Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Wow, until I looked at those pics I didn't realise 'Google!' was an anagram of 'Go Lego!'
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 ]
There was no one search engine that I used until somebody at work told me about Google (early 2001). Lycos, Dogpile, AltaVista, Yahoo, etc and so on all come to mind. There was no "loyalty" until Google. Google set the standard. Let's hope it doesn't grow too big for it's breeches.
Unfortunately for Google (and Adobe, and Xerox) what they want people to do doesn't matter. Fortunately for the Google and Adobe, when people talk about "googling" or "photoshopping" they are still usually using their products. Unlike the large number of people making xeroxes on their Canon copier.