Lecture
Here is the most unusual history of the company. Is it possible to write the history of the company, which just turned eight years old, and at the time of writing the book in the original language, and even less? It turns out possible.
So, before you google history. The story that happened before our eyes - what we did not even suspect! The story of how two young graduate students at Stanford made a revolution in the lives of our generation. In general, you have the latest history of the world. Togo world in which the cradle of civilization is Stanford.
We live in an era of technical revolution. Over the past 25 years, processors in our computers have become faster by three thousand times, but the RAM has fallen in price by 30 thousand times, and hard drives - by 3.6 million (!!!) times. And so, as it should be, at the right time, the right people were in the right place ...
The invention of Google technology can be compared with the invention of the wheel. Today, over time, it is not clear how it was possible to search the Internet before the advent of Google. Like all ingenious, Google search is a very simple thing ...
However, the company's success is due not only to favorable conditions for supporting technological breakthroughs that took shape a decade ago in Silicon Valley. The young scientists who chose the hard way of entrepreneurship had excellent advisers. At the start, Sergey and Larry talked a lot with Jeff Bezos from Amazon.com (by the way, Jeff was one of Google’s first investors), Yossi Vardi, the creator of ICQ, and others. It was these people who at various times challenged the existing distribution of forces in the computer world. Say, in this list, someone is missing? Of course, Apple. We know that in mid-2006, Eric Schmidt, executive director of Google, became a member of the board of directors of Apple Computers!
However, entrepreneurial insight is also characteristic of the founders of Google. Brin and Page have always been distinguished by non-standard approaches to business and non-standard actions. Now few people remember how the Russian Prime Minister deployed the plane and returned home when the war in Yugoslavia began, and what this decision led to. But the business community is pleased to discuss the conclusion of a very large contract concluded thanks to the unexpected decision of Sergey and Larry to land the plane instead of Madrid in London.
Today, Google has already ceased to be part of exclusively American life and culture. 67% of Internet users live outside the US– for 77% of Internet users, English is not their first language. But they all use to search Google. That is why Google speaks many languages: there are more than a hundred living languages in its arsenal, as well as dead (for example, Latin), artificial (Esperanto) and fictional (the language of the race from the planet Clinton from the TV series “Startrek”). Google allows users to find information in any language and with the help of linguistic technologies to understand what is being said.
Sergey Brin was born in Moscow in 1973 in a family of mathematicians - his father was a school teacher, and his grandfather taught mathematics in the 50s in the Moscow Engineering Institute. In 1979, the family moved from the USSR to the states under the American emigration program for people with Jewish roots. There Sergey's father, Michael Brin, began teaching at the University of Maryland, and his mother worked as a science specialist at NASA. Since childhood, he and his younger brother Sam have shown interest in computer technology.
After graduating from school, Sergei, of course, enters the faculty of mathematics at the University of Maryland, which he graduates ahead of schedule, earning himself a prestigious NSGF scholarship. The scholarship allowed him to continue his studies at Stanford University, and he is admitted to a doctoral program, US universities sometimes allow gifted students to skip over a master's degree and go from bachelor to a doctoral degree.
In his first year at Stanford, Sergey wrote a rather interesting program that can automatically download fresh pictures of girls from the Playboy website and install them as a skinsaver on his computer. His fellow students later noted that for the first time they saw a program that found information on the Internet in automatic mode. I lived this program for a very short time (because I didn’t like my friend Seryga very much). But the topic of information retrieval has been observed in many scientific papers of Sergey.
Larry Page was born in the family of a famous computer scientist, one of the pioneers of computer engineering, Carl Page. Like Sergey, Larry has been surrounded by computers since childhood. They were his main passion, but he was especially interested in "iron". After school, the guy entered the University of Michigan , where his father taught a course in the theory of computing systems. There is an interesting story about how Larry once assembled models of a black and white inkjet printer and plotter from a set of Lego parts designer. During his studies, he participated in many university scientific societies, often as a leader. After graduating with honors from the university, Page decided to continue his studies in the elite Stanford .
In March 1995, Larry, along with a group of graduates from the University of Michigan came to Stanford. At that time he was already 24 years old. Sergey Brin, who had been studying there for two years, was instructed to familiarize the group with the university. Participants of the tour later told that Larry and Sergey did not like each other very much - they began to argue over any trifle, each trying to prove the correctness of their point of view. It was probably on this basis that they agreed, soon becoming close friends.
