In February 1999, Google moved from Susan Wojcicki's garage to "new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just eight employees" and in August 1999, Google relocated to Mountain View: 2400 E. Bayshore. Five years later, Google moved to "the new Googleplex at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment."

Former Google employee Doug Edwards posted some videos from November 1999 of the old Googleplex. At that time, Google's search engine was only available in English, it didn't include ads or image search results and it was the only Google service.

A Reddit user writes:

I met both Carl Page and Larry Page at a party hosted by a Stanford friend of mine in 1998. Carl gave me his card for eGroups and said "we're hiring". Larry gave me his card for Google — a flimsy bit of paper obviously printed by bubble jet — and said "we're hiring". I said, "Nah, who needs another search engine?" and went to graduate school. I still have the card.

He wasn't the only one who thought that search engines aren't very useful. Google's founders faced difficulties in convincing investors that a search engine is a good business. Sun's co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim was the first Google investor, back in September 1998. "Andy Bechtolsheim was one of the few to see the true potential of what Brin and Page had wrought. During their presentation to him, Bechtolsheim said he had to duck out for another meeting and offered to write them a check. It was that hundred-grander, made out to Google Inc., that got the ball (and the bank) rolling. Brin and Page incorporated, managing to attract other investors, with an initial investment of around $1 million."

{ via waxy.org }

Google's search results pages haven't changed that much over time and most of the changes were subtle. An useful feature that has been removed was a list of competing search engines you could use if Google's results weren't very good. Here's an example from 2001:

"Try your query on: AltaVista Excite Google Groups (Deja) HotBot Lycos Yahoo!"


But Google's results have improved, the number of competing search engines has decreased and the list had to be updated frequently, so Google decided to remove the feature. Some add-ons have revived the feature: Customize Google is the most popular, but my favorite implementation is the Greasemonkey script "Try this search on", which lets you switch between different search engines.

Google's Matt Cutts had the idea to bring back the old feature as close to the original as possible and Tiffany Lane, another Google engineer, developed Retro Links, a Greasemonkey script that lists some alternative search engines at the bottom of the search results page. The list is customizable and you can choose between 42 services: Yahoo, Live Search, Flickr, Wikipedia, Gmail and many others.


I think it would be interesting if Google started to suggest third-party search engines that could provide useful results for your queries, based on your search history, location and relevance. In some cases, Google could even display results from other sites in some special OneBoxes: Flickr results sorted by "interestingness", Delicious bookmarks sorted by popularity, Twitter posts that are related to recent events etc.

Google brought back the index from January 2001 to show how many things have changed in almost 8 years. At that time, Google's index included 1,326,920,000 web pages and it was the most comprehensive index of a search engine.

Google explains that the index from January 2001 is the earliest available. "Well, for various technical reasons that are too boring to go into, earlier versions of our index aren't readily accessible. But we did still want to offer users a chance to search an older index as a way of looking back at web history, and the January 2001 index is the best we can do."

As Wikipedia informs us, January 2001 was an important month: Wikipedia is founded, George W. Bush becomes the 43rd President of the United States and Apple introduces iTunes.


A search for Gmail returned results about a Linux mail client and the Garfield email service:


If you search for Google, you'll find references to very few Google services: Google Directory, Google Toolbar and specialized search engines for Apple, Linux, but not yet Microsoft.


In 2001, Google's algorithms were less smart than today:


Unfortunately, Google doesn't use the interface from 2001 and the exclamation mark has been removed from the logo in 1999. Here's an original Google SERP from May 2001, courtesy of Christina Wodtke:


Another anachronism is this error page titled "2001 problems":


For more Google nostalgia, don't miss Google's special site for the 10th birthday.

{ via Blogoscoped }

Everyone quotes Google's informal motto "Don't be evil" (it's not "Do no evil") when Google does something questionable. Wikipedia's article for "Don't be evil" includes a fragment from John Battelle's book "The Search" that explains its origins:

On July 19, 2001, about a dozen early employees met to mull over the founders' directive [to elucidate Google's core values] ... The meeting soon became cluttered with the kind of easy and safe corporate clichés that everyone can support, but that carry little impact: Treat Everyone with Respect, for example, or Be on Time for Meetings.

