[Nfb-science] If Google Was A Religion, I'd Join The Church
Fred Wurtzel
f.wurtzel at att.net
Fri Sep 30 02:02:27 UTC 2011
hello,
I love Google and wish them a happy Birthday. here's a short history.
Warm Regardsk,
Fred
Doodle Celebrates Google's 13th Birthday: Here are 13 Milestones
By [42]John P. Mello Jr., [43]PCWorld Sep 27, 2011 9:53 AM
Google Birthday Doodle Google enters its teens today and celebrates
with a Google Doodle of what else? a birthday cake as it has done in
previous years.
Today's doodle is a little more elaborate than most previous birthday
doodles. The Google logo is there, all right. But you might notice
there's an exclamation point after the logo. That was part of the
original emblem--something it ditched, thankfully, in 1999. The logo is
also obscured behind a birthday cake, presents, party streamers, cone
hats and balloons.
1998
Although most of the time Google celebrates its birthday today, the
google.com domain was registered on Sept. 15, 1997 and Google the
company wasn't incorporated until Sept. 4, 1998. On at least two
occasions in the past, Google has split the difference in those dates
and [44]celebrated its birthday on September 7.
Google didn't start posting birthday doodles to its main search page
until its fourth year anniversary in 2002.
True to high-tech mythos, Google was started in a garage by two
Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, with $100,000 in seed
money from Andy Bechtolsheim, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
Google Birthday Doodles
1999
But it didn't stay in that garage for long. Less than a year after
Google incorporated, it had already moved twice when in June 1999, it
announced it had secured $25 million in funding for its operations.
2000
By 2000, things began percolating for the search company. Its main
rival, Yahoo!, announced it would be using Google's search engine for
its site. Meanwhile, it hit the 100 million search queries a day mark
and launched its AdSense program.
2001
The next year the company went global, setting up its first
international office in Tokyo. It also added a new chairman of the
board, [45]Eric Schmidt, who soon became CEO of the company, and it
branched out into image searching.
2002
Google Labs, where the company develops new offerings, as well as
Froogle, its shopping search engine, and Google News were all launched
in 2002.
2003
The next year Google got into the blogging business with the
acquisition of Pyra Labs, maker of Blogger. It also launched Google
Print, now Google Book Search, which gave searchers the power to ferret
through excerpts from thousands of books in digital form. 2003 was also
the year that lexicographers recognized a new verb in the English
language: to google.
2004
In 2004, Google's search index reached eight billion items. As it moved
into its new digs, the Googleplex, its garage days were a distant
memory. A most important development during the year was the launch of
its web-based mail service, Gmail.
2005
Maps became a focus of the company in 2005, along with customizable
home pages (iGoogle), an online news reader (Google Reader) and Google
Analytics, for discovering Web metrics. The company also began taking
baby steps into the wireless realm by introducing mobile versions of
Gmail, Blogger and Search.
2006
In 2006, Google bought YouTube, and the following year it further
expanded the global reach of Google Maps and the audience for
applications like Google Docs and Gmail. It also added street level
photography to its maps offering, which opened a can of privacy worms
for the company around the world.
2008
Google continued to reach beyond its search roots in 2008 when it
launched a mobile phone operating system to compete with Apple's
popular iPhone, and it even waded into the browser wars with its own
offering, Chrome.
2009
Browsers and mobile operating systems weren't enough for the company,
though, and in 2009, it launched its own lightweight operating system,
Chrome OS, although it wasn't until 2011 that any computers running the
system began shipping in volume.
2010
By 2010, Google was a full fledged behemoth. As such, news about its
gee-whiz developments began to take a back seat to less flattering
notices. There was a [46]WiFi scandal, where it was discovered the
company was collecting information from open wireless networks. It
joined Verizon in a [47]net neutrality pact that appeared to some to be
jumping in bed with the devil.
2011
In a move that could transform the company yet again, Google in 2011,
entered into an agreement to acquire the mobile phone maker
[48]Motorola Mobility for about US$12.5 billion. Also in 2011, in one
of the largest settlements ever, Google agreed to [49]pay $500 million
to settle a case involving the importation of illegal prescription
drugs into the United States.
Over the last 13 years, Google has done an enormous amount to make the
lives of many people easier and more productive. It's made a few
missteps along the way, and it will undoubtedly make a few in the
future. By and large, though, it appears to have tried to live up to
its motto, "Don't be evil." That's something most of Google's users
hope the company will continue to do for the next 13 years of its
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