CLASS ASSIGNMENT 1 - Google

Simvuyele Mageza 213005600

INTERNET 2 – NET200T
TERM 1: CLASS ASSIGNMENT 1
2/12/2014
MS SHOLAIN GOVENDER-BATEMAN


It has often been said that the greatest inventions in the history of the development of mankind come either from garages or dorm rooms at universities. Microsoft, Facebook, Google and other similar projects can all attest to the theory.
Google in particular is the largest web-based search engine of modern times. Today, Google is a common household brand, its usage being understood by the majority of society, from the tiniest toddlers to the frail and aged, provided they have basic understanding of and access to the internet.
The multi-billion dollar company began as a research assignment by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, PhD students at Stanford University in March 1996. Close friends Page and Brin created “BackRub” in search of a dissertation topic. They wanted to explore the mathematics involved in the World Wide Web. Page focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, based on the consideration that the number and nature of such backlinks was valuable information for an analysis of that page while Brin got support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. Terry Winograd, supervisor and mentor, encouraged the idea which Page later recalled as “the best advice I ever got”.
BackRub operated on Stanford servers for more than a year before it started taking up too much bandwidth. It eventually became Google after the creators misspelt googol which is the scientific term for the number 1 followed by a hundred 0’s, reflecting how Page and Brin wanted to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web. Google.com was registered as a domain on 15 September 1997.
Google soon took over the world by storm, providing a platform for people from all over the universe to search and share knowledge. Today finding information is a mouse-click away and research that would normally have taken days can be completed in minutes.
Although the early development of Google came with lawsuits of copyright infringement and investigations into its UK tax avoidance, the company rose from every scandal and provided to the world wide public a service that comes second to none.
Today the company employs millions of people yearly all around the globe and helps many others search for employment elsewhere. Research is made readily available by experts for general public consumption. Professionals everywhere use it daily, whether it is medicine, technology and even journalism. Google has grown from a dorm room project, a research dissertation to the number 1 web-based search engine in the world.
Finding information and compiling research on an infinite number of subjects can be done at a fraction of the time and possible money spent and in the comfort of ones own home. The advancement of technology allows for humans to save time and energy so that we can be able to do and achieve more. Google has proven to be an asset to almost all professions in the world and since its invention, life without it would be unimaginable.
Don’t believe me? Google it!


Sources used
www.google.co.za/about/company/history/
En.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google
www.cozy-digital.co.uk/history-of-google/info_67.html
www.submittoday.com/history_of_google.htm
www.palio.com/google-history/