It started off as BackRub and has become a worldwide phenomenon that is now often part of our everyday lexicon – ‘oh I’m not sure, let me Google it’.
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University, it would be reasonable to think when their collaboration started that they did not envisage their creation transforming the way in which we found, sourced and accessed information from the web.
The domain Google.com was registered two years later as a rebranding of BackRub. The revised name was a play on the word ‘googol’, a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros – (i.e. – an infinite number/amount of information).
Google’s 12th birthday passed by with moderate fanfare across the media recently (I guess the number 12 is not particularly catchy – in wedding terms a linen and silk anniversary), but is surely worth a blog or two given how it has changed the way in which we consume information or data.
Just think, what would you have done in 1998. Use a book? Or an encyclopaedia? Or phone a friend?
Google is indicative of the instant information world in which we live. It has not just facilitated rapid and immediate data search, but also contributed to other developments that we now take for granted such as Google Ad Words and new spheres of business such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
So when you think to yourself today, who won the first series of X Factor; or how do I ensure that as many people read my press release as possible; or what is best way to make a Victoria Sponge, I wonder what you will do next.
Maybe you’ll ‘Google’ it?