The engineers in the room were rolling their eyes. [Amit] Patel recalls: "Some of us were very anticorporate, and we didn't like the idea of all these specific rules. And engineers in general like efficiency — there had to be a way to say all these things in one statement, as opposed to being so specific."

That's when Paul Buchheit, another engineer in the group, blurted out what would become the most important three words in Google's corporate history. "Paul said, 'All of these things can be covered by just saying, Don't Be Evil,'" Patel recalls. "And it just kind of stuck."

... In the months after the meeting, Patel scribbled "Don't Be Evil" in the corner of every whiteboard in the company... The message spread, and it was embraced, especially by Page and Brin... "I think it's much better than Be Good or something," Page jokes. "When you are making decisions, it causes you to think. I think that's good."

Paul Buchheit, Gmail's first engineer, who now works at a start-up called FriendFeed, remembers that user's trust was an important decision factor.

At the time that the phrase was created, paid inclusion was a big issue, and we generally felt that it was rather evil due to its deceptive nature. In general, anything that involves deceiving your users is likely to be evil.

I think the most important effect of "Don't be evil" is that it gives everyone license to question decisions instead of simply following orders. I expect that the result is therefore reflected in thousands of small decisions and debates rather than a few large, highly visible issues. The other effect of course is that Google is held to a higher standard.

It's difficult to keep this high standard when you're a big corporation that needs to stay competitive. The difference between Google and other companies is that you'll never see news articles that question if other companies did something evil.

Eric Schmidt sees "Don't be evil" as a starting point for interesting conversations:

One day, very early on, I was in a meeting where an engineer said, "That would be evil." It was as if he'd said there was a murderer in the room. The whole conversation stopped, but then people challenged his assumptions. This had to do with how we would link our advertising system into search. We ultimately decided not to do what was proposed, because it was evil. That kind of story is repeated every hour now with thousands of people. Think of "Don't be evil" as an organizing principle about values. You and I may disagree on the definition of what is evil, but at least it gives us a way to have a very healthy debate.

To sum up,

Don't be evil =

"When you are making decisions, it causes you to think." (Larry Page)
"The most important effect of Don't be evil is that it gives everyone license to question decisions instead of simply following orders." (Paul Buchheit)
"Think of Don't be evil as an organizing principle about values." (Eric Schmidt)

There are so many questions and so little time to find answers for them. Before there was Google and other search engines, people relied on friends, family or books to solve their mysteries.

In 1924, a company from New York launched a question answering service: people asked questions by phone and received their answers after a short while.

Offering to answer any reasonable question telephoned to its office, a firm dealing in general information is said to have set up business in New York City. Subscribers to the service are permitted to put as many queries to the "question shop" as they desire. Each patron is given a code name and, it is reported, can receive aid from the station at any hour of the day or night. It is also claimed that eighty per cent of the queries do not require more than two minutes for an answer.

This reminds me of Kevin Fox's imaginary Google circa 1960.

{ Found by Modern Mechanix. Image used by permission. }

Paul Buchheit, Gmail's first engineer, writes about the first steps in the evolution of Gmail.

I wrote the first version of Gmail in one day. It was not very impressive. All I did was stuff my own email into the Google Groups (Usenet) indexing engine. I sent it out to a few people for feedback, and they said that it was somewhat useful, but it would be better if it searched over their email instead of mine. That was version two. After I released that people started wanting the ability to respond to email as well. That was version three. That process went on for a couple of years inside of Google before we released to the world.

And even when it was released, Gmail stayed in a closed beta for more than a year. After almost four years since the release, Gmail constantly adds new features and it's still in beta ("There's no good reason in the world for Gmail to still have the beta tag. It was supposed to have gone away a long time ago," says Paul).

Paul Buchheit, who left Google and currently works for a startup with other ex-Googlers, thinks it's important to release applications in an incipient phase to get feedback from users.

