Get Updates (It's FREE)

Results 1 to 11 of 11

Thread: What made Google, Google?

  1. #1
    Moderator Runum's Avatar
    Joined
    Aug 2007
    Locale
    DFW
    Age
    52
    Posts
    4,740
    Thanks
    2,179
    Thx'd 1,366 times in 881 Posts
    Blog Entries
    3

    Default What made Google, Google?

    Just been reading this story:

    Who-Are-the-Richest-People-in-Town: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

    Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed Google in 1998. I hadn't heard about it until fall of 2000 and that was from some college kids. during that time there were other search engines; Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc. Remember the Yahoo TV and radio spots? So the question is, what made Google what it is today? How did they find a niche in an apparently saturated market?

  2. #2
    Moderator Runum's Avatar
    Joined
    Aug 2007
    Locale
    DFW
    Age
    52
    Posts
    4,740
    Thanks
    2,179
    Thx'd 1,366 times in 881 Posts
    Blog Entries
    3

  3. #3
    (3) Lamborghini JScott's Avatar
    Joined
    Aug 2007
    Posts
    2,311
    Thanks
    57
    Thx'd 674 times in 370 Posts

    Default Re: What made Google, Google?

    Greg -

    Have you read this:

    [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Search-Rewrote-Business-Transformed-Culture/dp/1591840880]Amazon.com: The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture: John Battelle: Books[/ame]

    It's a great book, and really digs into the details of how Google got its start.

    The key (in my opinion, at least) is that the founders exploited the fact that none of the other search engines of the day had figured out a way to identify which pages were the most useful to the broadest set of people. Google revolutionized search by figuring out how to crack that code -- what ultimately ended up being Page Rank.

    While there is no-doubt some amazingly smart people there, and it is (or at least was) a tremendously well run company, the bulk of Google's success can be directly attributed to Larry and Sergey's now-seemingly simple idea that the more pages that link to your page, the more valuable your page is.

    Yup, before 1999 or so, nobody really considered that...

  4. The Following User Says Thank You to JScott For This Useful Post:

    Runum (May 22nd, 2009)

  5. #4
    (3) Lamborghini Jonleehacker's Avatar
    Joined
    Oct 2007
    Locale
    Edmonton, Canada
    Posts
    1,486
    Thanks
    485
    Thx'd 1,042 times in 502 Posts

    Default Re: What made Google, Google?

    Quote Originally Posted by Runum View Post
    Just been reading this story:

    Who-Are-the-Richest-People-in-Town: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

    Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed Google in 1998. I hadn't heard about it until fall of 2000 and that was from some college kids. during that time there were other search engines; Yahoo, Alta Vista, etc. Remember the Yahoo TV and radio spots? So the question is, what made Google what it is today? How did they find a niche in an apparently saturated market?
    In 1997 - 1998, the predominate experience of the Internet for most people was frustration. I can remember everyone complaining that it was "too difficult to find anything"

    Because the search engines were so crappy, a type of site called a "portal" was becoming popular: it basically had links to every possible related site for a topic. Also a very in-efficient way to find anything.

    Yahoo and Alta Vista were the market leaders but they were only the best of a crappy bunch and they weren't filling the needs of a booming population of internet users.

    This was an easy market for Google to dominate simply by taking the time to really understand what searchers really wanted (and why they were so frustrated) and figure out how to deliver it - when the other engines where lazy and satisfied with being the market leaders.

    That's how I remember it anyways.

  6. The Following User Says Thank You to Jonleehacker For This Useful Post:

    Runum (May 22nd, 2009)

  7. #5
    (3) Lamborghini biophase's Avatar
    Joined
    Jul 2007
    Locale
    Scottsdale, AZ
    Posts
    2,132
    Thanks
    114
    Thx'd 1,242 times in 546 Posts

    Default Re: What made Google, Google?

    From what I remember, I and many others switched to Google because there were NO ads. Their homepage had the one line and a search button. The other search engines were becoming littered with ads on their main page.

    I also remember that back then a banner ad on the top of yahoo's home page was $800/mo!!!

