that Google provided amazing results, so I tried it out. Within a couple days, I completely abandoned Alta Vista for Google, and even scaled back bothering with Yahoo because the results were just crazy accurate. I found myself boosting it to friends both of the geek persuasion and not, and everyone liked it. IMO, it was truly a case of a superior product trouncing the competition, the entire point of capitalism. They built a better mouse trap (pun not entirely intended).
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
I always used yahoo search until I started using firefox. After a little while, I had a preference for google
Xprize, Summer of code, etc. Google is definitely a great company. Sure Gmail is Creepy and they've taken heat for their TOS, but they are still a stand-up, innovative company in my mind. And god-by-every-name bless those guys for their green mindedness and showing its possible for a billionaire corp to do some good.
However, that doesn't mean they won't be next generation's Microsoft. Remember, MS had the little guy advantage for a while, and was innovative and even generous with the charities. But plenty hate them now.
how bad search really was before Google. For that matter it's easy to forget that it used to take work to find information at all. Our culture has just barely begun to come to terms with how revolutionary this change really is.
/...
Google Beta Turns 15
DejaNews was around in 1995 or earlier. They were one of Google's early acquisitions.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
All the really good evil is coded and compiled deep inside the top-secret Google data centers, surrounded by moats filled with sharks with friggin' laser beams on their heads.
Conspiracy theories aside, the data centers are a major innovation, and an area where Google has set standards for its competitors to chase. Google's massively scalable infrastructure is a big part of what has set it apart.
Google? I still visit the Mother Gopher for all my informational needs!
I still have the best search results, by far, on google. Yahoo would come in 2nd, and MS Live in a very distant 3rd. I know I can find what I need on Google, so whatever magic search mojo algorithims they're using, are working.
They've also offered a host of relatively good, free, albeit always-in-beta services. They were offering 1GB of storage when almost all the other guys were offeing 2 or 3 MB's.
I think google should just keep on rockin.
which is still around
it was 2000, a guy told me about it at work, and i was instantly hooked, simply because the search results were better than anything else i had tried
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Google started off running on Stanford equipment, and was spun off, as happens frequently at Stanford. Sun and Cisco also started with Stanford people and equipment.
Stanford has become a real estate company and a venture capital firm that runs a university on the side for the tax break. It's working out very well; they now have $21.6 billion in investment assets, including a big chunk of Google. This started around 1991, when the financial management operation was spun off as a separate company. The financial operation invests in venture pools, which in turn fund venture capitalists, which fund startup companies, some of which become big. They can draw on expertise from the academic side to help evaluate investments. It's working quite well; annualized returns for the past decade were 15.1%. Tax free!
I thought it was "Don't be evil". There are some subtle differences.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I guess that's why McCain emphasizes his character because he has NO skills, particularly, piloting skills. John McCain spent your hard-earned federal tax dollars and more time crashing planes
than he spent flying them.
John McCain: A Zero.
I don't know if it's a better world, but I can sure find a lot more stuff a lot easier than ever before.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I tried out Google when I first heard about it (naturally here on Slashdot). It wasn't instant love. I still went back and forth between my favorite -- Hotbot -- and Google. But eventually, Google won out.
I never understood why anyone liked Altavista after I told them about Hotbot. Hotbot was so much more consistent at bringing desired content to the top of the pile.
And then there was Google.
-l
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I hope that they keep the same values that made everyone switch to Google as their search engine for Chrome. I believe if they base their formation of Chrome off of the principles and ideals they had when they formed Google, I look forward to it's inception.
Anything and Everything about the Net
That's 110 in binary years! In Silicon Valley terms, that's ancient.
Most people don't get why the integral of "e to the x" is so funny. Most math majors don't have a sense of humor.
they got Google on computors now ?
Come on mods, that's not redundant, it's fucking funny!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
All I can think of is all those job search results, those infidelity results, all that porn, those movies, lyrics, wallpapers, did i mention porn, fedex-ups-usps-dhl tracking, spell checking, simple calculations, unit conversions, product comparisons, cracks, telling time, tracking flights, spying on your neighbors, caching ability and a lot more stuff has certainly been very convenient for me and a few million other people.
Your mileage may vary.
I've been there once. The tour docent was fairly knowledgeable too.
I just hope they're concentrating on the old stuff more than Web 1.0.
you had me at #!
November of 1998 I was doing some y2k testing for the phone company, and one of the long-timers ("the guru" of Unix there) told me about a new search engine he had been using for a few weeks, that rocked his world. Over Christmas I started playing with Google(beta), and eventually quit using anything else.