So what's the right attitude? Humility. It doesn't matter how smart and successful and qualified you are, you simply don't know what you're doing. (...) What is the humble approach to product design? Pay attention. Notice which things are working and which aren't. Experiment and iterate. Question your assumptions. Remember that you are wrong about a lot of things. Watch for the signals. Lose your technical and design snobbery.

Gmail got a delete button after many months of requests from users, even if Gmail's philosophy was "archive, don't delete". Gmail will also add some functionality from folders to its labels, most likely drag and drop.

The key step is to build a product that's interesting enough to a attract an audience and learn from people who use the product. "The sooner you can start testing your ideas, the sooner you can start fixing them," explains Paul.

Wired has an article about the design of Google's logo and its iterations. "Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who developed the now-famous logo, shows the iterations that led to the instantly recognizable primary colors and Catull typeface that define the Google brand. Kedar met Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page through a mutual friend nine years ago at Stanford University, where she was an assistant professor."

In the process, Ruth used a lot of symbols: from a pattern that suggests the infinite to interlocking rings that symbolize the power of search to transgress cultures, from a happy magnifying glass to sheer playfulness. "By taking out the magnifying glass, Kedar opens up the logo to signify that Google can become much more than just a search engine. By playing with the angles and colors of the letters, she tries to make clear that Google isn't a square corporation."

Ruth Kedar explains that she chose the Catull typeface because "Catull borrows elements from traditional writing instruments such as the quill and the chisel with a modern twist. Search, by nature, is an activity that requires we look into the past. Therefore Catull's historical ties seemed appropriate, as did the bridging between the old analog world and the new emerging digital era."

As you can see, the simple and cheerful Google logo hides a lot of interesting ideas and it's still relevant to the company, even if it's no longer just a search engine.

Before adopting a professional logo, Google used a logo created by Sergey Brin in GIMP. "Tinkering one day with a graphics program called GIMP, Sergey created a color rendering of the Google letters with an exclamation point at the end, mimicking Yahoo! He seemed quite proud of the new logo, which was composed of kindergarten-style block letters in primary colors. But it wasn't the look that meant the most to him. He was pleased that he had been able to teach himself how to use GIMP, free software that was tricky to employ," writes David A. Vise in The Google Story.

What search engine did you use in 2000? It's very likely that the answer is not Google. Three months before Google became the default search provider for Yahoo, Google's search results looked slightly different than they look today. Google showed relevant categories from DMOZ, the snippets were much shorter, the "related pages" feature was called GoogleScout, "I'm Feeling Lucky" was added to every search results pages and you could choose the number of search results from a drop-down. At that time, Google didn't offer any specialized search engine, but it added at the bottom of the page a list of links to competitors (you probably used one of those search engines). The number of search results was much smaller because Google only indexed around 200 million web pages and Google was still looking for ways to monetize the search engine.

Google still hosts a search results page from April 2000, even if it's slightly modified because it was a part of an April Fool's Day prank called Mentalplex. Here's a slightly updated search results page from later that year.



The same year, Google introduced text ads, but they were rather primitive. "Google has recently started to include text-only banner ads on their search engine, but you may have not noticed the change because most searches currently don't include a banner ad along with the search results," reported tomalak.org in January 2000. Here's how the advertising system worked at that time:

"Google uses its Patent-Pending PageRank Technology and sophisticated query classification to create a Virtual Directory. In other words, Google categorizes the thousands of different search queries into the Internet's most popular and targeted areas. Advertisers simply select from a wide range of available categories most appropriate to their business. Google will match the appropriate ads to the category most relevant to the user's search."


The web could still be approximated by directories, collections of high-quality sites manually categorized by editors. In March 2000, Google integrated data from the Open Directory Project: "1.5 million entries, arranged in over 200,000 categories, selected and maintained by a volunteer corps of more than 22,000 editors." Larry Page concluded that "the addition of Netscape's Open Directory Project creates the most comprehensive and robust search resource for finding information and browsing the Web. We've combined the best aspects of search and directories to create an enhanced tool for easy access to information contained on the Web."