  8. #6
    (5) Porsche NoMoneyDown's Avatar
    Joined
    Aug 2007
    Locale
    Round Rock, TX
    Posts
    577
    Thanks
    109
    Thx'd 148 times in 115 Posts

    Default Re: What made Google, Google?

    Didn't they start out either acquiring newsgroups from someone else (or using search capabilities within newsgroups)?
    "Because when I am old, I don't want to say 'What could have been'." - Me

  9. #7
    (5) Porsche CMCarlin's Avatar
    Joined
    Jan 2008
    Age
    30
    Posts
    577
    Thanks
    111
    Thx'd 135 times in 89 Posts

    Default Re: What made Google, Google?

    From what I gathered from reading the Google story they made it big by concentrating on one thing at the start: the user experience

    Their pagerank formula rocked, but their success was also in how they worked to keep the user happy. They concentrated greatly on performance which is why they kept their homepage simple, when all other search engines were figuring out ways to add more clutter. They also built their own computer networks. I forget the fine details but in the book it describes how they networked the computers together and got more processing power for their dollar than anyone else at the time. They became masters of efficiency and their user base kept growing.

    It's when they started to put ads on the right side of the page that they really started to rake in the cash. From there a billion dollar behemoth's story continues on.....

  10. #8
    Chillaxin
    Joined
    Jul 2007
    Locale
    Phoenix, AZ
    Posts
    9,589
    Thanks
    2,500
    Thx'd 4,561 times in 2,072 Posts

    Default Re: What made Google, Google?

    Imagine had they looked around back then and said "Eh, Yahoo, Alta Vista, HotBot -- these company's already have the search engine game locked up ... what else should we do?" And then started another company ...

    Competition is everyone and there is great opportunity in just doing it better.

  11. #9
    Moderator Runum's Avatar
    Joined
    Aug 2007
    Locale
    DFW
    Age
    52
    Posts
    4,740
    Thanks
    2,179
    Thx'd 1,366 times in 881 Posts
    Blog Entries
    3

    Default Re: What made Google, Google?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhxMJ View Post
    Imagine had they looked around back then and said "Eh, Yahoo, Alta Vista, HotBot -- these company's already have the search engine game locked up ... what else should we do?" And then started another company ...

    Competition is everyone and there is great opportunity in just doing it better.
    Agreed MJ. We have been getting a lot of these kind of posts lately. "I like this but the markets flooded so I can't do that." These guys looked at the market, analyzed it, and exploited a weakness. Simple yes, easy no. I bet they worked their butts of for months to years trying to capitalize on this.

  12. #10
    (6) Mercedes
    Joined
    Feb 2008
    Locale
    Toledo, OH
    Posts
    445
    Thanks
    112
    Thx'd 53 times in 44 Posts

    Default Re: What made Google, Google?

    I find it fascinating that no one thought of adjusting the scientific impact factor as an approach to improving search before google in late 1990s.

  13. #11
    Banned
    Joined
    Oct 2008
    Locale
    Palm Beach
    Age
    24
    Posts
    336
    Thanks
    42
    Thx'd 52 times in 36 Posts

    Default Re: What made Google, Google?

    Yeah, google really is a piece of work. The more I read about the company the more I love the story.

    That's why I launched my search engine piggy backing off google. LOL.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. Google: 'We're Very Sorry'
    By News-Mod in forum Internet/Technology News
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: May 14th, 2009, 06:30 PM
  2. Google Disrupts--Again
    By News-Mod in forum Internet/Technology News
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: Mar 5th, 2009, 06:11 AM
  3. Google Gives And Takes Away
    By News-Mod in forum Internet/Technology News
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: Feb 19th, 2009, 12:30 PM
  4. We Are What We Google
    By News-Mod in forum Internet/Technology News
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: Sep 17th, 2008, 01:00 PM
  5. New Google Tool -- Google Insights
    By santiago in forum Web Businesses/Internet Marketing
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: Aug 6th, 2008, 06:11 PM

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •