in the plex by steven levy

8/6/2019 In the Plex by Steven Levy

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sSimon & Schuster

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Copyright 2011 by Steven Levy

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Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Levy, Steven.

In the plex : how Google thinks, works, and shapes our lives / Steven Levy.

1st Simon & Schuster hbk. ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical reerences and index.

1. Google (Firm). 2. Google. 3. Internet industryUnited States. I. Title.

HD9696.8.U64G6657 2011

338.7'6102504dc22 2010049964

ISBN 978-1-4165-9658-5

ISBN 978-1-4165-9671-4 (ebook)


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1

PrOlOGue

SearChInG fOr GOOGle

Hve you herd o Google?

It ws blzing hot July dy in 2007, in the rurl Indin villge o

Rgihlli, locted thirty iles outside Bnglore. Twenty-two people ro copny bsed in Mountin View, Cliorni, hd driven in SUVs nd

vns up n unpved rod to this enclve o seventy thredbre huts with

ceent oors, surrounded by felds occsionlly trpled by unwelcoe

elephnts. Though electricity hd coe to Rgihlli soe yers erlier,

there ws not single personl coputer in the counity. The visit hd

begun wkwrdly, s the outsiders piled out o the crs nd ced the entire

popultion o the villge, bout two hundred people, who hd turned out to

welcoe the. It ws s i these well-dressed Westerners hd dropped inro nother plnet, which in sense they hd. Young schoolchildren were

pushed orwrd, nd they perored song. The visitors, in turn, gve the

children notebooks nd cndy. There ws n uncoortble silence, broken

when Mriss Myer, the delegtions leder, won o thirty-two, sid,

Lets interct with the. The group nned out nd begn to engge the

villgers in wkwrd converstion.

Tht is how Alex Vogenthler ce to sk spindly young n with

wide sile whether he hd herd o Google, Vogenthlers eployer. It ws question tht he would never hve hd to sk in his hoe country: virtu-

lly everyone in the United Sttes nd everywhere in the wired-up world


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2 Prologue

knew Google. Its uncnnily eective Internet serch product hd chnged

the wy people ccessed inortion, chnged the wy they thoughtbout

inortion. Its 2004 IPO hd estblished it s n econoic gint. And its

ounders theselves were the perect exples o the superbriny engineer-

ing entlity tht represented the uture o business in the Internet ge.

The villger ditted tht, no, he hd never herd o this Google.

Wht is it? he sked. Vogenthler tried to explin in the siplest ters

tht Google ws copny tht operted on the Internet. People used it

to serch or inortion. You would sk it question, nd it would i-

editely give you the nswer ro huge repositories o inortion it hd

gthered on the World Wide Web.

The n listened ptiently but clerly ws ore ilir with rice

felds thn serch felds.Then the villger held up cell phone. Is this you wht en? he

seeed to sk.

The little connectivity eter on the phone disply hd our brs.

There re signifcnt swths o the United Sttes o Aeric where one cn

brely pull in signlor gets no brs t ll. But here in rurl Indi, the

signl ws strong.

Google, it turns out, ws on the verge o ultiillion-dollr obile

eort to ke srt phones into inortion prostheses, djuncts to thehun brin tht would llow people to get inortion to vst swth

o ll the worlds knowledge instntly. This n ight not know Google

yet, but the copny would soon be in Rgihlli. And then he wouldknow

Google.

I witnessed this exchnge in 2007 s n observer on the nnul trip o

Google ssocite product ngers, select group pegged s the copnys

uture leders. We begn our journey in Sn Frncisco nd touched downin Tokyo, Beijing, Bnglore, nd Tel Aviv beore returning hoe sixteen

dys lter.

My prticiption on the trip hd been consequence o long rel-

tionship with Google. In lte 1998, Id herd buzz bout srter serch

engine nd tried it out. Google ws iles better thn nything Id used

beore. When I herd bit bout the sites ethod o extrcting such good

resultsit relied on sort o web-bsed deocrcyI bece even ore

intrigued. This is how I put it in the Februry 22, 1999, issue oNewsweek:Google, the Nets hottest serch engine, drws on eedbck ro the web

itsel to deliver ore relevnt results to custoer queries.