Google's traffic started to grow at an alarming rate. "Google ended 1999 averaging about 7 million searches each day, a roughly 70,000% increase over the 10,000 searches per day that were performed on the Google site in December 1998! This explosive growth reflects the total number of searches performed by users on www.google.com and on our corporate partner sites. As of the middle of January, we are averaging more than 10 million searches each day," reported Sergey Brin and Larry Page in the company's newsletter. Google wasn't satisfied and launched an affiliate program that enticed webmasters to add a Google search box to their sites. "By signing up for our affiliate program (...) you'll be able to place a Google search box on your site and begin receiving 3 cents for each search you send our way." At the end of 2000, Google handled more than 100 million search queries a day.

2000 was also the year when Matt Cutts joined Google. "When I joined in 2000, Google was a scrappy underdog search engine. Back then, Altavista was vastly more popular and reported 50 million searches a day. Google was popular among savvy webmasters and at many universities, and usage was growing quickly by word-of-mouth, but the smart folks at Google were eager for the company to be more well-known."

An example of positive feedback from 2000 (Usenet, via Google Groups):

"Try www.google.com. I've been most impressed with its ability to return good, relevant hits. Another big bonus with Google is that the site is almost completely clear of bandwidth-hogging graphics and advertising. The web site has to be the fastest I've ever seen."

2000 is the year that made Google a successful search engine, even if many people wondered what's the revenue strategy. "The company's adamant refusal to use banner or other graphical ads eliminates what is the most lucrative income stream for rival search engines. Although Google does have other revenue sources, such as licensing and text-based advertisements, the privately held company's business remains limited compared with its competitors," concluded Business Week in December 2000. "Now comes Google's big test. Can it keep forswearing pay-for-placement deals that allow commercial sites to buy high rankings in searches? Yahoo has begun cutting these deals in droves, matching lesser competitor LookSmart. But Brin says he isn't worried: When somebody searches for 'cancer,' should you put up the site that paid you or the site that has better information? Brin is betting better information will win the day. "

The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button is one of the very few things that stand out on Google's minimalistic homepage. It automatically takes you to the first search result and it's helpful for navigational queries, when there's a single good result (e.g.: [Yahoo Mail], [download Opera]). The option was included in a slightly altered manner in Google Toolbar and Firefox: browse by name instead of typing URLs in the address bar.

I'm Feeling Lucky:
http://google.com/search?btnI=1&q=yahoo+mail

Browse by Name:
http://google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=mail
http://google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=yahoo+mail

Marketplace found more about "I'm Feeling Lucky" and its meaning.

"The reason it's called 'I'm Feeling Lucky,' is of course that's a pretty damn ambitious goal. I mean to get the exact right one thing without even giving you a list of choices, and so you have to feel a little bit lucky if you're going to try that with one go," tried to explain Sergey Brin.

"You know Larry and Sergey had the view, and I certainly share it, that it's possible just to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money. And you know what I think is really delightful about Google and about the "I'm Feeling Lucky," is that they remind you that the people here have personality and that they have interests and that there is real people," said Marissa Mayer.

Even if only 1% from Google's searches bypass the search results page and go straight to the top result, Google will keep the strange button on the homepage as it has become a part of its brand. Probably the last time someone told you to click the button was to show you a Google Bomb: Go to Google, type in "miserable failure" and then press the "I'm feeling lucky" button (don't try, it won't work anymore). Or maybe you've seen the button in Picasa or iGoogle.

Jeff Atwood from Coding Horror thinks that the button is Google's number one UI mistake: "I understand this was a clever little joke in the early days of Google-- hey, look at us, we're a search engine that actually works! -- but is it really necessary to carry this clever little joke forward ten years and display it on the monitors of millions of web users every day? We get it already. Google is awesomely effective."

Google will remove the button when you won't have to feel lucky to get the best results every time and when the list of links will be replaced with an actual answer.

