Google Inc. is a world-class internet and technology company. Google is the number one search engine in the world and certainly the world community knows Google, even already use it to look up information on the internet. But did you know the figure behind the success of Google? How they make and set up Google? This time we will discuss in brief about the journey and the life of the founder of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Larry Page.
Larry Page was Google co-founder and current President of the Google products Inc. products. Lawrence E. Page was born in 1973 in Lansing, Michigan from parents, Carl Vincent Page which is a Professor of computer science at the University of Michigan and Gloria Page, a teacher of computer programming at the University of Michigan.
After graduating from East Lansing High School, he studied and earned a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering from the University of Michigan and continue the study of the Master’s program at Stanford University.
Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin is also one of the people who contributed greatly to the history of the founding of Google. Born in Moscow, Russia on August 21, 1973. Then moved to Maryland, USA in 1979.
Sergey Brin attended elementary to Junior high school at Paint Branch Montessori School and high school at Eleanor Roosevelt. Sergey Brin earn a master’s degree at the University of Maryland in mathematics. Sergey also received a scholarship to study at Stanford University. However, he must give up his doctor’s degree to focus on Google.
The Google Founders (By Ehud Kenan (originally posted to Flickr as 100_0334) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)Google Founding Story.
During college at Stanford. Page was introduced to Sergey Brin. As a person who is equally intelligent, Larry and Brin not rarely argue with each other. Although only the trivial things and affairs. However, the debate is not because they hated each other, but they’re used to compete with each other. Eventually their little quarrels always ended laughing together.
The idea of creating a Google started from a university research project. At that time, Search engines still like Yahoo, Altavista and others. Search engines seem to be equally useful. However, Page and Brin sees search engine pages that form the hyperlinks an informal rating system that brings the user to useful pages.
Eventually they find the topic interesting for both, i.e. information from large data sets. Then, Page and Brin created a search engine that sorts the search results according to popularity of the page. They concluded that the most popular website is the most useful site. Page and Brin initially tried to sell the idea of them. However, their efforts were rejected AltaVista, Excite, and (last) Yahoo, until finally Larry and Brin continued the projects independently despite having limited funds.
The search engine was named “Google”.
Google-search-engineGoogle is the name of the mathematical term “Googol,” which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros behind it. The selection of the name is meant to reflect their mission in arranging billions to trillions of information available on the website.
It was originally named Black Rub. Search Engine technology is continuously perfected.
With the limited funds Page and Brin have to rack the brain. Page found how to build computer servers using an unused goods and easily obtained, and instead of buying special-made machines that sold by computer company at a price of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Page and Brin built their first data center in Page’s dorm rooms from cheap PC parts and 15 thousand dollars borrowed through credit cards.
They began looking for an Investor to develop the sophistication of their search engine technology. So, they get the injection of funds from Andy Bechtolsheim, college friends and founder of Sun Microsystem. A check worth 100 thousand U.S. dollars, which is unique in the check was written on behalf of Google that even at the time it was not established by Sergey and Larry.
Then, looking at the bright ideas of the duo’s best friend. Investors in Silicon Valley, Michael Moritz (Sequa Capital) and John Doerr (Kleiner Perkins) are competing to finally be convinced to inject capital worth 12.5 million US dollars to Google company which on 7 December 1998 was established.
Eventually the company launched Google in September 1998 in Menlo Park, California. The company is growing so fast and get so many employees of several offices in the relocation because of lack of space, Google Inc. finally settled in what is now called Mountain View, California.
Google’s development from year to year is very rapid.
The development of google so rapidly, especially Blogger.com site they have mastered. Unlike most of the large companies in Silicon Valley, Google does not rush and try to refrain from going public. When they finally decided to jump into the stock of the year 2004, they were mentioned as the largest IPO at that time, with an estimated initial value of 20 billion dollars (this makes Brin and Page became a multimillionaire on paper). In June 2007, the company was worth 160 billion dollars.
Google barely spent any money to cover the marketing, Google only rely on news from the word of the mouth (mouth to mouth). Rather than collect revenue on paper through a premature IPO.
Google found a clear revenue stream from the sale of its search results on other search engines, including Yahoo!, great leader, as well as from the advertisements that are developed in the style of challenging common sense, and Google Adsense creates.
Google Adsense is an ad network that is owned by Google to provide income to the owners of the site’s current site. The existence of Google Adsense and blogger.com which anyone can make a website for free.
Google is continuously making surprises. In October 2004, the first quarter results of Google as a company are offered to the public is $805.9 million. Then in 2006, Google bought the world’s largest streaming video site, YouTube, with the price reaching USD 1.65 billion. The company also issued an operating system for mobile phones called Android and other famous system such as Gmail, Blogger, Google, Playstore, and a myriad of other applications. Who’s not currently familiar with Google? Even the word “google” was entered into the Oxford English Dictionary in June 1999.
The other hand behind Google.
GoogleplexAs a workplace, Google is pretty fanatical with details, but at the same time almost without hierarchy, focusing obsessively on core products, but also flexible to encourage new ideas.
The Googleplex is the workplace that is very convenient, because it comes a complete infrastructure and facilities such as a swimming pool, bar, billiard room, beach volleyball, Futsal, free food, free health drinks, and snacks.
What’s more, the relaxed workplace atmosphere because google employees are allowed to only wear a sweatshirt and jeans, so when we come to their offices and see someone wearing the official clothes, suits and so on, it is almost certain they were the guest.
One more interesting, in the Google system is applied, the employee is given 20% of their work time to freely work out what their interest in – approximately in 1 week. So the creativity of employees increased, and so was born like e.g. Google earth, etc.
So google is very concentrated on the human resources they have. That’s a bit of a journey to success of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Hopefully inspire!