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Prologue 3

Lter tht yer, I rrnged with Googles newly hired director o cor-

porte counictions, Cindy McCrey, to visit its Mountin View hed-

qurters. One dy in October I drove to 2400 Byshore Prkwy, where

Google hd just oved ro its previous loction bove Plo Alto bicycle

shop. Id visited lot o strt-ups nd wsnt relly surprised by the genil

chos vst roo, with cubicles yet unflled nd cluster o exercise

blls. However, I hdnt expected tht insted o being ttired in trditionl

T-shirts nd jens, the eployees were decked out in costues. I hd coe

on Hlloween.

Steven, eet Lrry Pge nd Sergey Brin, sid Cindy, introducing

e to the two young en who hd ounded the copny s Stnord grd-

ute students. Lrry ws dressed s Viking, with long-hired ur vest nd

ht with long ntlers protruding. Sergey ws in cow suit. On his chestws rubber slb ro which protruded huge, wrt-specked tets. They

greeted e cheerully nd we ll retreted to conerence roo where the

Viking nd the cow explined the irculous powers o Googles PgeRnk

technology.

Tht ws the frst o ny interviews I would conduct t Google.

Over the next ew yers, the copny bece ocus o y technology

reporting tNewsweek. Google grew ro the sll strt-up I hd visited to

beheoth o ore thn 20,000 eployees. Every dy, billions o peopleused its serch engine, nd Googles rerkble bility to deliver relevnt

results in illiseconds chnged the wy the world got its inortion. The

people who clicked on its ds de Google wildly proftble nd turned

its ounders into billioniresnd triggered n outcry ong trditionl

benefciries o d dollrs.

Google lso bece known or its irreverent culture nd its dt-

driven pproch to business decision king; ngeent experts rhp-

sodized bout its unconventionl ethods. As the yers went by, Googlebegn to interpret its issionto gther nd ke ccessible nd useul

the worlds inortionin the brodest possible sense. The copny

creted series o web-bsed pplictions. It nnounced its intention to

scn ll the worlds books. It bece involved in stellite igery, obile

phones, energy genertion, photo storge. Clerly, Google ws one o the

ost iportnt contributors to the revolution o coputers nd technol-

ogy tht rked turning point in civiliztion. I knew I wnted to write

book bout the copny but wsnt sure how. Then in erly July 2007, I ws sked to join the ssocite product

ngers on their trip. It ws n unprecedented invittion ro co-


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4 Prologue

pny tht usully liits contct between journlists nd its eployees.

The APM progr, I lerned, ws highly vlued inititive. To quote the

pitch one o the prticipnts de in 2006 to recent nd upcoing col-

lege grdutes: We invest ore into our APMs thn ny other copny

hs ever invested into young eployees. . . . We envision world where

everyone is wed by the ct tht Googles executives, the best CEOs in

the Silicon Vlley, nd the ost respected leders o globl non-profts ll

ce through the Google APM progr. Eric Schidt, Googles CEO,

told e, One o these people will probbly be our CEO one dywe just

dont know which one.

The eighteen APMs on the trip worked ll over Google: in serch,

dvertising, pplictions, nd even stelth projects such s Googles ttept

to cpture the rights to include gzines in its index. Myers te, longwith the APMs theselves, hd designed the gend o the trip. Every c-

tivity hd n underlying purpose to increse the prticipnts understnding

o technology or business issue, or ke the ore (in the prlnce o

the copny) Googley. In Tokyo, or instnce, they engged in scv-

enger hunt in the citys legendry Akihbr electronics district. Tes o

APMs were ech given $50 to buy the weirdest gdgets they could fnd.