{ via Valleywag }

Google is the only major search engine that offers a "similar pages" feature, but not too many people use it. Launched in September 1999 as GoogleScout (scout=explore, investigate), the feature shows around 30 web pages related to a search result.

For example, to find sites related to Google Reader, you can click on the "similar pages" link placed after the snippet and you'll discover other feed readers, Google Reader's blog, information about feeds, blog platforms.


The related pages are generated by analyzing the link structure of the web. A patent from 2000 explains how this feature works: "a first set of hyperlinked documents that have a forward link to the selected hyperlinked document is provided. Additionally, a second set of hyperlinked documents that are pointed to by the forward links in the hyperlinked documents in the first set is provided. A value is assigned to each forward link in each of the hyperlinked documents in the first set, with the value being reduced for a forward link if there are multiple hyperlinked documents from the same host as the hyperlinked document that includes the forward link. A score is generated for each hyperlinked document in the second set according to the values of the forward links pointing to the hyperlinked document. Accordingly, a list of related hyperlinked documents is generated from the second set according to the score of the hyperlinked documents."

Basically, you're expecting that many sites that link to Google Reader will also link to its competitors and to related information. This is very similar to Amazon's recommendations: "customers who bought this item also bought".

How to use this features?

• find the competitors of a company (e.g.: DaimlerChrysler)
• find similar music (e.g.: Regina Spektor)
• you like a site and want to find other similar sites (digg)
• explore a domain (like machine learning)
• refine the search results (search for bass and find the related pages for the first result about the fish)

Unfortunately, Google's implementation has a major flaw: because many pages link to popular sites like Blogger, Flickr, StatCounter, you'll sometimes find these sites in the list of related links even if they're completely unrelated. Gred Linden calls this "the Harry Potter problem", when talking about Amazon's recommendation system. "The first version of similarities was quite popular. But it had a problem, the Harry Potter problem. Oh, yes, Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a runaway bestseller. Kids buy it. Adults buy it. Everyone buys it. So, take a book, any book. If you look at all the customers who bought that book, then look at what other books they bought, rest assured, most of them have bought Harry Potter."

So even if GoogleScout doesn't work well all the time, it's a great tool for research and serependitious discoveries (add a bookmarklet to your browser to use this feature for any site you visit). Another way to find related pages is to search for a site in Google Directory and to click on its category. Similicio.us uses the bookmarks from del.icio.us to complete this sentence: "people who bookmarked this site also bookmarked...", while the untrustworthy Alexa fills in the blanks for "people who visit this site also visit...". Google also uses similar ideas to provide recommendations based on your search history.

Wikipedia's page for Google changed a lot as Google morphed from a search engine to an Internet company. The Wayback Machine is a good way to see how a web page evolved over time and it's easier to browse than Wikipedia's own history service. I only included the introduction of each version of the article and Google's homepage from the same period.

December 2003



Google is an Internet search engine that not only indexes the World Wide Web, but also caches the web pages themselves. It also indexes pictures on the web, Usenet newsgroups and news sites. As of 2003, it was the most popular search engine, handling upwards of 80% of all internet searches through its website and clients like Yahoo! and AOL.


July 2004



Google is the most popular search engine on the World Wide Web. Through its website and client websites, such as AOL, Google receives roughly 200 million search requests per day. Google has its headquarters (called the "Googleplex") in Mountain View, California, USA.

In addition to web pages, Google also provides services for searching images, Usenet newsgroups, news sites, and items for sale online. As of June 2004, Google contained 4.28 billion web pages, 880 million images and 845 million Usenet messages in its index; a total of 6 billion items. It also caches much of the content that it indexes.


December 2004



Google is a U.S.-based search engine owned by Google Inc. whose mission "is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The largest search engine on the web, Google receives over 200 million queries each day through its various services.

In addition to its tool for searching webpages, Google also provides services for searching images, Usenet newsgroups, news websites, and items for sale online. As of November 2004, Google has indexed 8.05 billion webpages, 880 million images, and 845 million Usenet messages — in total, over 9.5 billion items. It also caches much of the content that it indexes. Some of the other programs that operate under Google control include Blogger, Picasa, Keyhole, Froogle, and Google Desktop Search.


