Google was the brainchild of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They met in 1995 at Stanford University, USA, while they were studying Computer Science. You could say Google started with…

Google was the brainchild of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They met in 1995 at Stanford University, USA, while they were studying Computer Science. You could say Google started with an argument as, at first, Sergey and Larry didn't really get on! In fact, they argued and disagreed on just about everything. However, there was one thing they did share: a commitment to making the Internet more user-friendly. At that time, Internet search engines were slow and complicated. They listed search results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. Larry and Sergey found this frustrating, An idea came to them: why not list search results according to a website's popularity? So, they set about creating a search engine that could calculate how important a particular web page was. At first, their research received a fair amount of criticism from experts, but the two friends didn't give up and managed to raise enough money from investors, family and friends to support themselves. While they were developing the search engine, Larry and Sergey realised it needed a catchy name. They were inspired by a mathematical word, 'googol' which means '1 followed by a hundred zeros'. They thought it was a really good name, considering the endless amount of information available on the Net, and so 'googol' became 'google'. In 1998, Larry and Sergey set up their office in a friend's garage and Google went online. Soon, they were answering thousands of search requests per day. People really liked Google's simple, neat design and, of course, its speedy performance! Before long, Sergey and Larry moved their operations to a new headquarters they called Googleplex. In 2000, Google introduced ten foreign language versions and officially became the world's most popular search engine. Google now responds to about a billion search requests per day and its success shows no signs of fading. For most people seeking information, Google is the place to go!