The Google Guys by Richard L. Brandt Read Free Book Online Page B

Garcia-Molina managed to get them some money from the Digital Libraries project so they could buy more computers.
    The Google search engine, first set up to troll through Stanford’s own Web pages, was an immediate hit with students and faculty, and Page and Brin became convinced of its commercial potential. By late 1996, Sergey recalled in an interview, “We had something we thought was quite nice.” 7

Who Wants a Search Engine?
    But they still didn’t think this would be the basis for a company. They planned to finish their Ph.D.s, so they tried to sell their technology to other search engines.
    Fortunately, they found no takers. Had they succeeded, Google would not exist. For one thing, Larry and Sergey were pricing their technology very high, at about $1 million.
    Most companies turned them down flat. Around 1997, for example, Larry called Louis Monier, one of the creators of the AltaVista search engine at Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC). AltaVista was then considered the best search engine in existence. “He tried to explain to me who he was and what he was doing,” Monier recalls. “He sounded interesting. He didn’t sound like a crackpot or anything. I said, ‘Yeah, we should meet.’ ”
    But DEC management showed no interest. The company was not really interested in a search business; AltaVista had been created mainly to demonstrate how its computer server “was bigger and beefier” than other hardware, says Monier.
    Before Monier could talk to Larry and Sergey, he needed permission from DEC headquarters in Massachusetts. But now that Google had commercial potential, Larry’s obsession with secrecy emerged. He insisted that Monier sign a nondisclosure agreement first, and DEC management wouldn’t go for that. “This went nowhere, which was too bad,” says Monier.

Finding Funding
    It seems today that it was always inevitable that Larry and Sergey would turn their search engine into a company. But that was not the case. “Larry has a million ideas,” says his early partner Craig Silverstein. “If he didn’t make a company out of this, he’d be happy to make it out of something else later. If they had found someone who took their work seriously, and wanted to own it and offered the right price, they would have sold. We didn’t find that, so we said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it ourselves.’ ” In 1998 they began looking for investors to get them started.
    They approached David Cheriton, a computer science professor who had started a couple of companies with Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andy Bechtolsheim, for help finding funding. He decided to introduce them to Bechtolsheim. Just taking the step of asking Bechtolsheim for money was a bold and brash move. They had no business plan or formal pitch. Luckily, Bechtolsheim didn’t need either. According to Sergey, he simply said, “Oh, we could discuss a number of issues. Why don’t I just write you a check?” 8 He filled out check number 4642 to Google Inc. for $100,000.
    In the end, Cheriton matched Bechtolsheim’s investment, and with those two on board, the rest of the start-up money they needed came easily. Technology angels and executives, such as Ron Conway of the Band of Angels and Ram Shriram from Amazon, also put in money.
    Those who did invest made fortunes. Stanford, which holds the patent to the PageRank algorithm Larry created, received 1.8 million shares of Google stock in exchange for long-term rights to the patent. Stanford’s profit was $336 million, by far the most money it has ever received from spinning off technology invented on campus. It’s probably the most money any university has ever received from a single invention. Cheriton, already wealthy when he became the second investor in Google, is now a billionaire. One Stanford professor who loaned Larry and Sergey money when they were students joked that the stock he received in