WTF Fun Fact 13107 – Google Backrub

You may know part of the the story of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google. They met on a tour of Stanford, when Brin was showing prospective grad student Page around. While they didn’t agree on anything at first, they eventually became friends and business partners and invented Google. Except there was a step before Google – Backrub.

From Backrub to Google

According to Google’s own page on their history, the men wanted to build “a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub.”

So…eww. Can you imagine saying, “I don’t know, I’ll need to backrub that information?”

We don’t know the precise details about why they changed the name. But we know how the word Google came to be.

“The name was a play on the mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros and aptly reflected Larry and Sergey’s mission ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.'”

Google was a big deal in the academic community at first. Then it caught the eye of Silicon Valley investors in the late 90s.

“In August 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Larry and Sergey a check for $100,000, and Google Inc. was officially born. With this investment, the newly incorporated team made the upgrade from the dorms to their first office: a garage in suburban Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki (employee #16 and now CEO of YouTube). Clunky desktop computers, a ping pong table, and bright blue carpet set the scene for those early days and late nights.”

Google grows

Keeping things useful but unconventional was the duos brand style. Do you remember the first Google Doodle in 1998? It was a stick figure inside the logo telling everyone the staff was off-site attending Burning Man.

How about their motto? “Don’t be evil.”

In any case, things are now a far cry from the days of Backrub.  WTF fun facts

Source: “From the garage to the Googleplex” — Google

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WTF Fun Fact 12429 – The Inspiration for Google Image Search

Now known as Google Images, the idea behind the Google Image Search feature was none other than the pop star and actress Jennifer Lopez. When she worse the deep v-cut Versace dress to the Grammys in February of 2000, people performed millions of Google searches to get a second look at it.

Searches for the dress continued at a surprising rate throughout the year and into 2001. As a result, Google made it possible to search images alone starting on July 12, 2001. Before this, you could only search text on websites.

The feature was created by engineer Huican Zhu and product manager Susan Wojcicki (who is now the current CEO of YouTube). In 2001, 250 million images were indexed in Image Search. By 2010, it contained 10 billion photos.

The story has been confirmed by Eric Schmidt, who was the executive chairman of Google at the time.

In an essay published on Project Syndicate, he wrote: “At the time, it was the most popular search query we had ever seen. But we had no surefire way of getting users exactly what they wanted: J.Lo wearing that dress.” As a result, “Google Image Search was born.” – WTF Fun Facts

Source: “How Jennifer Lopez’s infamous 2000 Grammys dress — which was unretired this week — inspired Google image search” — Business Insider

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