The Most Powerful Ten-Year Old on the Planet

by James Fowler
http://www.mywebsource1.com/

No, it isn’t Superboy. It is the mega-powerful Google, which started just ten years ago Sunday, September 07. Google has been such a daily part of our lives, it is hard to imagine that it is only ten years old. Google was created between 1996-1998 by two Stanford students who hypothesized that a search engine that analyzes the relationships between websites would produce better results. Thus, sites with the most links to them from other relevant web pages appear higher on a search results list. Google use is so prevalent that the verb "google" was recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance. This same system is now used by most search engines today.

The company was originally started at Stanford University, but then later moved to a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California. From there, they moved to their current headquarters in Palo Alto, California. It was originally funded with a $100,000 check from Sun Microsystems.

Where did the founders come up with the name Google?

It comes from the word Googol, which means 10¹⁰⁰ (the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Likewise, the name Googleplex, the name of the company's property, comes from Googolplex or 1 followed by a googol of zeros.

In the late 1990's and early 2000's, Google captured the attention of many internet users because of its clean look and consistancy, plus the way it placed a web page higher up on the search list based upon the achievements of the web designers. To this day, we only have clues to making your web site rank higher in this search engine - Google keeps the exact formula a closely-guarded secret.

In the year 2000, Google began selling ad space on its search engine based upon keywords used in the ad. The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. These ads were initially sold on click-throughs using a minimum of $0.05 per click. This was originally inspired by another company named "Goto.com" which later became Overture (which was then sold to Yahoo!). This advertising medium later became known as Google AdWords and

In 2001, Google started using PageRank, a method of telling people the importance of their web sites by use of a 1-10 scale. PageRank is based off of a number of factors of how your web site is built, including the importance of incoming links.

In recent years, Google has taken over other areas of the Internet with their technology.

1999: Google created the blogging software, Blogger, to allow people to platform ideas online.

2004: Google created Gmail, a free, web-based email program.

2004: Google created Google Earth, a satellite imagery program.

2005: Google creates Google Sitemaps and Google Webmaster tools to help in web marketing.

2005: Google entered into partnerships with AOL, NASA, and Sun Microsystems.

2006: Google created its Documents and Spreadsheets program to compete with Microsoft.

2006: Google accquired YouTube, the popular video sharing web site.

2006: Google accquired JotSpot, a wiki-based technology for collaborative web sites

In just ten, short years, Google has gone onto become the largest company in the United States, employing more than 20,000 full time employees. Additionally, it has been named the #1 company to work for, based on the fringe benefits its employees receive, such as: on-site cafeterias, massage centers, daycare centers, flex schedules and gaming consoles such as Nintendo's Wii, Sony Playstations, and Microsoft's X-box. Today, their estimated worth has risen from the $100,000 they started with initially to over $160 Billion.

Not too bad for a 10-year-old kid...