The Invention of Google

Google is the most popular Internet search engine in the world. It was invented by two students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They met in 1995, when they were both studying computer science at Stanford University, USA. They were also both fans of the SF TV programme Star Trek, and they loved spaceship computer. They dreamed of producing something that could also answer any question in seconds.
Internet search engines at the time were slow and gave many websites that weren’t useful. In January 1996, Page and Brin decided to make a better and faster search engine. They thought the results should be based on the popularity of each website – the most popular ones have the highest number of ‘weblinks’ (links to other websites).
Nobody would give them money for their project so they used their credit cards and bought as much computer memory as possible. They also borrowed money from family and friends. Then, in 1998, they were given a cheque for $100,000, and they started their own company. Their first office was in a friend’s garage! The company name Google comes form mathematics. A ‘googol’ is a very high number -1 followed by a hundred zeros.
Nowdays Google is one of the most succesful and reliable American company, with incomes of hundreds of millions each year. Google has besides its search engine department many other sites that are concerned with online advertising, evaluating sites or ranking webpages.