How good is Google?
Google is now more than a business: it is a cultural phenomenon. But where will it be in a few years?
IF THE ultimate measure of impact is to have one's name become a new verb in the world's main languages, Google has reason to be proud. When they founded the company five years ago, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, friends at Stanford University, chose a word play on “googol”—the number 1 followed by 100 zeros—because their ambition was to organise the information overload of the internet in a transparent and superior way. These days, singles “google” suitors before agreeing to a date, housewives “google” recipes before cooking, and patients “google” their ailments before visiting doctors. Dave Gorman, a comedian, even has a popular show, the “Googlewhack Adventure”—a Googlewhack being what happens when two words are entered into Google and it comes back with exactly one match.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “How good is Google?”
From the November 1st 2003 edition
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