It's still the best search engine out there, but that's because everyone else has given up. It's nowhere as useful now as it was when it first came out, unfortunately.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Of course this isn't much of a concern for most Slashdot readers these days, but one reason I switched to Google, however many years ago it was, and have kept coming back, has been their consistent consideration for those of us who are occasionally stuck with a slow net connection.
Using Yahoo over dialup is intolerable. By comparison Google's main search page is still lightning fast over a modem. Sure, they'll let you gum it up with all that "iGoogle" clutter if you insist, but if you avoid the eye candy temptations, you'll just get clean, fast, functional design.
And Gmail can be adjusted to have dialup-friendly settings much more easily than any other webmail service I've seen.
Not necessarly, but Internet search technology certainly is ..
Now if only the Slashdot people were also to enthused ..
davecb5620@gmail.com
oh remember back before google using those subject listings at yahoo. yep now i don't have to look for relevant lists anymore, now i can type in what i'm searching for and find even longer lists! thanks google.
I put "slashdot" in TFA and pressed "I'm feeling lucky" and the Wayback Machine said it wasn't archived. :(
My favorite thing about Google is the unique logos marking special occasions. Sadly, they don't seem to consider today special enough.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I started using Google as my home page because of it's minimal page size. If I opened a browser I was either going to use a bookmark or was going to do a search. Not having to wait for the overhead that the other search engines had was a bonus to search results that were on par with other search engines.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
"Is the world a better place because of Google?""
When they get around to moving my house from the other side of the county. Then the world will be a better place.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I can't believe how you've grown! Why it seems like only yesterday. . .
Literally. This internet thing is growing up so fast!
Dang. There are actually net-savvy kids out there now who never lived in a world without Google. Think about that!
When did years start to fly by like this? I'm amazed.
-FL
Actually TFA says Google doesn't want people to use, say "googling" as a term for generic searches. As it says, there are serious, by business standards, concerns with using the term. It dilutes the trademark. Xerox had the same problem when people started using "xerox" to mean copying or duplicating. You only xerox on a Xerox machine. I skate with inline skates, the skates are Roller Blades, so when I use them I say roller blading. If the skate were not Roller Blades I wouldn't use the term "roller blading".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
There were one or two terrible, low res pictures of doors in the results. The rest were porn.
I am *so* going back to AltaVista! Thanks for the tip!
you had me at #!
I'm at least slightly amused about how google has apparently reached a point where it can be assumed that every given person uses google.
Awesome! Multiple keyboards and monitors. Truly slapped together. I wonder when they got their first KVM.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Too bad that Do No Evil has so obviously fallen by the wayside, although the search engine does remain good.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I consider not ever getting email from Daniel Brandt to be one of Gmail's most compelling features.
Next year they'll get their Hogwarts letter...
I have no idea why Google constantly gets a pass from Slashdot posters. Their privacy record is atrocious. They are one of the worst companies in existence as far as not respecting their users privacy. The Google monopoly and the way they treat users personal information is 100x worst than anything Microsoft has ever done.
Remember Yahoo's big ad campaign to become a verb. No one Yahoos, everyone Googles
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
From where I'm sitting, today is September 5th.
I remember when Metacrawler was invented here at UW. For several years it was my search tool of choice. But it eventually went commercial, and soon afterward it went way south. Fortunately I became aware of Google at about that time - and (unlike Metacrawler) when Google went commercial, they managed to remember why people used their tool in the first place.
#DeleteChrome
Hey google, what about creating a new search type along the lines of 'look for this search only on messageboards and forums'?
Google is good for blogs but like you say I don't think it's that good for message boards or forums. Alta Vista gives me better results there. What I find weird is that when I've done some searches on Google the top results were from About.com, specifically searching on topics about photography and archaeology or anthropology. Google for monte verde and Google's first result is Tom Dillehay on the First People in South America.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
when it was mentioned on the Steve Jackson Games website. Checking there, I see it was September of that year. So that's when.
Cuil did the same to me as Google has done. Using cuil.com I search for photography and the second result is About.com. Searching for Monte Verde and About.com's Monte Verde section is on the first page, the 10th result.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Google motto is "don't be evil", not "do no evil".
"do no evil" sounds lame.
"don't be evil" sounds Googley.
it was the load speed. While every other search engine/crawler took forever to load a boat load of crap, Google was simple.
Really, does any person outside of Google care if returns .02 seconds faster then a competitor?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're old, we get it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... but I'm not too impressed. Google profits from the ease of separating advertisers from their money, not from the relatively meager output of their 20000 employees.
For each and every thing Google offers, decent alternatives exist. Even if Google search would disappear, the void would be filled quickly. The same second source effect applies a fortiori to their shady advertisement business, Gmail and the hodgepodge of unrelated, discretionary, copycat and so-so bits and pieces.
