Happy Hanukkah to my friends who celebrate!
TL;DR
They called it “Backrub.” In 1997, the name changed to Google, a misspelling of “googol” — a term representing a 1 followed by 100 zeros. In a 1998 email, Google co-founder Larry Page used the word “googling”. The term gained significant popularity. Pop culture started to reference Google, such as on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” in 2002. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had no formal business plan. They received a $100,000 investment from Andy Bechtolsheim. This led to the official incorporation of Google Inc. Google would become the leading search engine. It surpassed competitors by refusing to settle for mediocrity. Instead, Google focused on innovation. They found a way to monetize with online advertising. They did it without cluttering their search engine with banner ads.
Methods of Prosperity newsletter is intended to share ideas and build relationships. To become a billionaire, one must first be conditioned to think like a billionaire. To that agenda, this newsletter studies remarkable people in history who demonstrated what to do (and what not to do). Your feedback is welcome. For more information about the author, please visit seanallenfenn.com/faq.
Last week on Methods of Prosperity.
In the early 1990s, searching the World Wide Web was inefficient. Search engines like Yahoo! (1995) and LookSmart (1995) functioned more as directories. Ask Jeeves (1996) attempted to offer conversational search with limited success. The breakthrough came from Larry Page, a PhD student at Stanford. He developed the PageRank algorithm. It focused on the importance of backlinks to evaluate a webpage’s significance. This innovation laid the foundation for Google. Larry Page, born in 1973 in Michigan to academic parents, was an early computer enthusiast. He met Sergey Brin, a fellow PhD student with a similar background, at Stanford in 1995. Brin, born in Moscow in 1973, immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1979. His family faced persecution as Jews in the Soviet Union. Together, Page and Brin embarked on a project called “Backrub” in 1996. Which aimed at improving search technology by analyzing web link structures. The project’s growth and resource consumption signaled a need. They developed a new, scalable search engine. This led to the development of Google.
The following is Methods of Prosperity newsletter number 44. It was originally deployed April 18, 2024. As of December 26, 2024, original subscribers have received up to issue number 80: Sam Zell (continued).
Part 44.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page (continued).
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Xerox. Velcro. Ping Pong. Google. These words originated as brand names which turned into verbs. In 1998, Google co-founder Larry Page used the term in an email, “Have fun and keep googling!”
The term then started gaining widespread usage in 2002. In that year, the character Willow on the TV show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” asked, “Have you googled her yet?”
This was one of the first high-profile uses of “google” as a verb in popular culture.
The Oxford English Dictionary added the official term, Google, in 2006. This solidified its status. Google became a verb. It took on the meaning “to search for information about a person or topic on the Google search engine.”
Alternate history could have been much different. “Backrub” was the original name of the project of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The project organized back links of web pages, creating hierarchy and significance. Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer would have asked, “Have you backrubbed her yet?” That would mean something else.
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A googol is the large number 10¹⁰⁰. In decimal notation, it’s written as the digit 1. Followed by one hundred zeroes.
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Its systematic name is 10 duotrigintillion.
Their search technology improved. In 1997, Larry Page and his officemates at Stanford discussed a number of possible new names. A graduate student named Sean Anderson suggested the word “googolplex”. Page responded with the shortened form “googol”. Sean Anderson then checked the availability of the domain name “google.com”. Which he found to be available. Page liked the name. He registered it for himself and Brin in September 1997.
Keep in mind that back then, there was no automatic spell check system that we take for granted today. Not to mention that Google didn’t exist yet. You had to look words like that up the old fashioned way. It may have been a happy accident that they misspelled googol, but Google is a much better name than Backrub. No one is likely to write a $100,000 check for Backrub (unless it’s for more than a back rub if you know what I mean).
Fortunately for Larry and Sergey, this was Silicon Valley in the late 1990’s. They were in the right place at the right time. Andy Bechtolsheim was the co-founder of Sun Microsystems. He invested $100,000 into Google in 1998. Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s search technology had potential. Bechtolsheim was a successful tech entrepreneur himself. He recognized the value of the search algorithm. These two Stanford graduate students impressed Bechtolsheim. Even though Google was still in its early beta stage at the time. Bechtolsheim recognized the potential. Page and Brin made a presentation to Bechtolsheim. During the presentation, he said he had to duck out for another meeting and offered to write them a check. He made the $100,000 check out to “Google Inc.”
But there was a slight problem.
Larry and Sergey had no contracts, no business plan, and no official company. Now all of a sudden they had seed capital. Page and Brin incorporated Google Inc. so they could cash their check. They moved their servers from a dorm room to a rented garage. Located in Menlo Park, California, they operated the fledgling Google company. In 1999, Google moved into an actual office space in Palo Alto, California.
165 University Avenue is a significant address in Palo Alto, California. Renowned as the “Lucky Building” or “Karma Building”, located near Stanford University. It’s associated with successful tech ventures like Google and PayPal. The building has served as an incubator for several notable Silicon Valley companies. In 2003, Google leased its first major headquarters, the “Googleplex”. Location? Mountain View, California.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin approached Yahoo in 1998 with a $1 million offer to sell Google. Yahoo turned down the proposal. In retrospect, that was a grave error for Yahoo. At the time, Tim Koogle was Yahoo’s CEO. For whatever reason, Koogle wasn’t interested in Google.
Without a buyer, Larry and Sergey went ahead and got to work on their own. By the end of 1999, Google had become the leading search engine. Google passed up AltaVista, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, LookSmart, and the other few who faded. The others failed, for one thing, because most companies do what other companies do. Instead of building a better product, they imitate their competition. It’s not only the monkey-see-monkey-do competitors that fail to innovate. Customers don’t know any better either. That’s what the companies tend to believe, anyway. They fail to build a better proverbial mouse trap. They don’t know what’s possible, or fail to make an effort.
Larry and Sergey never settled for less than what’s possible. They’re innovators. When they decided to take on advertising, they refused to copy Yahoo. Their minimalist search bar was never cluttered with banner ads around it. Larry and Sergey found a better, more subtle way. But they didn’t exactly invent this new way of advertising. Other search engines promised results based on human-built directories. They used computer-driven algorithms. But there was another search engine besides Google doing something different. The whole strategy behind search was about to change.
To be continued…
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– Sean Allen Fenn
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