Ducking into bckstreets with stlls ull o electronic prts nd gizos, they

wound up with cornucopi: USB-powered shtrys shped like ootbllhelets tht suck up soke; plte-sized disk tht siulted the phses o

the oon; brethlyzer you could instll in your cr; nd stubby wnd

tht, when wved bck nd orth, spelled out words in LED lights. In Bn-

glore, there ws dierent shopping huntn excursion to the rket

re where the winner o the copetition would be the one who hggled

best. (Good trining or king bulk purchses o coputers or even buy-

ing n Internet strt-up.) Another Tokyo high point ws the 5 a.m. trip to

the Tsukiji fsh rket. It wsnt the resh sushi tht scinted the APMsbut the echnics o the fsh uction, in soe wys siilr to the wy

Google works its AdWords progr.

In Chin, Googles top executive there, Ki-Fu Lee, tlked o blnc-

ing Googles reewheeling style with governent rulesnd censorship.

But during interviews with Chinese consuers, the APMs were discour-

ged to her the perception o the copny ong locls: Bidu [Googles

locl copetitor] knows ore [bout Chin] thn Google, sid one young

n to his APM interlocutors.At every ofce the APMs visited, they ttended eetings with locl

Googlers, frst lerning bout projects under wy nd then explining to


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Prologue 5

the residents wht ws going on t Mountin View hedqurters. I begn

to get n insiders sense o Googles product processesnd how serving its

users ws kin to crusde. An interesting oent occurred in Bnglore

when Myer ws tking questions ro locl engineers ter presenting

n overview o upcoing products. One o the sked, Weve herd the

rod p or products, whts the rod p or revenues? She lost bit

his hed o. Thts notthe wy to think, she sid. We re ocused on our

users. I we ke the hppy, we will hve revenues.

The ost scinting prt o the trip ws the tie spent with the

young Googlers. They were generlly ro elite colleges, with SAT scores

pproching or chieving perection. Creully culled ro thousnds o

people who would hve killed or the job, their personlities nd bilities

were reection o Googles own chrcter. During bus ride to the Gret Wll o Chin, one o the APMs chrted the group deogrphics nd

ound tht lost ll hd prents who were proessionls nd ore thn

hl hd prents who tught t universitywhich put the in the co-

pny o Googles ounders. They ll grew up with the Internet nd consid-

ered its principles to be s nturl s the lws o grvity. They were ong

the brightest nd ost bitious o genertion tht ws better equipped

to hndle the disruptive technology wve thn their elders were. Their

inds hued like tuning orks in resonnce with the copnys vlues ospeed, exibility, nd deep respect or dt.

Yet even while iersed in n optiis bubble with these young

people, I could see the strins tht ce with Googles brupt growth ro

eisty strt-up to rket-dointing gint with ore thn 20,000 e-

ployees. The APMs hd spent yer nvigting the olkwys o copli-

cted corportion, lbeit deterinedly dierent onend now they were

lost senior eployees. Whts ore, I ws stunned when poll o y

ellow trvelers reveled tht not single one o the sw hi- or hersel working or Google in fve yers. Mriss Myer took this news clly,

cliing tht such bition ws why they hd been hired in the frst plce.

This is the gene tht Lrry nd Sergey look or, she told e. Even i

they leve, its still good or us. Theyre going to tke the Google DNA

with the.

Ater covering the copny or lost decde, I thought I knew

it pretty well, but the rre view o the copny I got in those two weeks

de e see it in dierent, wider light. Still, there were considerbleysteries. Google ws copny built on the vlues o its ounders, who

hrbored bitions to build powerul corportion tht would ipct the


8/35

6 Prologue

entire world, t the se tie lothing the bureucrcy nd coitents

tht running such copny would entil. Google proessed sense o

orl puritys exeplifed by its inorl otto, Dont be evilbut

it seeed to hve blind spot regrding the consequences o its own

technology on privcy nd property rights. A bedrock principle o Google

ws serving its usersbut gol ws building gint rtifcil intelligence

lerning chine tht would bring uncertin consequences to the wy ll

o us live. Fro the very beginning, its ounders sid tht they wnted to

chnge the world. But who were they, nd wht did they envision this new

world order to be?

