 |
Larry Page and Sergey Brin
The Internet's most famous pair of Ph.D.s are still striving to make data more accessible
|
|
|
| |
AS THE INTERNET was just beginning to sprout wings
in the mid-1990s, two Ph.D. candidates in computer
science at Stanford began exploring the relationships
between pages on the Internet. What started out as
an unassuming research project yielded a system for
ranking Web pages that would eventually help guide
millions of users each day to information on the
Internet.
By January 1996, the two students, Larry Page and
Sergey Brin, had begun collaboration on a search
engine called BackRub, named for its capability of
analyzing the back links pointing to a Web page.
During this time, Page also explored ways of building
a serving environment using low-end PCs instead of
large expensive machines, which would become
another important component of Google search
technology.
Google first emerged when Page and Brin bought a terabyte worth of disks
and built Google's first datacenter in Page's dorm room. With a proof of
concept in hand, the two began pursuing potential buyers in the Web portal
arena.
In 1998 Page and Brin co-founded Internet search pioneer Google.
Google "began with research," says Brin. "Larry and I were working on our
Ph.D.s at Stanford when we starting looking at relationships between links on
the Web. It turns out our research was complementary and ultimately led to a
much more effective way to find information on the Internet."
Google is fueled by more than 20 innovations in search technology; the most
notable is Page and Brin's PageRank concept of analyzing a Web page's link
structure to determine the page's value.
PageRank interprets links among pages and analyzes the value of pages that
are linked to one another. Links coming from pages that are considered more
important or authoritative on a specific subject are given more weight and
therefore help increase the PageRank of other pages. This ranking system
works in tandem with text-matching technology to boost the relevancy of
search results, according to Brin.
"Google has demonstrated that high-quality Web searches can be valuable in
people's day-to-day lives," Page says.
The heady challenge of locating a single page from billions on the Web is
complicated by issues such as multiple languages, encodings, and data types,
according to Page.
"Google answers more than 150 million queries a day. If our technology saves
each person even just a few seconds on each search, think how much time
and money that saves the world in aggregate," Page says.
Google's collection of Web documents, including Usenet discussion posts,
images, catalogs, PDF files, and Word documents, recently grew to more than
3 billion, which, according to Page, is the largest of its kind in the world.
The company is also setting its sights behind the enterprise firewall, with the
recent introduction of the Google Search Appliance. The product puts Google
Internet search technology into a software and hardware appliance that can
search corporate information.
Looking forward, Google's scientists are working to enlarge the technology's
scalability to handle the growing size and scope of information on the
Internet.
"Google is expanding the reach of its services to include more and more
information," Page says. "[Our] mission is to organize the world's information
and make it accessible and useful."
John Crawford - Intel's processor pioneer strikes gold again
Mike Lazaridis - BlackBerry genius shares simple secret of success: Listen to your customers
Andy Mendelsohn - Breaking new ground is old hat for Oracle's long-time visionary database developer
Dave Moellenhoff - ASP founder predicts the end of software as we know it
Larry Page and Sergey Brin - The Internet's most famous pair of Ph.D.s are still striving to make data more accessible
Clifford Neuman - For Kerberos co-author, security hasn't lost its allure
Ray Ozzie - Notes inventor envisions peer-to-peer technology supplanting e-mail
Vivek Ranadivé - Real-time computing pioneer is taking his message to the enterprise masses
Dave Winer - SOAP co-author strives for simplicity and drives decentralization
Mark Lucovsky - The brains behind HailStorm sees Web services as a hub for simplifying busy lives
Back to 2002 Technology Innovators
|
ADVERTISEMENT
|
|
 |
Profile |
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
| Sergey Brin (left) and Larry Page - From researchers at Stanford to Google co-presidents, both men continue to expand search engines' capabilities. |
| |
| Larry Page |
| |
| • |
Current position - Co-founder, president of products |
| |
| • |
Age - 29 |
| |
| Sergey Brin |
| |
| • |
Current position - Co-founder, president of technology |
| |
| • |
Age - 29 |
| |
| • |
Technology prediction - "We can expect to see major advancements in the
use of computing power to solve important problems such as artificial
intelligence, health care, and nanotechnology. As computers become more
powerful and prevalent in our day-to-day lives, we will undoubtedly see
huge changes in the way we interact with each other and in the way we
live." |
| |
|
|
|
Related Links |
|
| |
|
|
|
| • |
Hall of fame 2002 - Several industry icons join InfoWorld's Innovators Hall of Fame |
| |
| • |
Ones to Watch 2002 - These up-and-comers are developing the technologies that will matter most in the coming months |
| |
| • |
Where are they now? - Since the 2000 Ones to Watch were named, many dot-coms imploded and the economy
soured. How have these technological talents fared? |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
NEWS 