Larry and Sergey found a common language almost immediately. And although they are completely different in character, a friendship has arisen between them, which is based on the crazy energy of both. It was in the spring of 1995, during the week of dating at Stanford University. Sergey showed a group of graduate students who had just arrived, among whom was Larry, the campus and its environs flooded with the Californian sun. Suddenly, between two young people who were discussing some trivial question, a lively argument ensued. Looking at how passionately everyone argued his case, it was hard to believe that they only knew each other for a few minutes - both clearly felt in their element.
Sergey is somewhat younger than Larry, but at that time he had been studying for doctoral studies at Stanford University for two years. Due to his outstanding mathematical abilities, he received a bachelor's degree in 19 years. From the very first attempt, he successfully passed all ten entrance exams for Stanford doctoral studies and began his scientific work. Confident, physically strong and open, Sergey was engaged in gymnastics and swimming, took an active part in the public life of the university, but most of the time was devoted to computer programming and solving mathematical problems.
Larry, a native of the Midwest, felt somewhat uncomfortable in the role of one of those elected, who was fortunate enough to get into Stanford elite doctoral studies, and seriously doubted that any good would come of it. During these few familiarization days, he hoped to make friends with someone.
“At first, I felt ill at ease,” he recalls, “and I was afraid that I would be sent home very soon.”
Larry and Sergey quickly found a common language - not least due to their natural desire to indulge with a worthy opponent, even if at the same time defending an absurd point of view. And no matter what the dispute is about, it is important to convince the other party by proving that it is right.
Their endless mutual warrants and verbal skirmishes served as the foundation for future joint work based on mutual respect, although at first everyone considered his new acquaintance an arrogant and unpleasant type. Both grew up in families where intellectual debates, especially on topics such as computers, mathematics, and the future, were common. In the debate, they trained their intellect and developed their thinking abilities. True, the appearance of the guys made the opposite impression: most of the people who saw Larry and Sergey for the first time considered them talented, friendly and ... stupid guys.
Their ambitions and interests were similar, and their character and knowledge were complementary. Sergey, the eldest of two brothers, an extrovert, likes to be in the center of attention. Larry is younger in the family, he is thoughtful and not too talkative. But when Larry and Sergey returned to Stanford by the beginning of the new school year, their intellectual duels gradually grew into a strong friendship. This transformation, as it turned out, was not accidental and had good reasons.
In a world in which, in defiance of physical laws, genetics and high technologies occupy leading positions, Sergey Brin and Larry Page had much in common. But most importantly, they were both second generation computer users. They worked with a computer in elementary school — under the strict guidance of parents who used a computer at work and at home to solve complex math problems. Thanks to this, Larry and Sergey stood out among their peers. Both attended classes at the Montessori school, which had a beneficial effect on their intellectual development; both lived near the major universities where their fathers taught; their mothers had a job with computers and technology. Education in their families was assigned not just an important, but a leading role. Therefore, studies in doctoral studies and subsequent entry into the university and scientific community - in the footsteps of parents - seemed simply inevitable.
In 1960, Karl Victor Page, Larry's father, became one of the first students to receive a master’s degree in computer technology from the University of Michigan. After five years in this new field, he received a doctorate degree. Gloria Page, Larry's mother, who also graduated from computer technology, worked as a database specialist. Larry adored his cheerful and outgoing father, who, among other things, when Larry was small, took him to the concerts of the Grateful Dead. In 1980, 15 years before Larry was applying for a doctoral degree, Karl Paget had taught for a while at Stanford University as a visiting professor. But the main place of his work was the University of Michigan. His second wife taught computer programming there.
Having been ill with polio in childhood, Larry's father lived to be 58 years old and died from complications caused by pneumonia. Larry was then a first year doctoral student, and for him it was an irreplaceable loss. “Larry was very depressed.He spent all day detached sitting on the steps of the Gates Building, - recalled Sean Anderson, his fellow student, - and everyone tried to comfort him at least somehow. ”
Carl Page was accompanied to his last journey by the words "a pioneer and world-class specialist in computer technology and artificial intelligence, a prominent scientist, a beloved teacher, and a keen mentor." George Stockman, his colleague at the University of Michigan, said that Karl "really wanted Larry to become a professor." He also noted that Larry’s love for discussions was passed on to him from his father: “Working with Karl was not easy, because he always tried to prove his case, and his son inherited this trait.” Now I understand where the passion with which Larry defended his point of view in disputes came from.
Despite the grief that befell him, Larry continued his studies at Stanford. Fortunately, his elder brother Karl Jr. lived and worked in Silicon Valley, with whom Larry could share the burden of loss. They spent a lot of time together, remembering their father and happy youth in their father's house.