Ater the trip I relized tht the best wy to nswer these questions

ws to report s uch s possible ro inside Google. Just s Id hd rre

glipse into its inner workings during tht suer o 2007, I would try toierse ysel ore deeply into its engineering, its corporte lie, nd its

culture, to report how it relly operted, how it developed its products, nd

how it ws nging its growth nd public exposure. I would be n out-

sider with n insiders view.

To do this, o course, Id need coopertion. Fortuntely, bsed on

our long reltionship, Googles executives, including LSELrry Pge,

Sergey Brin, nd Eric Schidtgreed to let e in. During the next two

yers criticl tie when Googles hlo lost soe o its glow even s thecopny grew ore powerulI interviewed hundreds o current nd

orer Googlers nd ttended vriety o eetings in the copny. These

included product developent eetings, interce reviews, serch lunch

eetings, privcy council sessions, weekly TGIF ll-hnds gtherings, nd

the gtherings o the high cond known s Google Product Strtegy

(GPS) eetings, where projects nd inititives re pproved or rejected. I

lso te lot o els t Andle, the burrito joint in Googles Building 43.

Wht I discovered ws copny exulting in cretive disorgni-ztion, even i the cretivity ws not lwys s substntil s hoped or.

Google hd ssive gols, nd the entire copny chnneled its vlues

ro the ounders. Its ission ws collecting nd orgnizing ll the worlds

inortionnd thts only the beginning. Fro the very strt, its ound-

ers sw Google s vehicle to relize the dre o rtifcil intelligence in

ugenting hunity. To relize their dres, Pge nd Brin hd to build

huge copny. At the se tie, they ttepted to intin s uch

s possible the nible, irreverent, nswer-to-no-one reedo o sllstrt-up. In the two yers I reserched this book, the clsh between those

gols reched pek, s Dvid hd becoe Golith.


9/35

Prologue 7

My inside perspective lso provided e the keys to unlock ore o

the secrets o Googles two blck boxesits serch engine nd its dver-

tising odelthn hd previously been disclosed. Google serch is prt o

our lives, nd its d syste is the ost iportnt coercil product o

the Internet ge. In this book, or the frst tie, reders cn lern the ull

story o their developent, evolution, nd inner workings. Understnding

those groundbreking products helps us understnd Google nd its e-

ployees becuse their opertion ebodies both the copnys vlues nd

its technologicl philosophy. More iportnt, understnding the helps us

understnd our own worldnd toorrows.

The science fction writer Willi Gibson once sid tht the uture is

lredy herejust not evenly distributed. At Google, the uture is lredy

under wy. To understnd this pioneering copny nd its people is togrsp our technologicl destiny. And so here is Google: how it works, wht

it thinks, why its chnging, how it will continue to chnge us. And how it

hopes to intin its soul.


10/35

9

Part One

the WOrld aCCOrdInG tO GOOGleBiogpy o Sc egi

1

It was science fction more than computer science.

On Februry 18, 2010, Judge Denny Chin o the New York Southern

District ederl court took stock o the pcked gllery in Courtroo 23B.

It ws going to be long dy. He ws presiding over hering tht would

provide only gloss to hundreds o subissions he hd lredy received on

this cse. There is just too uch to digest, he sid. He shook his hed,

prepring hisel to her the rguents o twenty-seven representtives ovrious interest groups or corportions, s well s presenttions by soe o

the lwyers or vrious prties, lwyers who flled every plce in two long

tbles beore hi.

