Teknoku.me – When Google collapses or goes down, many of the activities we do are hampered. This proves that we already depend a lot on Google services.
Google does have a myriad of services. Starting from the search engine “grandmother Google”, browser, e-mail, and even the operating system. Naturally, if Google is a mainstay.
However, have you ever thought what if Google services had never been born in the world?
The reason is, in 1998, the two founders of Google, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin almost sold the algorithm they designed for Google.
The algorithm is called PageRank. PageRank serves to rank or order websites that are displayed in Google search results, based on the importance of the site.
The reason is simple, they were overwhelmed and chose to focus on completing the education that was being pursued at Stanford University, United States.
The duo of friends then approached a number of technology companies offering search engine services, one of which was Yahoo.
At that time, Page and Brin were willing to let Google go at a “cheap” price, namely 1 million US dollars. However, Yahoo rejected the offer.
However, seeing Google’s success, Yahoo even approached Google in 2002 and offered 3 billion US dollars so that Page and Brin would want to sell the company they started.
Page and Brin declined the offer and raised the figure to the US $ 5 billion.
Yahoo did not budge. They may also regret that in 1998 they did not take up an offer that was so much more profitable.
Rejected Excite
Not only Yahoo, a popular search engine in the ’90s, Excite, was also approached by Page and Brin. Discussions with Excite regarding the acquisition of the Google project took place in 1999, one year after Yahoo’s rejection.
Google’s official price at that time was still the same, namely 1 million US dollars. However, Excite still seems to see that the figure is too high for the PageRank algorithm.
Page and Brin then agreed to lower the selling price of their sweat-made project by the US $ 750,000.
Excite still doesn’t want to buy it and reasons that the offer is still “too high”. This forced Page and Brin to return home without getting an agreement from the company led by George Bell.
Not only because of price, but it also turns out that there are other reasons behind Google’s rejection by Excite. In an interview, George Bell said that Larry Page wanted to replace all of Excite’s search engine technology using Google Search.
This was the basis for Excite’s decision to reject Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s offers.
“If we work at Excite (selling Google), you have to remove all Excite technology and replace it with the Google search engine,” Page said at the time, according to Bell’s admission.
Well, Yahoo and Excite’s refusal made Page and Brin “stuck” with their own projects, while trying to focus on their respective doctoral education.
However, that is what makes Google what it is today. Currently, Google is known by many people around the world and can be said to be embedded in everyday life.
The value or valuation of the company which is headquartered in Mountain View, California, USA is also getting soaring and is touted as one of the most expensive companies in the world.
In fact, based on Marketwatch data, the valuation of Alphabet, Inc., the parent that oversees Google, is currently worth 1.42 trillion US dollars.
If Yahoo or Excite had acquired Google at that time, maybe conditions would be different from today.
A name born of coincidence
As for the name, “Google” was not a name on Page and Brin’s mind when they started the project in 1996.
At that time, Google’s name was actually “BackRub”, a search engine project operated on servers at Stanford University.
In 1997, Page and Brin changed the name BackRub to Googol. “Googol” is the mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. This name is taken to explain Google’s mission as an infinite storehouse of information on the internet.
However, investors apparently misspelled Googol’s name for Google, and have already written it down in checks and various documents.
This made Page and Brin finally “forced” to use the Google name for their search engine technology until now.
Become a verb in the dictionary
Now, Google doesn’t appear to be just a product or brand. Many people use it as an element in a sentence, whether it’s a verb or a noun.
If we ask a relative about something that is still not common, for example, the relative may say “just try Googling what you want to find” or “please search on Google” and the like.
This means that Google is already attached to life.
In retrospect, this habit has its roots in the use of the word “Google” in the popular 2000s US TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
In the horror series, there is a character who says “Have you googled her yet?”
Because it is still a new term, this suddenly makes the other person surprised. He then explained that Google is a kind of search engine on the internet.
The word Google was increasingly used in the years after. In fact, in 2006, “google” was registered as a verb in the international English dictionary released by Merriam-Webster and Oxford.
Meaning? Of course to “find information about someone or something on the internet using the Google search engine”.
In the same year, Google then appealed to netizens to use the brand to mention various things related to the company that owns the Googleplex.
“We want to emphasize that you can use the word ‘Google’ when you actually refer to the Google company and our various services,” Google said in an announcement.
Apart from the name, there are actually many other interesting facts related to the history of Google. Despite the success of Google, Page and Brin seem to have succeeded in making corporate branding easy to remember and use by many, even though their names were born accidentally.
So the question now is, can we live in the modern era without Google?