What would you do without Google?

Since its inception in 1996, developed by two young Stanford computer science grad students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, taking on the original name BackRub it quickly caught on. After a year of operating on the Stanford servers it began to grow too large to be sustained. The pair decided that the BackRub search engine needed a name change. They finally settled on Google, a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. They were quickly on their way to developing into one of the most influential companies and search engines ever created. In 1998 Google received their first check for $100,000 to a company that didn’t even exist from an investor by the name of Andy Bechtolsheim. This check would give them the financial ability to set up a workspace in a garage in Santa Margarita, Menlo Park, CA and also file for incorporation. Shortly thereafter “PC Magazine” published an article stating that Google “has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results” and recognizes Google as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998. Since then it has been only uphill for Google with a search index of more than 52.79 Billion web pages and rapidly expanding every day. Google’s gross income is in the billions allowing them to acquire more than 50 different companies since their incorporation, including companies like YouTube, AOL, and DoubleClick. AOL came with a price tag of $1,000,000,000. YouTube came in next at a whopping $1.65 Billion and finally DoubleClick with a price of $3.1 Billion. With this buying power Google has proven itself in not only the search engine business but in a number of other industries as a very influential company. Some even foresee Google surpassing the software giant, Microsoft!

Google, being proven as one of the most influential search engines and companies generates a lot of though. Almost every computer user in the world is familiar with Google and uses it frequently to help make home computer use more pleasant and convenient. What would you do without Google? I know I would be stuck in a whole mess of web pages getting no where fast stumbling over irrelevant web sources. Has Google changed the world? “Over the past decade, Google and its rivals have enhanced the ease of information-gathering, lowered research costs and made creativity effectively cheaper and easier.” Said Arthur Brooks in an interview conducted by Forbes.com. This is an extremely valid point because before Google was around it could take someone hours or even days to find appropriate information for a discrete topic. If you think of something you want to know, just Google it. Everything you can think of can be found on Google, that’s why the word google has been added into the Merriam-Webster's dictionary. It is a verb meaning “to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web”. Google will continue to expand and change the world for many years to come. Lets just hope that it doesn't take over!