The cse ws The Authors Guild, Inc., Association of American Publishers,

et al. v. Google Inc. It ws lwsuit tenttively resolved by clss settleent

greeent in which n uthors group nd publishers ssocition set

conditions or technology copny to scn nd sell books. Judge Chins

decision would involve iportnt issues ecting the uture o digitl works, nd soe o the spekers beore the court engged on those is-

sues. But ny o the objectorsnd ost who ddressed the court were


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10 in the Plex

objectors to the settleentocused on young copny hedqurtered

on sprwling cpus in Mountin View, Cliorni. Tht copny ws

Google. The spekers seeed to distrust it, er it, even despise it.

A major threat to . . . reedom o expression and participation in cultural

diversity

An unjustifed monopoly

Eviscerates privacy protections

Concealment and misdirection

Price fxing . . . a massive market distortion . . . preying on the desperate

May well be a per se violation o the antitrust laws

(Tht lst stteent held specil weight, s it ce ro the U.S.deputy ssistnt ttorney generl.)

But the ederl governent ws only one o Googles surprising

opponents. Soe o the others were supporters o the public interest,

onitoring the privcy rights nd pocketbooks o citizens. Others were

dvoctes o ree speech. There ws even n objector representing the olk-

singer Arlo Guthrie.

The irony ws tht Google itsel explicitly ebrced the loty vlues

nd high orl stndrds tht it ws being ttcked or outing. Its ound-ers hd consistently stted tht their gol ws to ke the world better, spe-

cifclly by enbling hunitys ccess to inortion. Google hd creted

n stonishing tool tht took dvntge o the interconnected nture o

the burgeoning World Wide Web, tool tht epowered people to locte

even obscure inortion within seconds. This serch engine trnsored

the wy people worked, entertined theselves, nd lerned. Google de

historic profts ro tht product by creting new or o dvertising

nonintrusive nd even useul. It hired the shrpest inds in the world ndencourged the to tke on chllenges tht pushed the boundries o in-

novtion. Its ocus on engineering tlent to ccoplish difcult gols ws

ntionl inspirtion. It even wrned its shreholders tht the copny

would soeties pursue business prctices tht serve hunity even t

the expense o lower profts. It ccoplished ll those chieveents with

puckish irreverence tht cptivted the public nd de heroes o its e-

ployees.

But tht didnt tter to the objectors in Judge Chins courtroo.Those people were Googles nturl llies, nd they thought tht Google

ws no longer . . . good. The istrust nd er in the courtroo were re-


12/35

the World According to google 11

ected globlly by governents upset by Googles privcy policies nd

businesses worried tht Googles disruptive prctices would trget the

next. Everywhere Googles executives turned, they were ced with protests

nd lwsuits.

The course o events ws bing to Googles two ounders, Lrry

Pge nd Sergey Brin. O ll Googles projects, the one t issue in the

heringGoogles Book Serch projectws perhps the ost idelistic.

It ws n udcious ttept to digitize every book every printed, so tht

nyone in the world could locte the inortion within. Google would not

give wy the ull contents o the books, so when users discovered the,

they would hve reson to buy the. Authors would hve new rkets;

reders would hve instnt ccess to knowledge. Ater being sued by pub-

lishers nd uthors, Google de del with the tht would ke it evenesier to ccess the books nd to buy the on the spot. Every librry would

get ree terinl to connect to the entire corpus o the worlds books. To

Google, it ws boon to civiliztion.

Didnt people understand?

By ll etrics, the copny ws still thriving. Google still retined

its hundreds o illions o users, hosted billions o serches every dy, nd

hd growing businesses in video nd wireless devices. Its eployees were

still idelistic nd bitious in the best sense. But shdow now drkenedGoogles ige. To ny outsiders, the corporte otto tht Google hd

tken seriouslyDont be evilhd becoe joke, bludgeon to be

used ginst it.

Wht hd hppened?

Doing good ws Lrry Pges pln ro the very beginning. Even s child,

he wnted to be n inventor, not siply becuse his ind ligned perectly

with the nexus o logic nd technology (which it did) but becuse, he sys,I relly wnted to chnge the world.