March 2005



Google, Inc. is a U.S.-based corporation, established in 1998, that manages the Google search engine. Google is headquartered at the "Googleplex" in Mountain View, California, and employs over 3,000 workers. Google's CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt, formerly CEO of Novell, took over when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.


March 2006



Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is a U.S. public corporation, first incorporated as a privately held corporation in September, 1998, that designs and manages the Internet Google search engine. The company employs approximately 5,700 employees and is based in Mountain View, California. Eric Schmidt, formerly chief executive officer of Novell, was named Google's CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.

The name "Google" is a play on the word "googol," which refers to the number represented by 1 followed by one hundred zeros. As a further play on this, Google's headquarters, located in California, are referred to as "the Googleplex" — a googolplex being 1 followed by a googol of zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf. multiplex, cineplex, etc).

Google's services are run on several server farms, each consisting of many thousand low-cost commodity computers running stripped-down versions of Linux. While the company does not provide detailed information about its hardware, it was estimated in 2005 that they were using more than 100,000 Linux machines. See Google platform for more details on their technology.


July 2006



Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American multinational software corporation, first incorporated as a privately held corporation in September, 1998, that specializes in search engine, information retrieval technology and online advertising. With a market capitalization of US$118.32 billion as of June 2006, Google is the largest internet search company in the world, almost twice as large as rival Yahoo! The company employs approximately 6,800 employees and is based in Mountain View, California. Eric Schmidt, formerly chief executive officer of Novell, was named Google's CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," which refers to 10^100 (a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Google has become well known for its corporate culture and innovative, clean products, and has a major impact on online culture. The verb "to google" has come to mean "to perform a Web search", usually with the Google search engine.

Google's services are run on several server farms, which, in 2004, consisted of over 30 clusters of up to 2,000 PCs per cluster. Each cluster contains one petabyte of data with sustained transfer rates of 2 Gbps. Combined, over four billion web pages, averaging 10 Kb each, have been fully indexed.


November 2006



Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American public corporation and search engine, first incorporated as a privately held company on 7 September 1998. The company had 9,378 full-time employees as of September 30, 2006 and is based in Mountain View, California. Eric Schmidt, former chief executive officer of Novell, was named Google's CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," which refers to 10^100 (a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Google has had a major impact on online culture. The verb "google" was recently added to both the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."

Google's services are run on several server farms, each consisting of thousands of low-cost commodity computers running stripped-down versions of Linux. While the company does not provide detailed information about its hardware, a 2006 estimate consisted of over 450,000 servers, racked up in clusters located in data centers around the world (See Google platform for more details on their technology). According to the Nielsen cabinet, Google is the most used search engine on the web with a 54% market share, ahead of Yahoo! (23%) and MSN (13%). However, independent estimates from popular sites indicate that more than 80% of search referrals come from Google, with Yahoo! a distant second and MSN occupying barely 5%. The Google search engine receives about a billion search requests per day.


June 2007



Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American public corporation, specializing in Internet searching and online advertising. The company is based in Mountain View, California, and has 12,238 full-time employees (as of March 31, 2007). Google's mission statement is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google's corporate philosophy includes statements such as, "You can make money without doing evil," and, "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun," illustrating a somewhat relaxed corporate culture.

Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University, and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998. Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising USD1.67 billion, making it worth $23 billion. Through a series of new product developments, acquisitions and partnerships, the company has expanded its initial search and advertising business into other areas, including web-based email, online mapping, office productivity, and video sharing, among others.

Like most large corporations, Google's businesses have drawn some controversy, such as copyright disputes in its book search project, or censorship by Google of search results as it works with countries such as France, Germany, and China -- each of whom have laws requiring the company hide information from Google users in their country. Additionally, in the post September 11 era, several governments and militaries have raised concerns about the national security risks posed by vivid geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging. However, it should be noted that all of the images and details visible in Google Earth are available through other public, free sources; Google Earth does, however, make it easier to access.

