In September 1998, Google Inc. opened its door in Menlo Park, California. The door came with a remote control, as it was attached to the garage of a friend who sublet space to the new corporation’s staff of three. The office offered several big advantages, including a washer and dryer and a hot tub.
Google Milestones
The baseline of the company might be “don’t be evil“, but it actually should be something like “dare to dream”. What Larry Page and Sergey Brin have done a number of times already, is realize the improbable and seemingly insane in a market, redefine the standards of how things should be done, and kill off most of the competitors in one go.
- Build a storage engine with thousands of cheap servers instead of dozens of expensive ones. (Google File System is an essential read)
- Deliver search results in less than a second: keep a copy of all 8 billion pages in RAM memory.
- Give everyone a free email address with 1GB of space instead of 2MB (they can manage the $2/GB cost)
- Create a non-intrusive contextual advertising system that is profitable
- Run the world’s biggest outsourced content management system as a free blogging service.
- Create a mapping service that is free, up-to-date and easy to integrate – and show the whole world the AJAX way.
- Provide free wireless service everywhere (this one is not confirmed, but God, it would be nice)
A very happy birthday to Google, and I hope they stay around a whole while longer so they can shake up the establishment.
Google & music? Google & movies? Google & hardware? Google & office software? Google & payment? …