

Google - Our History in Depth - wtpiu
http://www.google.com/about/company/history/

======
xSwag
Sergey Brin probably had the snazziest profile picture in those times:

[http://web.archive.org/web/19980418143602/http://www-
db.stan...](http://web.archive.org/web/19980418143602/http://www-
db.stanford.edu/~sergey/)

~~~
thiagoc
[http://web.archive.org/web/20021030152640/http://www-
db.stan...](http://web.archive.org/web/20021030152640/http://www-
db.stanford.edu/~sergey/photos/drag96.jpg)

I laugh.

------
yid
One interesting thing that stood out in terms of Google-the-startup: they
incorporated on Sep 4, 1998 and raised $25 million in June 1999, and made
their first acquisition in February 2001. The traction they must have been
able to show must have staggering.

~~~
ohazi
Keep in mind that (1) the standards for impressive traction were a lot lower
back then, and (2) this happened when the first .com bubble was picking up a
ton of steam.

------
eitally
I wonder if they're old enough -- of prescient enough -- yet to realize they
should probably have a staff historian.

~~~
jacquesm
Better to have others write your history than yourself. Less hubris that way.
History has it's own way to deal with the notability criterion: everything
that's not notable will be forgotten.

------
finnh
Lot of firsts in 1999:

First dog

First chef

First non-engineering hire

First press release

First female engineer seems to be missing...

~~~
srhngpr
They may not have had a first female engineer, but in their first 21
employees, 6 of which were females.

Source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-first-20-employees-
wh...](http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-first-20-employees-where-are-
they-now-2012-7?op=1)

~~~
finnh
I was making a little joke - I thought it was widely known that Marissa Mayer
was Google's first female engineer.

Source: her wikipedia page, numerous articles.

~~~
bitops
Yeah, I was a little saddened to see that they didn't mention her - sure she
went to work for the competition but it'd have been classy to mention her.

------
mongol
When did Slashdot first mention Google? That is when I first heard of it

~~~
arkem
That would be December 20 1998 in an article 'Good new search engine running
on linux'

[http://linux.slashdot.org/story/98/12/20/2348230/good-new-
se...](http://linux.slashdot.org/story/98/12/20/2348230/good-new-search-
engine-running-on-linux)

------
orware
I just read this article on David Cheriton over the weekend:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/08/01/professor-
bil...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/08/01/professor-billionaire-
david-cheriton/)

And surprisingly, the Google Timeline doesn't include him in there (though he
should probably be listed around the 1998 time that Andy Bechtolsheim wrote
his check...unless they both contributed to the same check?).

~~~
nostrademons
I thought that basically David Cheriton made the introduction to Andy, invited
the founders and Andy over to his house, and then Andy decided "Cool, lemme
write you a check", and then David was like "While I'm here, lemme write you
one too." In contemporary fundraising parlance, Andy led the round and David
co-invested. The circumstances are covered in a bit more detail in In The
Plex, although IIRC that didn't say that David invested, only that the meeting
was at his house.

My guess is that David Cheriton, famous for keeping a low profile, didn't want
it to be known that he was a billionaire through Google, and they honored that
wish. But sometime fairly recently somebody else outed him (I recall reading
an article a couple years ago that mentioned him as Silicon Valley's
wealthiest unknown billionaire), and at that point the cat's outta the bag.

------
fuqua
No mention of their funding from the National Science Foundation that helped
them get off the ground?

[http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100660](http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100660)
[http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9411306](http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9411306)

------
bowlofpetunias
I get this page in Dutch. I didn't ask for it and I can't change it. In fact,
I'm logged in with an account which only has one language preference set
(English), which Google happily ignores whenever it feels like.

And it would be merely annoying if it only affected the interface language,
but it changes features, search results and in this case the entire content.

Which makes it pretty much impossible to participate in this discussion in HN.

This is one of the reasons why by now I dislike Google as much as I disliked
Microsoft back in 90's.

Some people may find it hard to identify with, but imagine communicating with
someone you know speaks perfect English, who you have politely requested to
communicate in English, and who actually speaks English to everyone else in
the room _except you_.

There are less offensive ways to say "fuck you".

~~~
psbp
This is a huge overreaction.

~~~
bowlofpetunias
Did I mention changing _features_ (omitting some, changing the navigation to
others) and _search results_ (Stack Overflow tends not to show up in local
searches in language xyz) ?

And all this with no language/region switch in sight? Except the one inside
the account settings, _which Google then randomly ignores_?

What would you consider to be the appropriate reaction to such a user
experience?

Or just imagine clicking on the link at the top of this threat and ending up
on a page called "Onze geschiedenis tot in detail", which contains a truly
awful, low quality and barely readable Dutch "translation" with no obvious way
of accessing the content people are actually discussing here.

