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Google Is Ten: The Search Engine That Changed the World

With Chrome Now Released, It May Fancy Tasting Its Cake Early
By Jeremy Geelan
Article Rating:
September 9, 2008 12:45 PM EDT
Reads:
 4,035

Google opened its doors in September 1998. But, as the Google official site phrases it, "The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake." Maybe, now that Chrome is released, instead of waiting till the 27th of the month as it did last year, Larry Page and Sergey Brin will feast on a nice big cake right away this week - along with the three key members of the Google Chrome team pictured).

Here's a round-up of what people are saying about the ten-year old giant from Mountain View, CA:

"[Chrome] really looks like an interesting and innovative approach to browsing the web," declared Svetlana Gladkova right here, in Web 2.0 Journal.

In his New York Times blog, Miguel Helft concentrated not on Chrome but on numerical comparisons between Google and arch-rival Microsoft, including the following:

Google’s age: 10
Microsoft’s age: 33

Google’s revenue in the last 4 quarters: $19.6 billion
Microsoft’s revenue in the last 4 quarters: $60.4 billion

Google employees, as of June 30th: 19,604
Microsoft employees, as of May 31st: 89,809

Market value of Google: $142 billion
Market value of Microsoft: $241 billion

Number of tech companies with a market value larger than Google’s: 3 (Microsoft, I.B.M. and Apple, in that order)

Harry McCracken has a different approach, he decides to speculate what the Web (and the world) would have looked like if Google had never been founded. A novel approach. Here's his conclusion about Gmail, for example:

"Ultimately, Gmail didn’t change everything for e-mail, and some of the things it did change would have happened with or without Google. But the change likely happened faster than it would have otherwise."

The Boston Herald has a lovely quote from Craig Silverstein, Google’s technology director and the first employee hired by Page and Brin.

"There are people who think we are plenty full of ourselves right now, but from inside at least, it doesn’t look that way. I think what keeps us humble is realizing how much further we have to go."

Silicon Valley's own Mercury News is already on to not its first but its second review of Chrome, concluding:

"A lot has been said about how Chrome is crash-proof. While nothing is anything proof, I have already experienced the advantage of Google's multi-threaded approach. I visited a couple of sites that ground Chrome to a halt. But instead of having to close the entire browser, I just closed that one tab and everything continued to work. With Firefox, I often have to press Ctrl+Alt+the Del to abort the entire program and there have even been times when I've had to power down my PC to get out of a browser crash."

Om Malik, as only Om Malik can, headlines his blogged celebration "Google at 10: Larry, Sergey & Me" and uses the 10th birthday moment as a springboard t a trip down memory lane to 1999 when he was writing a Forbes.com feature and had the opportunity to speak with Page and Brin:

"Larry Page & Sergey Brin had stopped by at the Forbes.com offices and we talked at length about the company. It ultimately resulted in this feature, How Google Is That? Larry still had the same disastrous haircut he supports today. Brin was measured and logical as always in his responses. They thankfully made no meaningless and “do-no-evil” hypocritical statements. They were just two guys out to change the world. I remember getting along with them famously, but never saw or talked to them since, though I have been to many Google press events."

 

 

Published September 9, 2008 – Reads 4,035
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Jeremy Geelan

Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the all-new International Cloud Computing Expo series, of the International Virtualization Expo series, of AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo series, and of the long-running SOAWorld Conference & Expo series. He's founder of Cloud Computing Journal, Web 2.0 Journal, AJAX & RIA Journal and other leading SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.

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