Once Larry had already experienced the pain of loss. When he was eight years old (he was born on March 26, 1973), his parents separated. For the boy, it was a heavy blow. Nevertheless, both father and mother, after the divorce, paid great attention to raising their son. Larry was surrounded by love and care of two mothers at once: the real one and the second wife of his father, Joyce Wildental, a professor at the University of Michigan. Both women maintain friendships to this day.
Larry studied at the McDonald School in East Lansing. Nick Archer, the head of his boy scout squad, notes that he was "inclined towards independent thinking." According to his brother, Larry as a child was a real boy with a multitude of interests, not limited to computers. The brothers were curious about “how it works” - and this applied not only to various devices and devices, but also to social issues, public administration, politics, etc. Their father supported the positions of democrats, in particular the slogan “Education and equal opportunities - for all. " His paternal grandfather was an active participant in the famous sit-in strike of auto workers in 1936-1937 in the city of Flint (Michigan), one of the longest in the history of the labor movement. Maybe that's why the brothers were so interested in social issues. A maternal grandfather went to Israel and settled in the desert town of Arad, where water and other resources were in short supply. At first, he had a hard time there, but over time he became accustomed to working as a toolmaker and stamp manufacturer. The pioneering spirit is alive in its grandchildren to this day.
Larry’s mother is Jewish, but since his father’s “religion” has always been technology, neither Jewish traditions nor Judaism have been imposed on his son. That father introduced the brothers to the computer. “I was very lucky that my father was a professor in the computer technology department,” said Larry. - The first computer in our home appeared in 1978. He was huge and very expensive. After buying it, we still had to save on food for a long time. I always liked computers, because I knew that with their help a lot could be achieved. ”
Larry spent a lot of time behind the home computer. Unsurprisingly, his school teachers were discouraged by the way he performed his homework. “Every time I handed over a piece of paper with printed text, and then they didn’t even know what a dot matrix printer was. They were very puzzled. ” Carl Jr. recalls that first-grader Larry already knew a great deal: “I remember very well how Larry typed Arnold Lobel’s children's book Frog and Toad Together on his computer when he was six years old.”A few years later, Larry, armed with a screwdriver, disassembled the home unit - he was wondering how it works. He also liked to help his brother, who became a student at the University of Michigan (Karl is nine years older), to do his homework when he came home for the holidays. In high school, Larry assembled an inkjet printer from Lego parts. “Nobody imposed anything on me. I really enjoyed working with the computer, ”he says.
Larry followed in the footsteps of his father and brother: he entered the University of Michigan, where he studied computer technology and attended a course on entrepreneurship. In 1995, he received a bachelor's degree. He supervised the Michigan branch of the Eta Kappa Nu technical college and even sold donuts on the campus.
He also attended classes in university leadership development programs. LeaderShape made the greatest impression on him - a program aimed at developing students' leadership qualities.
Larry learned a lot from great university professors. “I had the opportunity to communicate with amazing people who willingly helped me and gave useful advice,” he says. These feelings were mutual: university professors considered him an excellent student. “Larry stood out from the rest, always a little ahead,” recalls Elliot Soloway, a professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Technologies. “While working on my project as part of my course, Larry used a pocket PC — and then very few people knew what a pocket computer was.”
Science and technology are not alien to Sergey Brin's parents either. His mother, Eugenia Brin, is a specialist at the Center for Space Flight. Goddard at NASA. She is engaged in modeling atmospheric and weather conditions affecting space flight. The father, Michael Brin, teaches mathematics at the University of Maryland. He is the author of several dozen scientific articles on various aspects of mathematics, from abstract geometry to dynamical systems.
“He was an ordinary child,” says Mikhail Brin about Sergey, “but he always tried to be closer to the computer. It all started with the games and the old Commodore 64s, one of the first personal computers. ”
Sergey Brin, born in Moscow on August 21, 1973, left the Soviet Union when he was six years old. His parents sought to escape from a state where hidden anti-Semitism reigned, and hoped that in the new country they would gain freedom and prospects for themselves and their son. “I left not only for my own sake, but also for the sake of his future,” stresses Michael Brin.
It should be noted that one of Sergei’s relatives had already been (more precisely, had been) in America long before that. His great-grandmother, of course, was a black sheep among the residents of Russia of that time, because she studied microbiology at the University of Chicago. But having believed in the ideals of communism, in 1921 she returned to Moscow to take a direct part in the construction of a young state. Sergey's grandfather, like his father, was a professor of mathematics, and Mikhail Brin became a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences in the Soviet Union. His mother, also a mathematician by training, worked as a civil engineer in the USSR.
