The scale of search today
An oil refinery?
Eleven years ago, on a bright spring morning, millions of web surfers found that they had received a friendly email from a brand new search company called Google. They were conducting a beta version of their new search engine and were looking for user feedback. In those days you could even sign up for the Google newsletter. What immediately impressed me was the simplicity of the design . There were no cluttered adverts or banner ads like Web Crawler, Alta Vista and Magellan. Even in the days of dial-up, Google’s beta version was startlingly quick at returning results. Larry Page and Sergey Brin weren’t long out of Stanford University and only a year or so earlier had still been toying with the name ‘Backrub’ for their new search engine. The first Google server is now encased in a museum. I don’t think even they could have imagined the speed of Google’s growth. The picture above may resemble an oil refinery but in fact is a water cooling plant that cools the servers in one of Google’s data centres. It’s hard to believe it has grown from this:
to this, in just eleven years!
Tags: Google, Search Engine