An Inside Look at Google

The Beginning of Google

Google began as a research project in January of 1996. The founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were both PhD students at Standford University at the time. They originally hypothesized a search engine that analyzed relationships among websites would create better rankings of results that established methods. They originally nicknamed the system "Backrub" due to the fact that it checked backlinks to determine the importance of sites. The domain name originally used the Stanford University website under google.stanford.edu, until the domain was registered google.com on September 15, 1997 when the website was incorporated Google Inc. The total investment was $100,000. The company quickly grew. Eventually, the Googleplex was bought from Silicon Graphics for $319 million. In 2000, it began selling associates advertisements with keywords. The concept quickly grew, and other companies developed similar services. The verb "google" was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006.

Larry Page is currently worth $11 billion after a $4 billion dollar loss in 2008.
Sergey Brin is currently worth $12 billion after a $6.7 billion dollar loss in 2008.
Altogether, Google Inc. is worth an estimated $120 billion dollars.