Michael Brin worked for ten years as an economist at the State Planning Commission. His duties included the creation of propaganda materials, supported by statistical data and convincing that the quality of life in the Soviet Union is higher than in the United States of America. “Most of the time I argued that the standard of living in the USSR is far ahead of the standard of living in the United States,” recalls Mikhail Brin. - I know almost everything about numbers. But I gave, to put it mildly, not quite accurate information. ”
After moving to the United States, Michael Brin began teaching mathematics at the University of Maryland. He proudly recalls that Sergey was interested not only in computers, but also in mathematics. “He knew mathematics well. For him and other gifted students, another mathematics teacher was specially invited to the school. ”
They lived in Prince George County, near Washington. Sergei went to school them. Eleanor Roosevelt, where children from poorly educated families mainly studied, and therefore physical strength there was valued much more than intelligence.One of his classmates later recalled that Sergei "was boastful of his intellect" and often entered into arguments with teachers, trying to prove to them that they were wrong.
Honestly, Sergey had a low opinion of both most of his school teachers and classmates. After all, at home he learned much more.
While still a schoolboy, Sergey entered the University of Maryland. At age 19, Brin had already received a bachelor's degree with honors in the specialty “Mathematics and Computer Technologies”.
“The teachers paid me a lot of attention, often talked with me after class. My level of training was higher than that of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Harvard University, ”says Sergey about his studies in Maryland, where he attended a number of postgraduate courses.
“My colleagues told me that he is a good student,” notes Michael Brin. - Good students have more opportunities. They can enroll in many different courses and, accordingly, work with a large number of qualified teachers. ”
During the summer holidays, Sergey was engaged in new methods of analysis, including developing a program for processing graphic data for a flight simulator. Summer work and Wolfnun Research, the General Electric Information Service and the University of Maryland Institute for Computer Research, allowed him to replenish his knowledge in such areas as computer technology, data mining, and mathematics.
Sergey inherited a wonderful sense of humor from his parents. Somehow his mother placed her photo on the home page next to Lenin's profile, providing this collage with the caption: “Me and my best friend”. And his father on the 25th anniversary of Sergei wrote and posted on the Internet a small poem:
You become stronger -
Spirit, body, even thought,
Well, I'm getting old
With every new year of life.
On the Internet, you persevere File after file is collected, Your “spider” snares nimbly For what you don’t know. In the Web dirty, stuffy You grabbed the dream by the tail - And you live under the southern sun. For you, son, my toast. Bill lost sleep and money Because of Monica Neighborhood, She calculated years with her ... Drink to your income!
Michael Brin adored to pry his relatives and students with a sharp wit, forcing them to be constantly on the alert. So, he often gave the checked works to students with the words "my sincere condolences", and if a student gave the wrong answer, he seriously said: "Absolutely ... wrong!" One of his former students called his style of communication both relaxing and dangerous: " Dr. Bryn is a great storyteller and chain smoker. Usually he came in, gave us an intricate puzzle, and went out to smoke. By his return, we had to give an answer ... Almost half of the statistician students with whom he taught left after the first session, worrying about trampled pride. I, his student, sometimes thought that I was the ward of a cruel sergeant from Kubrick's film “All-Metal Sheath”. ”
All Breens had their own homepage on the Internet, which necessarily had links to the pages of other family members — the lines connecting them in cyberspace. Michael Brin wrote on his page: “Sergey is a Stanford student-doctoral student (specialty“ computer technologies ”). Engaged in data mining. And I developed (along with my friend Larry) the search engine Google, he said, the best of all. ” Sam, Sergey's younger brother, admitted in love with his basketball ball on his website: “Basketball is my life. I train every day for half an hour, and on Mondays and Thursdays I participate in the trainings of my team. My favorite professional team is the Washington Wizards, they train near my home. ”
After graduating from the University of Maryland, Sergey entered the Stanford doctorate as a fellow of the National Science Foundation, choosing a specialty "computer technology". Michael Brin hoped that his son, like his father and grandfather, would choose a professorial path. “I wanted him to get a doctorate degree and become someone - maybe a professor. I once asked him if he signed up for some doctoral courses in the new semester. And he replied: "Yes, for a doctoral voyage."
