The result of their endeavour was a website they called google.com.Soon, they collected about a million dollars from friends, and got their website online. They moved out from the computer science department of Stanford University and relocated to Menlo Park, California, where they rented a garage from a friend.
The story goes that she demanded US $1500 as rent, and a partnership in the company. Sergey and Larry refused, saying they’d pay her US $1700, but with no shares in their website. She agreed. Today, she, Susan Wojcicki, is director of product management at Google. And their headquarters, called Googleplex, is still at Menlo Park, California.
Google facts
- The Google is a play on the word googol, a term coined by Milton Sarrota, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. Googol is the number 1 followed by a 100 zeros.
- The first Google office was opened in a garage, on September 7, 1998, using a remote control.
- Craig Silverstein, currently director of technology, was Google’s first hire.
- The man in charge of the Google kitchen Charlie Ayers was once a chef with the punk rock group The Grateful Dead.
- The precursor to the Google search engine was called BackRub.
- Yahoo’s co-founder David Filo encouraged Sergey Brin and Larry Page to found the website. Today, they are each other’s business partners as well as biggest competitors.
- Today, Google searches more than 200 million queries each day.
- Google can be accessed in 88 languages of which five are Indian. It provides results in 35 languages.
