The first question most people have is, What the heck is a Google? It is a play on the word googol, which is the mathematical figure 1 followed by 100 zeros. Depending on the level of your love for math, this is either the greatest or lamest name for a search engine. Regardless, the clever kids at Google have turned it into a cultural standard.
The Beginning
Larry Page and Sergey Brin co-founded Google in January of 1996, then known as BackRub. The boys were in the early twenties and classic computer geeks. Sergey was born in Moscow, alum of the University of Michigan and visiting Stanford. Larry was assigned to be his guide. During this visit, they obviously hit it off or today nobody would give a hoot about linking strategies.
Although two men and the name BackRub may raise some questions, the name actually referred to a method for producing search engine rankings. Specifically, the BackRub search engine was designed to analyze the back links to a site. Although BackRub developed a following with those in the know, nothing much happened for a few years.
1998
As with most new businesses, the boys needed some serious cash. The brass at Yahoo...