Before meeting with Larry, Sergey worked on a variety of topics. Since he did not need to be “loaded” with postgraduate courses — most of them he had already mastered in Maryland — he decided to learn how to sail and seriously do gymnastics. His interest in exploring new topics led to a series of random, but important discoveries. Together with other doctoral students and professors, he participated in a project to develop a program capable of detecting copyright infringements in a study in molecular biology, and later got excited with the idea of posting movie ratings made by viewers on relevant websites. “You rate the films you've seen,” he explained. “Then the program finds the ratings of other users with similar tastes and, by extrapolation, determines whether you like the films you have not yet seen.” This idea — true for books — was soon brought to life on the Amazon com site. At Stanford, Sergei opened up a sea of possibilities for intellectual development. “I tried so many things when I studied in a doctoral program ... The more actively you try something new, the more chances you have to stumble upon something really worthwhile,” he recalls.
After Larry’s arrival in the fall of 1995, he and Sergey began not to spill water. Bryn abandoned his movie ratings and began to work on projects one way or another related to the work that Page was doing. In addition, they began a thorough study of a phenomenon called the Internet.
In the meantime, Bryn and Paige gnawed on the granite of science in their little world, many interesting events took place in the big world. From Silicon Valley to Wall Street, everyone just talked about the appearance of Netscape on the stock exchange. On August 9, 1995, Netscape placed its shares on the stock exchange at a price of $ 28, and on the very first day of trading their exchange rate soared to $ 75. In a matter of hours, the company's share capital rose to more than three billion dollars. This Netscape public offering marked the beginning of the Internet era and marked the beginning of the next gold rush. Wall Street was ready for it. Stockbrokers who had no idea about what the company is doing, called investors and said that experts unanimously say: this is only the beginning. And no one seemed to be bothered by the fact that Netscape did not make a profit, because its sales, albeit small, doubled every quarter. The company that developed the current product called “browser”, which allowed computer users to read web pages, seemed doomed to reach the break-even point soon. Some analysts even predicted that Netscape would eventually overshadow the mighty Microsoft. By the end of 1995, the company's stock price reached $ 171, and Wall Street financiers began to look closely at other young and promising Internet companies.
The scent of dollars, rained golden rain on Netscape, soaked the department of computer technology at Stanford. The university management did not see anything wrong in the fact that students and professors engaged in scientific work received a monetary reward for it. Despite the fact that the main task of the university was to train the next generation of teachers and scientists, it has already gained a reputation as an “incubator” for successful IT companies like Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems (by the way, Sun stands for Stanford University Network). ).
Stanford University, in contrast to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and some other leading scientific institutions, has allowed doctoral students to work on potentially commercial projects using university resources. The university's patent office also rethought its role: now, instead of claiming all the advanced techniques and technologies that were conducted on the campus, the office rendered assistance to their creators in the process of examining patent applications and paid for everything related to it. costs. The bureau later entered into long-term licensing agreements that gave Stanford scientists the opportunity to create their own company and get rich. Instead, the patent office received a certain percentage of shares of newly formed companies.
“I didn’t want us to become an obstacle to new technologies,” says Stanford Rector John Hennessy. - The atmosphere in our campus is conducive to the development of entrepreneurship and investment, it stimulates the solution of qualitatively new problems, and also contributes to the transfer of new methods and technologies to commercial terms. Our students and professors understand that the best way to express yourself is not to write a scientific article, but to take the technology you believe in and make a commercial product out of it. Literally a mile from the campus are entrepreneurs who invest in these companies; they have a lot of experience in this. ”
The largest investment firms in the country are located on the nearby Sand Road Road, investing money in newly formed companies and receiving a certain percentage of their shares in return. Venture capital firms made risky capital investments in companies that were at the initial stage of development, hoping to make a good profit. But since they managed without the mythical crystal ball, with which one could look into the future, irretrievable investments were an integral part of the game called “venture operations”.
Nevertheless, the best firms did not spare funds for the promotion of new ideas and innovative technologies, hoping to break the bank when companies placed their shares on the stock exchange or when they were sold. Due to the neighborhood with venture companies, students and professors at Stanford found it much easier to get financial support and advice than their counterparts from other universities. By allowing university professors to have a stake in companies and sell stocks, the Stanford management was able to keep most leading professors on staff. Many of them became multimillionaires, but at the same time continued to work in high school. And the truth is, what is the point of leaving if there are all the conditions for effective activity: the sun, palm trees, intelligent students and the opportunity to work on innovative ideas that promise a good profit. And it is much more interesting than just lying on the beach or working in a private company.
For Larry and Sergey, the sons of research professors who taught in a more traditional university setting, the main goal was to get a doctor’s degree, not material enrichment. In their families, nothing was valued as highly as education. They were proud of their parents and were eager to bring their studies at Stanford to their logical conclusion. But very soon their scientific dedication was seriously tested.
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History of computer technology and IT technology
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