So I wouldn't be surprised if Google would become irrelevant in the next decennium.
I'm not a coward by any name.
I discovered it 1999, in my first job in IT.
I remember one of my colleagues was rather dismissive of it, suggesting that a search engine was only as good as the number of pages it had indexed. Google was new, therefore it couldn't have indexed as many as the others. I started using it anyway.
What I remember is that before google I used to bookmark everything useful I found, so I could be sure of finding it again. After using google for a while I stopped bothering. It was quicker to find a page with google that troll through my huge list of bookmarks.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
that Google's first mailing list is hosted on Yahoo?
Dang. There are actually net-savvy kids out there now who never lived in a world without Google. Think about that!
I wouldn't put much stock in that if I were you. The majority of these 'net-savvy' kids are the same ones posting to Myspace and fucking Bebo for christs sakes. Sure they think themselves net-savvy but they're all deluded.
I, for one, try to use Google as seldom as possible. They know too much (cue Pablo Francisco voiceover... ;) Seriously, the Google corporation is really, really clever in the way they market themselves to the public eye. Don't be evil and all that stuff; to work for them, supposedly, is an incredible experience, cool and whatnot... unlike other companies. Sort of like a Google Distortion Field that surrounds them. Their recent success with the Chrome browser is an excellent example for their successful marketing. But if you really think about all the information the Google corporation is collecting, you should be afraid, you should be VERY afraid!
;o)
To give you an idea check out this video from a presentation at toorcon by Steven Rambaw titled "Privacy is Dead - Get over it", ironically hosted at Google (Youtube has it, too, BTW): http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-383709537384528624 The presentation does NOT specifically deal with Google, but the big G get's its mention, of course. Whatever you might think about Rambam or Google or anything else concerning internet & privacy, for that matter, I really recommend you to sit down and take the time to watch this video. It's about two hours long, but really enlightening, even if you already have a general grip on things concerning privacy in today's highly networked world.
Returning to tha G, nowadays I try to use alternatives wherever I can (Meta: ixquick.com, clusty.com, Sroogle.org [Yes, despite it's owner], etc). When I still used to use Google regularly I noticed that sometimes I even found results through other search engines, like Yahoo, that Google simply didn't know about, specifically in relation to Japanese websites. They're not that good, after all. (NOTE: Not that Yahoo is any better than Google. They're every bit as hungry for information as everyone else in this business.)
So, when did YOU stop using Google?
Oh god, they too used to have an exclamation mark in their brand name!
It looks weird. It sounds weird in your head. And it totally! messes up the readability of texts. Just imagine you have to write an article about Google! considering Yahoo! might be a good acquisition target!
So why on earth did everyone do that in the nineties? And why has no one told the marketing departments of this world that the nineties are over?
Is that 10, base 2? Come on, folks. Let your innner geek out. It should read:
Google Turns 0x0A
Have gnu, will travel.
And I must admit its caught on...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
There's nothing more delightful to me than seeing a 10-year-old pwn Microsoft.
That means Google will hit puberty soon.
What will this mean for "Don't be evil"?
I started using google sometime in 1996, quite possibly shortly after they started in January. I heard about this new search engine, possibly even here on slashdot, and gave it a try.
Before then, I was mostly using Alta Vista. It was ok, but you really had to dig through the results to find what you needed. I remember that time as "all search engines suck, Alta Vista just sucks less".
Then I tried google.stanford.edu and never went back. Literally. Their index was much smaller than Alta Vista at that time, but their results were so much better. Alta Vista had all sorts of garbage on their front page, but that never really bothered me -- it was all about the search results, the cleaner front page was just a side benefit.
So, in response to the previous poster, I would argue that Google *WAS* some sort of a savior. Definitely back in 1996 they were.
Maybe those that came in later like 1998 to 2000 were coming from a much improved Alta Vista than I was, but in 1996 Alta Vista was really quite terrible in comparison with Google.
Sean
I dunno, but am I the only one who thinks of that more as an injunction?
"Do no evil....for all your data are belong to us...and to whomever we feel like sharing them with."
I want to try Film Gimp aka CinePaint. But I need a book or something to learn it and I haven't found one. That or someone to show me how to use it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
When did Google change from the look in 1998 to the current white background look? I think I must have been using it since then (maybe 2000?). I've tried some brief stints with other search engines, to give them a shot, but I've always liked using Google best.
Then again, as a personal entity with no stake in these corporate entities, I could care less about their trademark protections.
