Anna Redding - Google It!: How Two Students’ Mission to Organize the Internet Changed the World

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To Crowley and Quinn,
may you always shoot for the moon

Need to know how many stacked pennies it would take to reach the moon? Want to know about the latest visual effects technology used to make Star Wars ? Need to know if George Washington really had dentures made out of wood?

FYI:

It would take a stack of 240 billion pennies to reach the moon!

Star Wars special effectsCheck out this cool link for a peek at how the latest computer graphics (CG) were used to pull off the stunning visuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obwG9k6x2us

Was George Washingtons wooden smile made from wooden teeth? NO. His false teeth were actually made of bone, ivory, and sometimes other humans teeth.

Imagine you cant google the answers becausewell, Google hasnt been invented yet.

You have two choices. You can sit there on your couch, swallow your curiosity like a bitter pill, and live with not knowing.

Or you can get your parents to drive you to the library. Fingers crossed, the answers you need are somewhere in the pages of a book thats somewhere on their bookshelves.

But wait a minute. What if your parents dont know how to get to the library? Youll have to consult a paper map.

WARNING! Unless you are an origami dynamo, once you unfold a map, it might never be refolded correctly. Never. Dont even try.

Still cant find it?

It may come down to this: You have to use a paper phone book to look up the librarys phone number. Then, pick up your home phone (the kind thats wired to a wall), wait for a real, live human being to answer, and then ask for directions. Yikes!

Its hard to believe, but that was life without Google. Getting information was difficult and took a lot of work.

Horrified? The two guys who thought up Google were just as freaked out as you are. This was the world they grew up in, back in the 1970s and 1980s. And even as kids, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin knew they wanted to change the world.

When Larry and Sergey were born in 1973, technology was in a very different place than it is today. In most homes, telephones were attached to walls and could only be used to make phone calls. No texts, no news, no mapsjust phone calls. Hope was coming. That year, the first-ever cell phone call was made. But these cell phones were huge, like talking into a brick. Plus, the battery life was around twenty minutes. And then there was the price tag: $3,995! In todays dollars? That would set you back more than $22,000.

Oh, and about your TV. If you needed to change the channel, you had to get up and physically turn a dial on your TV set, unless you were one of the lucky ones who had a pricey remote control!

Computers had been something used mostly by scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in research and academic settings. They were physically huge and could take up an entire desk or even a whole room. But this last thing was about to changejust in time to inspire Larrys and Sergeys love of technology.

But it wouldnt be easy. Larry and Sergey were born on opposites sides of the planet. And when their paths finally crossed, they didnt even like each other.

Its a wonder Google ever happened at all.

When Larry and Sergey met during the summer of 1995, they should have been the best of friends. After all, they both loved computers, math, engineering, science, and technology. They had both attended Montessori schools and grown up in families steeped in STEM. Thats a lot in common.

BFFs at first sight, right? Nope. Not even close.

When they met for the very first time, Larry and Sergey couldnt stand each other! Twenty-two-year-old Larry was supposed to be enjoying a welcome tour of San Francisco for new students checking out nearby Stanford University. Already accepted to Stanford, Larry was giving the university a thorough look-see before deciding if he wanted to study therethough secretly he couldnt believe Stanford wanted him!

Spanish colonists founded San Francisco in 1776. The Gold Rush of 1849 made San Francisco the largest city on the West Coast. Today, the San Francisco Bay Area is home to 8.7 million people, making it the fifth-largest metro area in America.

Enter twenty-one-year-old Sergey. He was the tour guide. Who better to lead the tour? As a second-year graduate student, Sergey was known for zipping around Stanfords hallways on Rollerblades. He was not only fun, he was smart, too. Sergey had already aced his required courses and now devoted a serious chunk of time to advanced swimming, trapeze lessons, and Ultimate Frisbee. (Oh! And some elective courses. He did fit some study into his free time.)

But as Larry and Sergey trudged up one hill and down another, this duo filled the streets of San Francisco with their bickering banter. They argued about anything and everything needling, poking, prodding, questioning, interrupting, and talking down to each other. Their first meeting was a disaster.

The only thing the two agreed on was their opinion of the other. In a word? Obnoxious .

Aerial view of Stanford University. (Photo by Jrissman.)

The sprawling 8,000-acre Stanford University campus was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (designer of New York Citys famous Central Park). Sitting in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford has long been an incubator for creativity and innovation. Companies including Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo!, Cisco, Intuit, and SunMicrosystems can trace their origins to Stanford.

But the same chemistry that sparked the nonstop squabbling also acted like a magnet. By the time school started in the fall of 1995, Larry and Sergey had discovered that they actually had a lot in common, from their science-filled childhoods to their passion for technology and engineering, not to mention their undeniable knack for spirited debate. Both Larry and Sergey were confident in exploring new ideas and taking risks. They were also both obsessed with efficiency and improving the way things worked.

And in just a few months, they would team up on a school assignment that would change their livesand ours, too.

NAME: Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin

DATE OF BIRTH: August 21, 1973

PLACE: Moscow, Russia

FIRST COMPUTER: Age 9, Commodore 64

Commodore 64. (Photo by Evan Amos.)

Sure, by todays standards, the Commodore 64 isnt much to look at, but this remains one of the most popular computers ever sold. Because of the quality of the audio and graphics, it was great for gaming. The Commodore 64 sold for $595 in 1982.

FAMILY: Sergey Brin was born into a family of intellectuals. His great-grandmother? A microbiologist. His grandfather? A math professor. Both of his parents were brilliant mathematicians.

They were also very brave. Faced with anti-Semitism and discrimination in their home country of Russia, Sergeys parents made the difficult choice to leave everything behind and start a new life in America. Sergey was only six years old.