Transcript: PodVentureZone: Lost Google Tapes Part 1, Sergey Brin

This transcript is from a PodTech.net podcast at:
http://www.podtech.net/home/technology/1657/podventurezone-lost-google-tapes-part-1-sergey-brin

Guest: Sergey Brin - Google
Guest: Larry Page - Google
Host: John F. Ince - PodTech

John F. Ince - PodTech
Welcome to PodVentureZone, this is John Ince, your host. Today, we're introducing a new series on PodVentureZone called 'The Lost Google Tapes', based upon interviews conducted in January of the year 2000. Our guest today is Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google.

You're from Moscow originally?

Sergey Brin - Google
Yeah, I was born in Moscow, my family came here when I was six, the College Park Area, near The University of Maryland, and that's where I grew up until I came to Stanford through the PhD program.

John F. Ince - PodTech
Why did you study as a graduate?

Sergey Brin - Google
I was a Math and Computer Science Major.

John F. Ince - PodTech
Let's see, at the time you were in college -- how old are you know, 26? Were you aware of the potential of the internet?

Sergey Brin - Google
I used Mosaic at the time, I remember, (Inaudible) just came out, right around when I was in college, and I thought it was pretty cool. I don't know that I really thought of it in the terms that it has gone to now, I can't say I predicted that. I thought it was fun thing to work with. I remember I applied to all Web server, tools and maps and just -- it was kind of more of a fun thing than, oh, this is going to change the world, and I think I tinkered with it. I think most of the Computer Science students were sort of really cool, are the ones that sort of hang out at the offices late at night would tinker with something on the Web.

John F. Ince - PodTech
How did you come to Stanford?

Sergey Brin - Google
Okay, I took a (Inaudible), I'm not sure it's still online. Stanford, I guess at the time, I decided I want to go to Grad school and procure science. I had this choice of Stanford, Berkley, Carnegie Mellon, University of Washington, those were the other ones that were sort of top on my list, I thought I should get to such places. On the other hand, Larry didn't get to Stanford until 1995, and he started his research pretty soon after, and started downloading Web pages, and actually he was in the Human Computer and Action, which is kind of strange, because its not really related research. He best basically pulled this project, and I was just starting up the whole Data Mining Research.

John F. Ince - PodTech
Tell me a little bit more what Data Mining is, like in management?

Sergey Brin - Google
Yeah, the idea behind data mining is that, you basically take a lot of data and then aggregate to make it work for you. So, it's actually kind of the opposite of what you imagine. You imagine Data Mining, you're thinking, oh, there's some general data in this big pile of data, but really the idea is that you get the general, you combine all the data together in the right way. (Inaudible) response for years, but in terms of the Computer Science field of research, it was just getting started, right around the time that I was starting Grad school. So I got interest in that, and I had started these meetings, they were actually going to be pretty popular. Then I was chatting with Larry a lot. We got along pretty well, and he was collecting the state of link structure of the Web. He wasn't really like search or anything like that.

It was basically just collecting this data and seeing what we can do with it, but probably within a few months, Larry started in 1995, it probably was a little while before he got rolling, so it was already late 1995 by the time the project started. Pretty early 1996, we had the beginnings for the research, so it was pretty a big undertaking. People worked -- the four of us basically, Larry, myself, and the two financial (Inaudible), we would work, we probably had some other things to we had to take care of as well. We were pretty excited when we were working on it. So by 1997, we already -- actually even 1996, we probably, by late 1996, we had something that was quite nice already, and by 1997, I believe we had already started Google.

So, they were thinking about large numbers at random, they tried a whole bunch, and you're really constrained because a lot of domains are taken. So they came up with Googol, which is the mathematical term for tenth of a hundred. So the spelling, the correct spelling, which is Googol -- actually I'm not sure that they realized that they'd made a spelling error at that time, but that was taken anyway, Googol.com was registered. There was this guy who had it. I tried to buy it from him later, but he was fond of it, and so we went with Google.

John F. Ince - PodTech
You were registered in this domain name to set up a Search Engine?

Sergey Brin - Google
We figured we had a project with this name, we might as well have the domain, this is already at the point that AltaVista was already upset that they didn't have AltaVista.com.

John F. Ince - PodTech
Your project at that point was called Googol or Google?

Sergey Brin - Google
Google, Google, no, it was already once we decided the name, got the domain, we always stuck with the Google.

John F. Ince - PodTech
What other names were considered besides Googol?

Sergey Brin - Google
I think the previous contender to that was called the Whatbox.

John F. Ince - PodTech
The Whatbox.

Sergey Brin - Google
Which would have been okay, but then we decided that Whatbox sounded like Wetbox, which sounded like some kind of a porn site or something, we decided to stay away from that.

John F. Ince - PodTech
(Inaudible)

Sergey Brin - Google
Oh really. The registered name was (Inaudible). I also had two (Inaudible).

Speaker
I like that totally, that's really good.

Speaker
I think oh my God is the most used term in the American language.

Speaker
Oh yeah.

Speaker
That I don't know, like by itself is very common. Oh my God, New Yorkers say Oh my God.

John F. Ince - PodVentureZone
That's right. The only one, the only (Inaudible) that is actually available is Oh my God.

