Talk:History of Google

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the History of Google article.
Article policies
This article is within the scope of the Technology WikiProject, a group related to the the study of Technology. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.

Contents

[edit] Google Technology

What did google contribute to search engine technology? As a reader, I came to the history of google page looking for information about how the search engine itself came about and became popular--revolutionized internet searching, etc. What was new and different? As of the moment I write this, the article is nothing but the evolution of google as a corporation in the world of business. M.J.Willett 00:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Google partnerships

Ther should be a part in this articla for Google partnerships.

[edit] Financing and IPO

This Washington Post article lists many important early investors (including AOL and Yahoo!) in Google, who do not find a place in the section. -- Sundar 06:50, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Google Offers Wikimedia Hosting

On February 11, 2005, news [1] [2] emerged that discussions are in progress over the possibility of Google hosting a section of the Wikimedia Foundation's information on donated servers and internet transit. Early information states that no advertising (such as Google's AdWords) would be necessary on Wikimedia's projects. The Foundation confirmed that the two groups will hold a private IRC chat in March to further discuss possibilities, and stressed that no details have yet been finalised. As a result, some outsiders have coined the unofficial term "Googlepedia".

This article now suffers from the same problem as Meta:Google hosting (at least this article is not protected), namely, it is outdated. It is past March now. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 08:39, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC)

[edit] Financing and IPO, Managment

A line reads "...The deadline imposed by this requirement accelerated our decision." Should the words to commence the IPO or something be added? As a non-finance-head, I'm asking "What decision?"

The CFO seems to make a lot more money (salary) than do the founders of the company, the CEO, and the veep of sales. This use of k's for thousands seems obscurant. Should I presume (again as a non-investing person) that they own such huge pieces of the company that salaries are irrelevant?

"...[R]anked Google's corporate governance dead last...." With respect to performance? Greed? Height? Christian devotion? Should this be made clearer for people who keep their money under mattresses and won't follow the link?

[edit] Founding

I take it that September 27 is some anniversary of Google's founding, since that is what it says in the September 27 article and Google has birthday cake on its home page, but that is not mentioned in the article. The article only says that it was incorporated on September 7. What is September 27 the anniversary of?

Answer here

[edit] Sun agrees to distribute Google's toolbar with free Java software.

Do others here think this is worthy of a mention? Google, Sun partner CaribDigita 23:19, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

  • Add it within the comment:
October 2005: Google and Sun Microsystems join forces to offer online word processing and spreadsheet functions. The partnership will help promote Sun's OpenOffice, Solaris OS and Java platform; which in turn will assist Google to compete with Microsoft's current dominance in the Office and Operating System software areas. Treelovinhippie 03:23, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Google and Comcast joint Venture in Time Warner Cable?

Google, Comcast said to be eyeing stake in AOL] CaribDigita 04:00, 14 October 2005 (UTC) Will they or wont they? :-)

[edit] "Google & AOL Deal - Key Take Aways"

This section sure doesn't sound objective. For one, it's written in first person nominative form. ModemManCJ 04:51, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

It's also plagiarism. Copied from a blog entry of two days old. http://net.typepad.com/net/2005/12/google_aol_deal.html. I am removing it. pitr 15:38, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merging articles required?

I was just wondering do we really need 2 websites describing Google as all the information in Google is also in History of Google plus more. Artemisia 15:10, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Having them together would make this page too long. BrokenSegue 17:38, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
There's actually quite a bit more information in the History of Google as opposed to Google. This is actually standard practice on wikipedia as articles get very large. Plus, all of the criticism and controversy is here, as opposed to the main article, since generally, the controversy of today becomes tomorrow's history,... Dr. Cash 00:17, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
If anything, this article needs to be split between the History section and the Criticism section. Stev0 20:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with Dr. Cash - This page (currently) even does not say anything about the start in 1996!!! Aadaam 21:51, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Early financing

I've been doing some research and there's some major errors in the article. Here's what I have so far:

  • 1996 - IP royalties - 1/3 Brin/Page, 1/3 CS dept, 1/3 eng. school
  • 1998 - Stanford University - tech license for 5%
  • 1998 - Andy Bechtolsheim, David R. Cheriton, Ram Shriram, Jeff Bezos, Wilson Sonsini - $1m for 10%
  • 1999 - Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins - $12.5m x 2 for 20% combined - 11% to 14% each in 2004
  •  ???? - Angel Investors Angel II (Rob Conway)
  • 2000 - Yahoo - $10m for ??% - warrant to purchase 3.7 million shares - 5% in 2004
  • 2001 - Eric Schmidt - CEO for ??%
  • 2004 - Sergey Brin and Larry Page - 40% combined

For some of the harder to find numbers, some links:

Some details: Bechtolsheim put in $200K in the first round in 1998. He gave them a $100K cheque on the porch, but then Cheriton, Shriram, Bezos, and Sonsini (and maybe others) were involved in actually settling on a valuation and by then Bechtolsheim put in another $100K and the total round was worth about $1m and got 10% (or maybe about 10%). That would put the company's valuation at 10m in 1998. You can see all these people listed as Series A investors in some of the IPO documents.

In 1999 Sequoia & Kleiner Perkins came in with $12.5m each for 10% each, this seems to have been round 2, or Series B in the IPO docs (the originals also seem to have invested more at the same time, but I haven't found the percentage they got in that round).

In 2000 Yahoo invested $10 for ? percentage. They apparently had 5% in 2004, but it may have involved warrants instead of straight shares. Also, a bunch of others came in 2000 including the infamous Angel Investors.

After that it seems the only major change of shares was for Eric Schmidt. At the time of the IPO Brin & Page still had 40%. Sbwoodside 23:42, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Page does not cover pre-2003 era at all, a lot of things are just copy-paste from Google

I think I'll request a merge, at least it will show up for some. Aadaam 22:00, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

The 'early history' section was deleted by an anonymous IP vandal several months ago, and unfortunately wasn't caught by anti-vandalism patrols. It has been readded to the page. Thanks for pointing this out. Dr. Cash 04:46, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] what about adding "Google whacking" as a link here?

Give it the proper respect I think ;-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ChenSo (talk • contribs) 07:12, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed article idea

Shouldn't there be a "Timeline of Google" article? I recently noticed that Google changed their favicon and I was looking for a place to put this information. I know that "Wikipedia is not a dumping ground" for random information, but I think it would be beneficial to have a timeline. Agree? TIM KLOSKE|TALK 19:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

There already is an article on the History of Google, and your intuition is correct, that we shouldn't just create a timeline of each thing (little or big) the company does. --ZimZalaBim talk 19:52, 31 May 2008 (UTC)