The Google Story, part 2

This blog series is not a biography on the Google founders, but just a brief look at what made the company so successful in so little time. Without spending any money in advertisement, Google expanded its popularity by the millions rather quickly. If you want to know more details about the founders, I suggest you buy the wonderful book, The Google Story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed.

Here are my notes.

From the Introduction

Google was created by two Stanford students, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. We’ll learn some more about them later, but for now let’s take a look at one of the best-kept secrets at Googleplex, the company headquarters at Silicon Valley.

Google’s biggest is secret is this; to power its search, Google employees assemble and customize hundreds of thousands of PCs, which are run on Google-patented programs. “No word in the English language exists to describe this seamless melding of hardware and software at such a massive scale, so we have named it Googleware.” The PCs are stacked one on top of the other in refrigerator-size racks in secure facilities at Googleplex. When a PC burns out, it is not replaced, but another PC takes over. There’s no human intervention.

When the Google stock became public on August 19, 2004 at $85 per share, it soared to $300 in less than a year.

What makes Google different from other companies is that instead of thinking of ways to make money and build products for that, their engineers think of ways to solve a problem, and only later do they think of ways to make a profit.

This is Google’s charm. If you take a look at their homepage, there are no banners, no ads, and no clutter, but just a simple and friendly logo (Take a look and compare with rival Yahoo!). This says a lot about their philosophy, since the www.google.com home page is considered to be the most valuable piece of online real estate property.

Google’s appeal is so universal that to google, means to search. It has become a verb in English and in many other languages around the world.

The Google Story, part 1

I’ve been always fascinated by computers. What specifically fascinates me more about computers is the Internet, especially the World Wide Web. I got my first computer when I was around 15 years old, along with the eternally slow dial up. I remember that AOL was king back then, but there are some new kids on the block now.

If I didn’t hate math so much, I’d really think I would have come up with some cool and innovative new “thing” that would have changed the online world. That may sound a bit preposterous, and maybe even pretentious, but I really think I could have done something special. I really did spend a lot of time online early on in life. In my teenage years, I taught myself basic HTML and JavaScript. I created several web sites on the once popular Angelfire and they became pretty well known in their niche. There are many stories about those sites that slowly but surely I will share in this blog.

But most of all, you should know that I love writing. Combining my love for technology, ingenuity and writing, I plan on reviewing the following book: The Google Story, by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed.

What made Google so popular? Where did their catchy name come from? How do they make money?

These and many more questions are promised to be answered in the book. I plan on blogging on four or five chapters each time, just giving you the interesting details, the lessons learned and the answers to these and more questions.

So, tell your tech-loving friends about this blog, or better yet, tell them to google me.

Little comments, big ideas

Why should you read this blog instead of millions of others online?

There are two main reasons. One, I'm curious about many things. And I also love to write. For instance, I plan on reviewing books, such as The Google Story, and find out how and why that company became so popular. How did "google" become the synonym of "search."

I also plan to research some other silly things that randomly spark my interest, such as why don't the eggs from the store hatch into chickens?

Most of these random blog entries ideas have developed after conversations with my wife, who happens to have a very lovely blog and you should read it, too. So, I will not only write the facts, but also my observations and how these topics came about. This blog will include day to day musings, trips, experiences and everything else that makes life magical and alive.

So yeah, read on, and leave a little comment too. That's always nice.