Sergey Brin - Google
Can make fun of New Yorkers.

John F. Ince - PodTech
So okay, you've got this really cool technology, and people are starting to hear about it. The buzz is starting to be (Inaudible).

Sergey Brin - Google
By the way, at this point we're already -- at 1997 we're already developing the next generation, and that already incorporates a bunch of other technologies too. For example, Hypertext Analysis, which is where we start not only, well we moved to (Inaudible) an interesting title, but also we start looking what are -- where are all terms on the page? What are their font sizes? Which things are headers? What is the text of nearby pages, like pages which are hosted link to this page, what do they say? This really boosted our relevance, so the page rank was the important component, but we combined that with this relevance measure based on this Hypertext Analysis, and the two together really functioned well. So that started the next generation technology and we used that technology at Google here.

So we started to talk to the existing search engines, we weren't sort of in an entrepreneurial frame of mind back then.

John F. Ince - PodTech
You were or were not?

Sergey Brin - Google
We're not. I mean it occurred to us to start a company, and I think Larry's probably more entrepreneurial than I am, he's been dreaming to start a company for a while, but at the time we just decided, why don't we go off and see if we can license this technology and get it into existing systems.

John F. Ince - PodTech
So who did you talk to about this?

Sergey Brin - Google
We talked to basically all the search engines in this area, Excite and InfoSeek, AltaVista, not quite from the same perspective and...

John F. Ince - PodTech
Did you speak to other company?

Sergey Brin - Google
Also Yahoo!. We spoke to the founders of Excite.

John F. Ince - PodTech
So, they had (Inaudible)?

Sergey Brin - Google
(Inaudible) Bell of Excite, he was the CEO at the time before he got bodged. I spoke to David and Jerry on Yahoo!

John F. Ince - PodTech
When did you speak to them?

Sergey Brin - Google
It must have been also around 1997, I'm trying to remember, I think this was before we had the next generation fully working, because the reason that didn't go out, they were all very nice, and they were appreciative of our technology, but we didn't really have the full solution, and at the time they didn't have, they still don't have any search at all. So its not that they already had a search engine, which our technology could improve, but basically they didn't have to have a search engine from scratch, and they were using AltaVista at the time or Open Text and...

John F. Ince - PodTech
Yahoo! was?

Sergey Brin - Google
Yeah.

Speaker
So they were licensing this technology?

Sergey Brin - Google
They were licensing the whole sort of, not just the technology. So Yahoo! has the directory, which is precisely what they developed, which is really a school service, but the directory only has a small portion of what's available at that time. So when you do a search on Yahoo!, first it tries to look in the directory for that, but then if it doesn't find it, it needs to search the whole Web, and that's the piece that they were interested in. I don't know what direction the time that happens, but it probably is significant, probably less than 50% these days, but still significant for actually...

John F. Ince - PodTech
You mean that happening means if it doesn't (Inaudible).

Sergey Brin - Google
There's few types of search in Yahoo!, that it won't match what they have.

John F. Ince - PodTech
In the directory?

Sergey Brin - Google
In the directory, what they have.

John F. Ince - PodTech
How would they compile and organize the information in the directory?

Sergey Brin - Google
They're definitely better people to ask them, I mean they have like teams of people, lot of people who go around scurrying. Well, they take submissions, so I guess they look at submissions, they evaluate them, categorize them. So they basically have a very human effort, and the philosophical difference that Yahoo!'s -- I've always found to be kind of anti technology.

John F. Ince - PodTech
Yahoo!?

Sergey Brin - Google
Yeah. Probably less so currently then they used to be, but they're kind of right, I mean they did try a different solution, they tried at a better solution than the technology base solutions at that time, and they still try (Inaudible) solutions for their problems. Anyways, they have their directory, but they still need to have the search over the Web, because the directory doesn't cover everything, it's a small fraction, like a percent or something of the total sites on the Web. They were -- then they prompted a bunch of search engine, AltaVista, (Inaudible), I don't know exactly in what order.

John F. Ince - PodTech
AltaVista, what else?

Sergey Brin - Google
Context, remember Role Context, it was this search engine for a short while.

John F. Ince - PodTech
Role Context, what else?

Sergey Brin - Google
Inktomi, that's their current solution, Inktomi.

John F. Ince - PodTech
Oh, okay.

Sergey Brin - Google
We talked to Inktomi. Anyway, this was before we had really developed, fully developed our next generation of search, and we had only our previous demo which was compelling but not a finished solution, and we were working on. So at the time that marriage didn't work out, because we just didn't have the full product and they would have to have taken us and (Inaudible) to finish it, that was little awkward. We also talked to the search engines where we could have applied our technology directly, which is Excite, InfoSeek, and things like that, and whoever was interested and things like that. In the end, we decided they weren't really focused on search, they were already building up their portals, and they considered search to be a small fraction of what they cared about, and they didn't feel that the search quality was important, and therefore we would have been sort of a very small part of what they do.

So those relationships didn't work out. We just continued to work on Google through the end of -- from spring of 1998 to the summer of 1998, and one summer, and this point it was Larry and I, because Scott had already started -- when did he -- anyway, (Inaudible) was already starting e-groups at the time, and (Inaudible) had gone off to (Inaudible). So that point Larry and I decided to start a company.