Google is the most famous internet search engine in the world. Its birth took place in the 1990s, at which time explorers began to become popular. In 1998, businessman Larry Page, together with Sergey Brin, launched a search engine called Google. And, like other visionaries of new technologies, they started in the garage of their home.
But two years before the official launch, Larry Page had already been working on a search engine, which today is considered the predecessor of Google. Its name was Backrub, and it was developed in 1996 as a universal digital library.
By 1998, Backrub had already indexed some 25 million web pages. The idea of the developers was, not only that the search engine would relate the web pages where the keyword was repeated, but also the most relevant and linked web sites.
But the Backrub name did not seem to reflect strongly enough the company’s mission. For this reason, that year they decided to change its name using the word ‘googol’ (or gúgol in Spanish), a mathematical term that refers to the number 10 raised to 100; that is, a 1 followed by a hundred zeros. This was a symbol of how the creators imagined a world of digital information accessible to all, with millions of gigabytes of data available to the user, and with their search engine as a bridge to access all that information.
Google, in addition to being one of the most profitable companies in the world, is also one of the most inspiring. In addition to introducing innovations to make navigation easier and perfect its algorithm, theirs are tools such as Maps, Drive, Adwords, Analytics … Google takes great care of details, in that sense, doodles stand out, which are part of their identity (the first doodle dates from the same year of launch, 1998), animations that are usually related to the present time and that serve to make browsing more enjoyable; as well as hidden games.
As a curiosity to finish, Google’s most famous slogan is closely related to its mission, that of offering data to users around the world: ‘Don’t be evil’ is a mantra spread since the late 90s and devised by one of the founders, Sergey Brin, who refers to the responsible use of the network. Currently, privacy, misinformation or copyright (malware, fake news …) are some of the main challenges that companies that lead the future on the Internet will have to face.