I used to write and there's not many things that will get a published writer slapped with a lawsuit faster than to use a trademark as a verb, or in the case of Coca Cola as a pronoun for a generic drink. In my writing classes and in the writing clubs or groups I was a member of this was pretty regularly stressed. A regular person on the streets, or on /. doesn't have to be concerned but someone who writes for a living certainly does.
Anyway, just about everyone uses Google nowadays, so it's usually going to be technically correct to say "googling".
According to TFA not quite 2/3 of searches are done with Google. I wouldn't say that that's "just about everyone". I don't use Google for all of my searches either, most but not all. I also use About.com, Alta Vista, Ask.com, and Dmoz (Open Directory Project).
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
the results tally returned as goooooooooooogle
not only is time travel possible, it's irrelevant.
The problem with Google is that their "don't be evil" claim is hard to take seriously any more. Ads at the right of search results weren't too bad, but then it went downhill. They created the "content-related ad" industry, which resulted in a vast number of "made for AdWords" junk sites and blogs, the "domaining" industry, and a vast amount of crap. Even real advertisers don't like it; the smarter ones opt out of the Google Content Network and stick with the search result ads.
From there it went downhill. Google doesn't do much to qualify their advertisers, and as we point out occasionally, about 35% of them are "bottom feeders", where you can't even identify the real business behind the ad.
Then there's Google Checkout. They accept very marginal businesses. They ought to be doing the kind of validation a bank does of its clients, but clearly, they don't.
Google's real problem is that they went public at the top of their game. Google was #1 in search when they went public, so they couldn't grow in their main business area. They had to expand to justify their high P/E ratio, and none of their expansion areas (YouTube, GMail, etc.) made money. So they had to figure out how to get more revenue per search result. At that point they started to turn to the dark side.
You're old, we get it.
Hm. Uncalled for snark. Did I fail to recognize somebody's brilliance or was that just general bitterness?
Ah well. Everybody gets to try again tomorrow.
Cheers!
-FL
Russian Google began with non-prestigious 3rd level domain, google.com.ru. I noticed Google was a deface- at those times. I used NN4 browser. This is the shot: http://pyotr.pisem.net/google.gif
Well, the main stiff tp mention on the shot is the barewords those are tabu directly on the Search button (:
If you wanted to stay on top, you read Slashdot. I think that's why I started to use Google in September 1998. Before or later, but around that time for sure.
After my geek friend told me of google in autumn of 1998 I quickly abandoned AltaVista for Google. For a few weeks I would do dual searches with both to compare results and to check how Google was stacking up and it quickly became apparent that they were much much better and they had a nicer cleaner search interface. When I did my CS project I remember occasionally using both google and yahoo because they did put different search items near the top 10-20. Occationally Yahoo would throw up something Google hadn't found. But Google always overall had much better hits.
I like Google but I fear it is getting way too big. While Google shouldn't be punished for being successful, I do fear that it'll be the only major search engine on the Internet in the next few years.
I'm only one person, but I do sometimes use Yahoo! just to support it (a little).
...and ALtavista..., they were great until they started:
+Putting annoying ads(with annoying video and sound!!) in the search page.
+Putting the companies that bought them in the first places of the search results.
+Being slow as snails.
+Difficult advanced search(the first ftpsearch was very, very good, they trashed it), for searching multiple terms you needed to use "Advanced search" and put AND and parenthesis!!!
+Making it a portal instead of searching( TRANSLATION: "We are going to control what you see and do on internet,not you").
I suppose they started listening the economists people in their companies.
One day I discovered google from "searchlores.org", never went back. I always felt it was too good to be true, and expected the day google is being controlled by business mindset people that sinks the company in the long term for getting short term profits(and leaving as heroes and millionaires ) to be near, it will take more time that I thought though.
Google was created originally in Feb 1997. It was planned by THREE (Hubert, Larry, and Sergey) people, NOT two. Details see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Yx8eo0fzY
+this +is +how +my +search +phrase +used +to +look +like +on +Yahoo! +until +I +found +Google +in +1999
Google was the only search engine that got the correct results for me. I always marveled at the correct algorithm and was baffled as to how the others managed to attract any users.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
When did you start using its search engine?
If I was not too lazy to dig through 10 years of Slashdot archives, I could probably tell you. I just know it was in early beta (possibly alpha) when I started using it, and I was so thrilled by it, I stopped using altavista, the only halfway decent search engine before then (okay, lets start the fight, yahoo, webcrawler, excite). So, yeah, I am sure I have easily been using it for 10 years. The page at archive.org said that they had 25 million webpages being crawled. I am pretty sure it was not quite that big when I started using them - I am thinking they had only indexed 10 million when I started. We were also pretty big Linux freaks, so Google's server farms and clusters really fascinated us. I was a 2nd year CS student at this time, and we ate this up.