Two students' idea became the company that organized the world
The 1990s web — a giant messy room
I can't find anything in here!
Billions of pages, no catalog, no signs.
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1995 · Stanford computer lab
I'm thinking about ranking the web…
Me too! Let's talk!
Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet for the first time.
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Different ideas — but the more they talked, the better it got
What if we looked at who links to whom?
Yes! More links = more important!
Two minds collided into one key idea.
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The key insight — like the most popular kid in school
They called it PageRank — ranking pages by how many link to them.
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1996 · Stanford dorm room
Blew another fuse…
But search is getting really good!
Servers overflowed the dorm, blowing fuses nightly.
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Originally called "BackRub"… not cool
Let's call it Google!
Googol — 1 followed by 100 zeros!
A name meaning "organizing a near-infinite amount of info".
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Word spread fast on campus…
Whoa! It actually finds what I want!
Students typed a question — the first result was the answer.
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1998 · A check that changed everything
This is incredible!
$100,000! Go start the company!
The investor wrote a check to a company that didn't yet exist — Google Inc.
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Early 2000s · Search was huge… but not making money
Servers cost a fortune… what do we do?
Every search cost money — Google hadn't found how to earn yet.
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A smart idea — ads that are actually useful
What if ads matched what you're searching for?
Then it's not annoying — it's helpful!
Relevant small ads — this idea made Google one of the most profitable companies ever.
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April 1, 2004 · Gmail launches
1 GB for free?!
250× the storage!
Too much space to believe — but it was real.
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2005 · Google Maps
Wow! I can see the whole world!
Zoom, pan, drag — a magic window to the world.
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2007 · Street View cars hit the road
What's on top of that car?
Rooftop cameras mapped the world — walk Paris from your room.
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2006 · Acquired YouTube
$1.6 billion! Is this the right call?
Turns out — YouTube became the world's second-biggest search engine.
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2008 · Android opens the phone world
Free and open! Anyone can build phones!
Today over 3 billion devices run Android.
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Search, mail, maps, videos, phones…
Google was no longer just search — it was everywhere.
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Google's next dream — bigger than search
What if computers didn't just find answers…
…but really understood them?
Organizing info was just step one — the real goal was smart machines.
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2016 · AlphaGo vs. the Go world champion
A computer can't win this… right?
Go has more moves than atoms in the universe. AlphaGo won 4 of 5.
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2017 · Transformer — computers finally understand sentences
Almost every AI today stands on this Google invention.
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2023 · Gemini arrives
How do I solve this math problem?
Let me walk you through it step by step!
Like a know-it-all classmate — not just finds, but teaches.
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AI quietly enters every home
Photos, writing, captions, translation — AI helps everywhere.
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Waymo · Cars that drive themselves
The car drives itself! I can relax…
Waymo has driven 32 million km — 40 round-trips to the moon.
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2015 · Google became Alphabet
Google was one part — plus DeepMind, Waymo, Verily, and more.
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From "finding answers" to "understanding the world"
Two students in a dorm changed how humanity finds info and thinks.
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