Would this put you in a good mood?

~~~
reginaldo
Most Google services accept and honor a "hl" URL parameter. So it would be
[http://www.google.com/about/company/history/?hl=en](http://www.google.com/about/company/history/?hl=en)
for English, and hl=nl for Dutch (not that you want it). No cookie cleaning is
needed :)

------
sksk
Strange that Gmail is not mentioned in 2004 unless I am missing it! They
mention Chat for Gmail but not Gmail?

~~~
sakis
As far as I remember, GMail was announced on April 1st, 2004 and was
considered by most (all?) an April Fool's joke.

------
spurgu
Cool, I just discovered that they have Inactive Account Management.

[https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/account/inactive](https://www.google.com/settings/u/0/account/inactive)

------
karthik_sripal
The Link for 2013 is actually pointing to 2011 - AM missing somethign here ?
:-)

~~~
kanamekun
Probably just a sign that this page is hand coded!

~~~
karthiksripal
:-) Any how do I report this to get fixed ? Couldn't just keep seeing this
mistake!

------
samspenc
Wow! Is this new, or has it been out for a while?

Just finished reading Steven Levy's book on Google - amazing read and insight
into Google's history.

~~~
gwern
This has been out for a while.

I was consulting it back in March 2013 for details I could use for my
[http://gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns](http://gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns) so
I know it goes at least that far back.

But you can also punch it into the Internet Archive
([http://web.archive.org/web/20120401000000*/http://www.google...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120401000000*/http://www.google.com/about/company/history/))
and see that it goes back at least to March 2012. As it happens, as part of
the previous research I know that a lot of Google content moves around various
URLs without redirects, so between that and how the first IA version is
comprehensive, I strongly suspected that it was much older than March 2012;
one useful trick for finding the original URL is to look for quotes of the
page on other websites which point at a different URL. In this case, if you
quote the bit starting with "Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford...."
(the first entry) and you search in Google with a date-limit of 1995-2010 (in
the 'Search Tools' option), you can see hits dated from 2005, 2008, & 2009\.
The 2005 would be best, but it's some sort of spammy junk, so I try another
hit, and it links to
'[http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline/#start'](http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline/#start')
which is quite different. That takes me back to August 2008:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20080401000000*/http://www.google...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080401000000*/http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline/)
We can't search for this because it's broken but it tells us that we can
narrow our timerange even more, to early 2008. Another hit includes a
'trackback' link to another Google URL, which I duly load up:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20020223143331/http://www.google....](http://web.archive.org/web/20020223143331/http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html)
Useless, since it's not the timeline - but notice the sidebar! 'Timline',
bingo. Now we can go all the way back to December 2001:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20011213165211/http://www.google....](http://web.archive.org/web/20011213165211/http://www.google.com/corporate/timeline.html)

So, this page was started at least as early as December 2001.

------
reledi
I'd like to know more about what happened between 1995-'96\. Besides their
introduction, how did they become partners? Were they office mates?

------
bumbledraven
Seems to be missing the word "reader"

~~~
nnethercote
It doesn't exist. It never existed.

------
jensenbox
They really need to add in the 'deaths' or transitions of their products as
well.

------
ateevchopra
This is really great ! Especially all the April fool days Google gave us.

It reminds me of one of my friend. He had to explain "How Google works" in the
class. He accidentally read half of this prank:

[http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html](http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html)

and explained it in the class. Everyone enjoyed !

But the thing to be noticed most was that most of the students, including the
reached believed ! !

------
danso
Timelines are a tough, sometimes misleading/information-hiding format...they
have a systematic look akin to data, but are much closer to regular editorial
content in how they're produced.

Case in point, the Person Finder is mentioned twice on the Timeline, for the
Tokyo Earthquake and the Boston Marathon bombings, but not for the event at
which it was conceived -- Hurricane Katrina ( __correction at bottom) --
something that was arguably a more epic disaster than the bombings or
earthquake, while at the same time being a much bigger and more surprising
technical feat at the time...given that it was 2005, when Facebook and the
social web had been barely a product.

\- __My bad, Google 's actual adoption of Person Finder was during Haiti in
2010, which, well predates both Tokyo and Boston and was definitely a bigger
disaster in terms of human life than both. But Haiti isn't mentioned in the
Google timeline

[https://support.google.com/personfinder/?hl=en](https://support.google.com/personfinder/?hl=en)

But the Tokyo earthquake and Boston bombings are more fresh in our mind, hence
their greater prominence on a timeline generated from today's perspective.

(Not criticizing anything in particular about the OP, just pointing out that
timelines can be just as obfuscating as they are clarifying, and the Person
Finder example stuck out to me)

------
melange
A good marketing piece.

