
Google's 20th Birthday - guessmyname
https://www.google.com/doodles/googles-20th-birthday
======
mapgrep
I remember using Google when it was hosted at Stanford.edu, luckily internet
archive captures this moment:

[https://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/http://google.sta...](https://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/http://google.stanford.edu:80/)

Notice that the branding is "Google!" with an exclamation point, just like
that other Stanford tool for finding stuff online, Yahoo!.

The "About Google!" page is pretty interesting, includes links to Sergey and
Larry's grad school personal home pages:

[https://web.archive.org/web/19990204033714/http://google.sta...](https://web.archive.org/web/19990204033714/http://google.stanford.edu:80/about.html)

It also includes, under "credits," this:

Research Funding: NSF, NASA, DARPA and Interval Research

So remember, Google may be touted as a quintessential Silicon Valley startup,
but, like virtually all of them, it owes a lot to the work of the federal
government.

(And what is Interval Research, you might ask? Wikipedia says it was a Palo
Alto tech incubator co-founded by Paul Allen — previously the co-founder of
Microsoft. Lol.)

~~~
justinmk
> So remember, Google may be touted as a quintessential Silicon Valley
> startup, but, like virtually all of them, it owes a lot to the work of the
> federal government.

Oh, right. The thing that sucks trillions of dollars out of the economy and
then claims credit for anything it touched.

~~~
solarkraft
The thing that ... supported all that innovation and works hard (though it's
currently not doing that great) at keeping the economy in check.

~~~
justinmk
"Supporting innovation" is a low bar. It's easy to do that with lots of money,
by allocating a small fraction to investment and wasting the rest.

My point is that the cost isn't justified. Your point is "something happened,
therefore it's worth the cost".

~~~
solarkraft
I didn't even advocate for the government writing research grants (though I do
think it's a good idea). I tried (perhaps badly) to point out that "The thing
that sucks trillions of dollars out of the economy" is a terribly silly
characterization for the federal government.

------
ergothus
I've been in this industry for 23 years. A LOT has changed...but I expect I'll
be in in for 20-25 more, so I occasionally freak out about how much I know
that will be as irrelevant as what I learned in '95 was. (A lot carries over,
but...so much doesn't).

Back then we had only physical servers (as a practical concern), Linux was
considered risky to rely on, there was no social media, and everything on the
web was expressed in highway metaphors and spoken of in capital letters ("The
World Wide Web"). "Digital" was considered a fancy word, and to the average
geek high speed access meant ISDN, while the average person was just starting
to be able to imitate a 14400 baud modem connection sound. Wireless wasn't a
thing (draft standard I think) and usenet was actually usable.

~~~
eponeponepon
_Man_ I miss Usenet. Last time I used a news client was 2006, working at a
firm that had an internal NNTP server for announcements, general chatter, for
sale ads etc.

I don't think anyone under 30 would have a clue what to do with newsgroups
these days.

~~~
snaky
reddit.com/r/usenet/ is active. But it's not about text anymore.

------
tschellenbach
Congrats Google! You guys have made the world a better place. Search, Adwords,
Chrome, Gmail, Maps, Navigation, Youtube, Android, Docs, Drive to name a few.
Don't forget about that with everything that's going on. Sometimes the
internet feels like it's a bit too focused on negative things.

~~~
lisper
Thanks! :-) (I was the lead engineer on the first release of AdWords. Good to
know someone appreciates our work.)

~~~
jacquesm
I appreciate the technical achievement. But I would have appreciated it even
more if it had been a standalone company separated from the rest of Google.
The products by themselves are benign, all that power concentrated in the
hands of so few is not.

~~~
lisper
I don’t disagree with you. Unfortunately that part was never up to me.

------
cosinetau
Happy 20th, Google!

20 is an interesting time of life for any legal entity. I hope you renew your
vision of "don't be evil" for your next 20!

With love, me

~~~
yumraj
> I hope you _renew_ your vision of "don't be evil" for your next 20!

I think you mean _readopt_

~~~
cosinetau
I did. Thank you! Can I have another?

------
dkrich
This is a good time to present a reminder of how clueless most of us are about
how the future will look in the present:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20090324232727/http://www.busine...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090324232727/http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/dec2000/nf2000127_947.htm)

~~~
bunnycorn
TBF: the authors concerns were valid, mainly the advertising aspect, which
later Google obviously addressed.

------
anfilt
The google has been as of late though; It makes me wish the company does not
have many birthdays. It's kinda sad.

------
43tsdfasdfasdf
There are people in college that never knew how much Internet search sucked
before Google, or dealt a webmail service with a measly 2MB of storage.

------
fhood
It seems just yesterday they were but a wee lad. So adorable and quirky. Now
they're all grown up, sniff, how things have changed.

------
kayoone
i wonder if they took real voice samples from people using voice search for
that video or if they have been recorded just for this because the audio
quality seems to vary quite a bit.

------
jenscow
Anyone else noticed the return of the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button?

I wonder if this is related to the anniversary?

~~~
zabuni
If you mouse over it turns into something else. First time I clicked it, I got
a built in solitaire game:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=solitaire](https://www.google.com/search?q=solitaire)
Second time, it linked me to this:
[https://onetoday.google.com/](https://onetoday.google.com/) It seems to go to
random places around google.

~~~
JTon
I tried 3 times in short succession and got
[https://www.google.com/doodles](https://www.google.com/doodles) every time

------
snaky
> Subject: Re: Russian (8-bit) Search ?

[https://obartunov.livejournal.com/174726.html](https://obartunov.livejournal.com/174726.html)

------
echevil
It means I have been using Google for 20 years! It changed lots of aspects of
my life. Thank you Google!

------
LeoNatan25
May it not reach its 30th.

~~~
exikyut
10 years is a very short time to erase several exabytes of data, [probably]
several hundred million CPUs, and the datacenters that house them.

------
hugg
Why doesn't USA have any doodles?

~~~
richardwhiuk
[https://www.google.com/doodles/fourth-of-
july-2018](https://www.google.com/doodles/fourth-of-july-2018)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/fourth-of-
july-2017](https://www.google.com/doodles/fourth-of-july-2017) through to
[https://www.google.com/doodles/fourth-of-
july-2014](https://www.google.com/doodles/fourth-of-july-2014)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/4th-of-
july](https://www.google.com/doodles/4th-of-july)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/mothers-
day-2010-usa](https://www.google.com/doodles/mothers-day-2010-usa)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/veterans-
day-2016](https://www.google.com/doodles/veterans-day-2016)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/united-states-
elections-2016](https://www.google.com/doodles/united-states-elections-2016)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/united-states-
elections-2016-...](https://www.google.com/doodles/united-states-
elections-2016-reminder-day-2)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/us-
elections-2014](https://www.google.com/doodles/us-elections-2014)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/2004-us-
elections](https://www.google.com/doodles/2004-us-elections)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/us-
vote-2000](https://www.google.com/doodles/us-vote-2000)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/labor-
day-2016-us](https://www.google.com/doodles/labor-day-2016-us)

[https://www.google.com/doodles/dr-martin-luther-king-
day-201...](https://www.google.com/doodles/dr-martin-luther-king-day-2011)

Plenty.

~~~
hugg
Ah ok. It just wasn't showing anything on the map.

