Google in a Whole

Google in a whole

According to Google lore, company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were not terribly fond of each other when they first met as Stanford University graduate students in computer science in 1995. Larry was a 24-year-old University of Michigan alumnus on a weekend visit; Sergey, 23, was among a group of students assigned to show him around. They argued about every topic they discussed. Their strong opinions and divergent viewpoints would eventually find common ground in a unique approach to solving one of computing's biggest challenges: retrieving relevant information from a massive set of data.

On June 7, the company announced that it had secured a round of funding that included $25 million from the two leading venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In a replay of the convergence of opposites that gave birth to Google, the two firms -- normally fiercely competitive, but seeing eye-to-eye on the value of this new investment -- both took seats on the board of directors. Mike Moritz of Sequoia and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins -- who between them had helped grow Sun Microsytems, Intuit, Amazon, and Yahoo! -- joined Ram Shriram, CEO of Junglee, at the ping pong table that served as formal boardroom furniture.

The gridlock was alleviated with the move to the Googleplex, Google's current headquarters in Mountain View, California. And tucked away in one corner of the two-story structure, the Google kernel continued to grow -- attracting staff and clients and drawing attention from users and the press. AOL/Netscape selected Google as its web search service and helped push traffic levels past 3 million searches per day. Clearly, Google had evolved. What had been a college research project was now a real company offering a service that was in great demand. As 2000 ended, Google was already handling more than 100 million search queries a day -- and continued to look for new ways to connect people with the information they needed, whenever and wherever they needed it. They reached out first to a population with a never-ending need for knowledge -- students, educators, and researchers -- paying homage to Google's academic roots by offering free search services to schools, universities, and other educational institutions worldwide

In a nod to Google's continuing international expansion, Nikesh Arora joined as senior executive overseeing