Holden Page

Mr. Gilmore

Communications 10 B

23 April 2008

Google: The Web Giant

The Internet is a fascinating wealth of knowledge. With nearly every possible topic

covered in nearly every language, the way we view the world and the information

within it has changed. Though with so much information at our fingertips, and no way

to memorize where it is all located, the Internet would be potentially useless. Many

search engines had tried and failed under the pressure of organizing the Internet.

Except for one, Google has nearly perfected the art of search and organizing data on

the web, and if it has not been perfected yet, it is being improved on by some of the

most talented minds in the business. This purpose of this article is to depict how

Google has revolutionized the web and how it influences how you see the internet

today.

Google as we know it today started as a project called Backrub. Backrub, a

revolutionary indexing system, was designed by two Stanford students named Larry

Page and Sergey Brin. The new indexing service was an instant hit and by word of

mouth and spread throughout the college campus. With such a powerful indexing

service at hand and an apparant consumer demand, Larry and Sergey decided they

would sell Backrub. After many failed attempts, they both took the advice of David Filo
(Yahoo! Founder) and created there own business out of the software. After a few

hiccups in funding and scalability, Andy Bechtolsheim (Sun Microsystems Founder)

signed a one hundred thousand dollar check for Google Inc. starting the now know and

influential web giant Google ("Google").

Google is first and foremost a search engine. The web search engine uses keywords,

spiders (or web crawlers) and page rank. Search engines before Google such as Yahoo!

and AltaVista, used keywords to index and search the web. This provided very vague

results or many times the wrong result all together and made searching more of a

nuisance than a helpful tool. Google helped fill the gap by providing an indexing

service called page rank. Page rank is an advanced algorithm and indexing system

that ranks a website based off of relevant site links linking to and from it, much like the

original indexing service first made before the release of Google called Backrub. This

revolutionary indexing service changed how people looked for relevant results on the

web. Information was literally at our fingertips and a few clicks would get you to where

you needed to be in an instant. Enterprise businesses saw the effectiveness of Google

search and began using the Page Rank algorithm on there company servers

("Stephen"). Google had struck the right chord with online search and they would

continue to play.

After estabilishing their dominance in the search market in 2004 ("Stephen"). Google

started to move on to bigger ventures to make themselves a more integral part of the

web. In late 2003 they released an advertising platform called Google Adsense and

Adwords. Adwords was a way for publishers to put there ads across Google web

searches and websites that were running Google Adsense. Adwords was a
revolutionary way for publishers to advertise because Google did not charge for every

display of the ad, but instead only charged if the ad was clicked. Adwords only put ads

by relevant search results or relevant websites to increase the chance of the

publishers ad being noticed and there product or service hitting the intended market.

This change in the online ad market increased publishers trust and was an instant hit.

After the initial release of Google Adwords they released Google Adsense so website

administrators could make money off there site by running this new service. Then

Google split the profits based on a complicated algorithm and the worth of the ad

when clicked ("Adsense"). Coupled with publisher trust, an innovative and effective

way to target customers, Google was now the dominant Ad platform of the internet

owning nearly 69% of the market ("Baker").

Google now complete with a suite of superb ad services and an amazing internet

search they were ready to move on to bigger and better things. On April 1st, 2004,

Google released a much anticipated and highly rumored email service called Gmail.

Google's first web based application was new territory and dominated by big names in

the game such as Yahoo! and Microsoft Hotmail. Entering such a dominated market

proved to be easier than originally thought. With a big brand name such as Google

backing it up, Gmail was an instant success the moment it entered private beta. Once

released many users were shocked by the available space which totaled up to one

gigabyte, and steadily grew based on yet another algorithm. This immediately blew

out the competition where the standard was 20 mega bytes and charged excessively

for more. After the initial storage shock many were also surprised by how organized

and well constructed the interface was, one user named Andrew Comrie-Picard, an

entertainment lawyer said that, "Besides being huge, it's searchable, easy to handle

and it feels like it's actually developed by people who use e-mail."("Stone"). Many
features in Gmail proved this to be true such as the ability to "search" e-mails. With so

much storage and a constant rate of growth Gmail's goal was for an e-mail never to be

deleted, but instead archived and indexed to be available for search later. They also

differentiated how e-mail conversations were viewed. Messages were now converted

into organizable windows so it was easy to follow along and keep up with an e-mail

conversation in a quick and concise manner without backtracking to previous

messages ("Gmail"). With Gmail becoming so popular and increasing the pressure on

the top two e-mail web services at the time, Yahoo! and Microsoft Hotmail both

increased storage and made a re-vamped user interface in there own respect. This

increased performance for all e-mail users but not quite gaining the garner of user

support that Google now had. Google had successfully entered and became a viable

competitor in the e-mail market.

Now that Google established dominance in four main markets and getting a strong foot

hold in e-mail.They proved to themselves and others that they could build successful

online web applications, the bar was now risen for the search giant. On June 28th,

2005 Google released Google Earth. A satellite imagery product that allowed the world

to view satellite images on a globe for free. It also allowed people to create 3D maps,

integrate with Google Maps, let enterprises use this service and provide a new way for

Google to provide information to people. With geo-tagging Google Earth let users share

where they've been with friends and family or otherwise the whole world. After the

initial release of Google Earth, a powerful and not to mention free, drafting program

was released called Google SketchUp. Google SketchUp's ability to make 3D housing

and add it to Google Earth's was also another reason for people to adopt the new

service provided by Google Earth ("Rodriguez"). A Citigroup's business analyst Shane

Blair said that, " I think in terms of the software program itself, it's very user friendly …
it's very self-intuitive in that you can either enter an exact address or just a town or

even a business or landmark in that town and it will take you at least to what it thinks

it is"("Porteus"). Proving to be true Google Earth's superb way of locating what you

wanted was integrated with there ever-popular search like nearly every product

provided by Google ("Rodriguez"). Once again, Google Earth was another instant hit

with the ever-growing web giant.

These five superb services provided by Google are now the basis of the web goliath

and there constantly growing company. Google has changed the online industry like

Microsoft changed the market for computing. Without Google many things we use on

the internet would not of been discovered or been as widely used. With these services

in place and new ones expected to come there is a lot more we can accept in the

future from Google.

2005. <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170733,00.html>.

Stephen, Arnold. "How Google Has Changed Enterprise Search." Internet Services 01

November 2004. eLibrary. Dassel-Cokato High School Media Services, Cokato,

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2004. 24 April 2008

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Journal 31 March 2008. 4 May 2008

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advertising-market/6632/>.

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<http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html>.

"Welcome to Adsense." Google Adsense 26 April 2008.

<https://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_US/?gsessionid=-A5NcHXmnKc>.
Rodriguez, Eileen. "Google Launches Free 3D Mapping and Search Product." Google

Press Release Center 28 June 2005. 23 April 2008

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