David Vise is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, recognized for his contributions to The Washington Post and his book "The Bureau and the Mole." His career also includes a role as a Senior Advisor at New Mountain Capital, and he is an alumnus of the Wharton School. Mark Malseed is a writer and researcher with a background that includes work for The Washington Post and the Boston Herald. He has been involved in research for notable books like "Plan of Attack" and "Bush At War," and holds a degree from Lehigh University.
The invention of Google has been as transformative to the access and dissemination of information as the creation of the modern printing press over five centuries ago. Google's seamless integration into daily life, providing answers to countless queries in numerous languages, has made it an indispensable tool for millions worldwide. Its founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, initially lacked a clear business vision when they established Google in 1998. Born in Moscow in 1973, Brin moved to the United States with his family to escape anti-Semitism, valuing education highly due to his parents' backgrounds in science and mathematics. Similarly, Page, born in Michigan in 1973, was raised in a household familiar with computing, leading both to pursue doctoral studies at Stanford University. Their partnership began with intellectual debates, laying the groundwork for a lasting friendship and collaboration. Their academic pursuits led them to explore new methods for sifting through the vast amounts of data on the internet, a challenge during the mid-1990s when the web was cluttered and unorganized. Page's interest in web links and their potential to improve search results led to the development of the PageRank system, which assessed the value of web pages based on the links pointing to them. This innovative approach formed the basis of their Ph.D. thesis and the primitive search engine "BackRub," which later evolved into Google. The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," a term representing a vast number, reflecting the search engine's ability to organize immense amounts of information. This serendipitous error in naming underscored the founders' ambition to create an expansive and efficient search engine, marking the beginning of Google's journey to becoming a pivotal part of the internet's infrastructure.
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