1one day at the end of August, 1998, two Stanford university graduates, Page and Bush, clicked the mouse several times in front of Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Sun, and obtained the latter's investment of $654.38 million. At that time, they showed Bekto Shm a new Internet search technology. Bectosheim, who has worked hard in Silicon Valley for many years, immediately realized that this technology has great market growth potential. He did not hesitate to sign a check worth $6,543,800 to Page and Bush. The number of this check is 4642.

1On September 7th, 998, Page and Brin formally founded Google in a garage in the suburb of California, USA. At that time, it was still a little-known startup. 10 years later, Google has become one of the most famous Internet brands in the world. According to data released by comScore, an Internet traffic monitoring agency, Google's share in the US search market is as high as 60%, which is three times that of the second-place Yahoo (Yahoo's US market share is about 20%).

In Portugal, Finland and Spain, Google has a market share of 90%. Google's revenue in 2007 was as high as $654.38+06.6 billion, while in 2003 it was only $654.38+05 billion. Looking back at the interviews with Brin and Page in early 1999, we can also see the mentality of the two founders at that time and the early development of Google.

As can be seen from a business card that Page once used, an exclamation point was added at the end of Google logo (see photo), which shows that the two founders really respected Yahoo at that time, because Yahoo's name was always followed by an exclamation point. As can be seen from this business card, Google's office moved from the garage to Palo Alto.

The following is a wonderful summary of the interviews of Page and Brin with the German magazine Stern in June 5438+0999 and June 5438+0:

Q: When did you have the idea of starting your own company?

Page: I had this idea three years ago when I was studying computer science. At that time, my research direction was link structure. Then I convinced others to be interested in it, and later Brin joined in.

Brin: My research direction at that time was data mining.

Page: We are both studying for computer degrees at Stanford University, and we think this is a good opportunity.

Q: Did you have any difficulty in seeking financial assistance?

Brin: We first reveal our ideas to our university tutors and other teachers, and then they introduce us to others. Soon after, we had an investor and a lawyer, and the financial assistance we received exceeded our expectations. We have also made some market planning, but we investors generally don't ask these questions at all. Until recently, an investor sent us an email saying, "By the way, have you made a marketing plan?"? I shouldn't have seen it before. "

Page: Actually, we will tell investors the work plan. Investors will also ask us questions to understand what we are usually busy with.

Brin: Before we founded the company, we had been doing research for three years, so we had a basic operating platform.

Page: We have close ties with people in the American IT industry. Didn't we just run out of college and say, "Hi! Can you give me some venture capital? "

Brin: All investors who have contacted us are willing to invest in Google. At present, we can receive an average of 5~ 10 emails every day to discuss our investment intention. We have collected their names before we decide what to do next. If we can get the support of big investment institutions, we don't need to develop hundreds of small investors.

Q: Do you think it's a little too late for you to enter the field of Internet search?

Page: There should be better technology in the field of search industry. For ordinary netizens, they often use search services when surfing the Internet, so this is a huge business opportunity. If your skills are good, you will naturally be welcomed by netizens. People often make decisions through online information, so if the corresponding companies can build a bridge between netizens and internet information, they will be in a good market position. In the field of search, there is still huge room for latecomers to join.

Brin: According to our experience, users attach great importance to the quality of the results returned by search engines. When we make some improvements to Google products, netizens will not notice this change, but the traffic will increase greatly. As long as your technology is advanced, users will reuse your products many times. They didn't do it on purpose, but subconsciously used the product again, because your search results are of higher quality. At present, Google traffic is increasing day by day, and we are not worried about our latecomer status.

Page: Another phenomenon is that many large Internet companies want to acquire search engines from outside, because it is not easy to develop search technology with their own teams. Fortunately, our search technology is not bad. We think we have the best search technology.

Q: What do you think Google will look like in the next five years? What kind of development will you two get then?

Brin: It will take a long time for this stream to reach the sea. In addition to the growth of financial strength, we will certainly benefit from other aspects, such as we will gain more market experience. If we plan to create another company in the future, IT will be much easier, because we have fully contacted the IT industry. One more thing, the operation itself is very exciting. I really like studying at Stanford University, but what you do when you start a company is completely different from studying at university. We should learn to deal with unfamiliar affairs, not just technology development.

We are doing something useful, that is, bringing our research results to the world. This is quite exciting in itself. I think maybe we can change netizens' online habits and make it easier for them to find all kinds of information.

Page: This is also one of my life goals. Search will play an important role in the daily life of netizens. As far as the two of us are concerned, we created Google because we have a belief that Google can do better in search technology, which is of great significance to changing the search experience of netizens around the world.

Q: Have you considered the huge risks in the process of starting a business?

Page: The situation in Silicon Valley is slightly different. For us, the risk is not great. If the company you started fails, it is actually equivalent to getting more funds. In fact, there are many factors that cause the failure of a startup, sometimes it has nothing to do with the founder, but because of other random factors.

Brin: Our main risk is working hours. We are redoubling our efforts. At present, the working hours of Google employees far exceed the normal working hours, not just 40 hours a week. We also hope to shorten the working hours. At first, we worked 12 hours a day and 6 days a week. We always want to shorten working hours, because we don't think extending working hours is necessarily effective.

Page: For most Internet companies, they are "around the clock" 24 hours a day. You need business to run; If there is a technical failure, it needs to be repaired immediately. Because of this, online startups are very different from conventional startups.

Brin: We are trying to reduce the weekly working hours to less than 60 hours.

Q: What are your usual job responsibilities?

Brin: The two of us are in charge of many things. We want to hand over some responsibilities to employees, but we still do a lot of low-level programming work. Besides programming, we will spend a lot of time talking with venture capitalists, which is also a strategic connection. We need to make some strategic development plans for the company.

Other duties of the two of us also include: taking out the garbage, bringing lunch boxes to employees, checking whether the work phone is normal, ordering work computers, and so on. We had four full-time employees last week, five this week and six next week. It is estimated that the number of our full-time employees will continue to increase in the future.