"I think, in general, people are uncomfortable with things that are different. Even now when I talk about adding new features to Gmail, if it isn't just a small variation or rearranging what's already there, people don't like it. People have a narrow concept of what's possible, and we're limited more by our own ideas about what's possible than what really is possible. So they just get uncomfortable, and they kind of tend to attack it for whatever reason."



Paul Buchheit is the man behind Gmail, the first and the most successful AJAX web application from Google.

On April 1, 2004, we rolled out the first release of Gmail. It immediately became known for giving away 1000 MB of storage, while the others only offered 4 MB, as they had for many years. We didn't do that just for the attention (although we certainly got our share). It's just part of our philosophy. We always want to do as much as we can for our users, and so if we can make something free, we will.

But storage was only the most obvious difference, and our other improvements were just as important. Gmail included a quick and accurate search. It introduced powerful new concepts to organize email, such as the conversation view (so now I can finally see all those replies at once). It provided a fast and dynamic interface from web browsers everywhere, popularizing the techniques that have since become known as AJAX.

This interface included many important features not commonly found on the web at that time, such as email address auto-completion, a slick spell-checker, keyboard shortcuts, and pages that update instantly. It included a smart spam filter to get rid of junk mail. Finally, we made an important new promise: you can keep your Gmail address and all of your email, even if you someday decide that Gmail is not for you. Cell phone owners already have the right to keep their old phone number when switching to a new provider, and you should have that same freedom with email. To ensure this freedom, Gmail provides, for free, both email forwarding and POP download of all your mail. Many services are now beginning to include other Gmail innovations; we hope that some day they will also be willing to include this one.

But Gmail managed to make other competing email services improve.

Mr. Buchheit said he started working on Gmail after observing that other email programs were getting worse, not better. Microsoft's Mr. Doerr said that at his company, Gmail was a thunderbolt. "You guys woke us up," he told Mr. Buchheit. Yahoo's Mr. Diamond, then at a startup with its own hot, new email program, [OddPost, now known as Yahoo Mail Beta] said Gmail was the final impetus that Yahoo needed to buy his company.

Mr. Buchheit responded with a victory lap. "We were trying to make the email experience better for our users," he said. "We ended up making it better for yours, too."

"Paul was one of the first engineers at Google. Among other things, he came up with the idea for PigeonRank. Oh yeah, and Gmail, which he largely built himself in the middle of the night. Paul liked to get to the office after noon or even at dinnertime, then work on into the next morning," recalls an ex-Googler. He also wrote the original prototype of Google AdSense and came up with Google's mantra: "Don't be evil". He joined Google in 1999, but he left the company last year because his life there became "too predictable, and too typical." But you can find him at his blog where he still talks a lot about Google.

Jeff Atwood visited the Computer History Museum from Mountain View, California. Among other impressive things, he saw one of Google's first production servers.

"Instead of buying whatever pre-built rack-mount servers Dell, Compaq, and IBM were selling at the time, Google opted to hand-build their server infrastructure themselves. The sagging motherboards and hard drives are literally propped in place on handmade plywood platforms. The power switches are crudely mounted in front, the network cables draped along each side. The poorly routed power connectors snake their way back to generic PC power supplies in the rear. (...)

Even today, Google is serious about exerting total control over the servers in their now-massive server farms. They build their own high-efficiency power supplies, and conduct fascinating, public research on disk failure. Current estimates put Google's server farm at around 450,000 machines - and they're still custom built, commodity-class x86 PCs, just like they were in 1999."

Jeff thinks it's a good idea to follow Google's model and to build your own PC, by using your favorite components. He even offers some suggestions.

In December 2001, when there was no Digg or StumbleUpon, Google Toolbar launched a beta version:

A new version of the Google toolbar now in beta testing sports a new look -- happy and sad faces that let toolbar users rate web pages. (...)

Google says that excessive clicks are watched for. Google also assures that it has mechanisms in place to ensure good sites don't get penalized by competitors voting against them.

