Google (incorporated 1998)

When Mr. Page and Mr. Brin founded Google in 1998, Mr. Hassan bought 160,000 shares for $800. When Google went public in 2004, the shares were worth more than $200 million. The shares, now in Google’s parent company, Alphabet, would be valued at more than $13 billion today [2021].

after working at Washington University's Medical Libraries Group (having been recruited out of SUNY Buffalo for the summer).

Two of the most compelling areas that Google and its founders are quietly working on are the promising fields of molecular biology and genetics. Millions of genes in combination with massive amounts of biological and scientific data are an excellent match for the Google search engine, the tremendous database the company has in place, and its immense computing power. Already, Google has downloaded a map of the human genome and is working closely with biologist Dr. Craig Venter and other leaders in genetics on scientific projects that may lead to important breakthroughs in science, medicine, and health. In other words, we may be heading toward a time when people can google their own genes.

Any contributor could create and own new Knol articles, and there could be multiple articles on the same topic with each written by a different author.

As they saw it, generation one was AltaVista, generation two was Google, and generation three was Teoma, or what Ask Jeeves came to refer to as Expert Rank. Teoma's technology involved mathematical formulas and calculations that went beyond Google's PageRank system, which was based on popularity. In fact, the concept had been cited in the original Stanford University paper written by Sergey Brin and Larry Page as one of the methods that could be used to rank indexed Web sites in response to search requests. "They called their method global popularity and they called this method local popularity, meaning you look more granularly at the Web and see who the authoritative sources are," Lanzone said. He said Brin an Page had concluded that local popularity would be exceedingly difficult to execute well, because either it would require too much processing power to do it in real time or it would take too long.

ExpertRank is an evolution of IBM's CLEVER project, a search engine that never made it to public.

The difference between PageRank and ExpertRank is that for ExpertRank the quality of the page is important and that quality is not absolute, but it's relative to a subject.

At Google, the preference is for working in small teams of three, with individual employees expected to allot 20 percent of their time to exploring whatever ideas interest them most. The notion of "20 percent time" is borrowed from the academic world, where professors are given one day a week to pursue private interests.

Scholarship was not just emphasized in their homes; it was treasured.

Larry came to feel that he was showered with love and wisdom from two mothers: his real mom, and Joyce Wildenthal, a Michigan State professor who had a long-term relationship with his dad.

Page served as CSE’s [MSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering] first graduate director and had a critical role in promoting the department’s research mission. In 1967, when he joined MSU, the computer science program consisted of only undergraduate courses. Just three years later, the department offered eighteen graduate courses in computer science.

[...]

Page taught courses in Automata and Formal language theory and Artificial intelligence. He was a beloved teacher and mentor to innumerable students until his death in 1996.

Carl Jr. recalls Larry as an inquisitive younger brother with wide-ranging interests

He also enjoyed helping Carl Jr. - who was nine years older - with his college computer homework when Carl came home from the University of Michigan during breaks.

Despite his grief [for the death of their father at the early age of 58], Larry remained enrolled at Stanford. It helped that his older brother, Carl Jr., lived and worked in Silicon Valley. They had each other, so Larry wasn't left to bear the loss alone, and the two spent time together, fondly recalling their dad and reflecting on their childhood memories.

Google's deal with Yahoo!] had special significance for Larry Page, since his brother, Carl Jr., also was in serious negotiations with Yahoo! over a major business transaction. The following day, June 27, Yahoo announced plans to buy eGroups, a technology firm that Carl Page had co-founded, for $413 million.

The Wojcickis grew into Silicon Valley royalty. It’s the sort of family, Anne jokes, where “you’re only a viable fetus once you have your Ph.D.