Here's how Google describes the feature: "Use these buttons to vote for or against a page or search result. Click the happy or unhappy face to tell Google that you like or dislike a particular page. You can also use these buttons to report especially good or bad results after you do a search with Google."

Matt Cutts explained at that time: "Right now it's just an experiment. Worst case, it's an easy way for people to report spam that we can handle automatically. We might see if we can improve our search with this data."

In 2003, when Google Toolbar 2 was launched, Google was still undecided: "This feature is currently in test mode, so you will not notice any immediate effects based on your action, other than experiencing a warm sense of satisfaction from having shared your feelings with people who really do care."

The tests must have been positive since the feature was included in the next version too. It's interesting to note that the mysterious feature continous to be available in the Internet Explorer version of Google Toolbar (Settings > Options > More > Voting), but it hasn't been included in the Firefox extension.


This small feature may have been responsible for detecting spam sites or for changing page rankings, but Google could resurrect it and make it a part of Google Personalized Search. They already show interesting pages related to your interests, these voting buttons could refine Google's data and improve the personalized search results.

Press releases are boring, but the about section from the end (or the boilerplate) could tell you a lot about a company. Here are some excerpts from Google's press releases over the years.

1999:

-"Google is dedicated to providing the best search experience on the web. Google has its own search destination site at http://google.com. Google also offers co-branded solutions for information content providers. Google was founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, building on three years of research as computer science Ph.D. candidates at Stanford University. Traffic has been growing at a rate of 50% per month since Google's inception, fueled only by word of mouth."

1999-2000:

-"Google was founded in 1998 by Stanford University Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin to create a new generation of powerful, scalable search engine products to improve the user experience of searching the web. Based on three years of advanced research in computer science, Google is dedicated to providing the best user search experience by delivering a powerful, yet simple-to-use format for finding the most relevant answers to search queries."

2000:

-"Google exists to provide the world's best Internet search experience. Google accomplishes this for millions of users daily by delivering a powerful, fast, and easy way to find the most relevant information available. Google's technological innovations have powered the company to numerous awards, including a 2000 Webby and People's Voice Award For Best Technical Achievement; Best Search Engine on the Internet from Yahoo! Internet Life; Top Ten Best Cybertech of 1999 by TIME magazine; Technical Excellence Award from PC Magazine; and Best Search Engine by The Net."

2001-2002:

-"With the largest index of websites available on the World Wide Web and the industry's most advanced search technology, Google Inc. delivers the fastest and easiest way to find relevant information on the Internet. (...) A growing number of companies worldwide, including Yahoo! and its international properties, Sony Corporation and its global affiliates, Netscape, and Cisco Systems, rely on Google to power search on their websites."

(at some point in) 2004:

-"Google is a global technology leader focused on improving the way people connect with information. Google's innovations in web search and advertising have made its website a top Internet destination and its brand one of the most recognized in the world. Google maintains the world's largest online index of websites and other content, and Google makes this information freely available to anyone with an Internet connection. Google's automated search technology helps people obtain nearly instant access to relevant information from its vast online index."

2003-now:

-"Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia."

2006 (April Fool's Day edition):

-"Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. wannabes Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets and a very large number of minor ones. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for those users who haven't tuned out of online commerce altogether. Most Google lava lamps and bean bag chairs are located in Silicon Valley, though numerous such lamps and chairs can also be found in offices throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia."

Trying to provide the best search engine and to improve the way people connect with information, Google became a great brand and a top web property thanks to the word of the mouth, the important awards received and the collaboration with Yahoo, Netscape and other companies. Independent of platform, browser or language, Google conquered the world by being fast, easy to use and friendly.

Here are some definitions for Google from 1999:

Larry Page: "Google fills a real void in the Internet precisely because we have a manic passion for pure, unadulterated search."

Sergey Brin: "Google strives to get Internet users to the information they want as quickly and efficiently as possible, and that's all we do. We've engendered such strong loyalty because Google provides the purest and most powerful search experience on the web."