Pge grew up in Lnsing, Michign, where his ther tught co-

puter science t Michign Stte. His prents divorced when he ws eight,

but he ws close with both his ther nd otherwho hd her own co-

puter science degree. Nturlly, he spoke coputers s priry lnguge.

As he lter told n interviewer, I think I ws the frst kid in y eleentry

school to turn in word-processed docuent.

Pge ws not socil nilpeople who tlked to hi oten won-dered i there were jigger o Aspergers in the ixnd could unnerve

people by siply not tlking. But when he did spek, ore oten thn not


13/35

12 in the Plex

he would coe out with ides tht bordered on the ntstic. Attending

suer progr in ledership (otto: A helthy disregrd or the i-

possible) helped ove hi to ction. At the University o Michign, he

bece obsessed with trnsporttion nd drew up plns or n elborte

onoril syste in Ann Arbor, replcing the undne bus syste with

uturistic coute between the dors nd the clssroos. It seeed to

coe s surprise to hi tht nciul ultiillion-dollr trnsit ntsy

ro n undergrdute would not be quickly ebrced nd ipleented.

(Fiteen yers ter he grduted, Pge would bring up the issue gin in

eeting with the universitys president.)

His intelligence nd igintion were cler. But when you got to

know hi, wht stood out ws his bition. It expressed itsel not s

personl drive (though there ws tht, too) but s generl principle thteveryone should think big nd then ke big things hppen. He believed

tht the only true ilure ws not ttepting the udcious. Even i you

il t your bitious thing, its very hrd to il copletely, he sys.

Thts the thing tht people dont get. Pge always thought bout tht.

When people proposed short-ter solution, Pges instinct ws to think

long ter. There would eventully be joke ong Googlers tht Pge

went to the uture nd ce bck to tell us bout it.

Pge erned degree in coputer science like his ther did. But hisdestiny ws in Cliorni, specifclly in the Silicon Vlley. In wy, Pges

rrivl t Stnord ws hoecoing. Hed lived there briey in 1979

when his dd hd spent sbbticl t Stnord; soe culty ebers still

reebered hi s n instibly curious seven-yer-old. In 1995, Stnord

ws not only the best plce to pursue cutting-edge coputer science but,

becuse o the Internet boo, ws lso the world cpitl o bition. For-

tuntely, Pges visions extended to the coercil: Probbly ro when

I ws twelve, I knew I ws going to strt copny eventully, hed ltersy. Pges brother, nine yers older, ws lredy in Silicon Vlley, working

or n Internet strt-up.

Pge chose to work in the deprtents Hun-Coputer Interc-

tion Group. The subject would stnd Pge in good sted in the uture

with respect to product developent, even though it ws not in the HCI

doin to fgure out new odel o inortion retrievl. On his desk

nd pereting his converstions ws Apple interce guru Donld Nor-

ns clssic toe The Psychology of Everyday Things, the bible o religionwhose frst, nd rgubly only, condent is The user is lwys right.

(Other Norn disciples, such s Je Bezos t Azon.co, were dopt-


14/35


ing this creed on the web.) Another inuentil book ws biogrphy o

Nikol Tesl, the brillint Serb scientist; though Tesls contributions rgu-

bly tched Thos Edisonsnd his bitions were grnd enough to

ipress even Pgehe died in obscurity. I elt like he ws gret inven-

tor nd it ws sd story, sys Pge. I eel like he couldve ccoplished

uch ore hd he hd ore resources. And he hd trouble coercil-

izing the stu he did. Probbly ore trouble thn he shouldve hd. I think

tht ws good lesson. I didnt wnt to just invent things, I lso wnted to

ke the world better, nd in order to do tht, you need to do ore thn

just invent things.

The suer beore entering Stnord, Pge ttended progr or

ccepted cndidtes tht included tour o Sn Frncisco. The guide ws

grd student Pges ge whod been t Stnord or two yers. I thoughthe ws pretty obnoxious, Pge lter sid o the guide, Sergey Brin. The

content o the encounter is now relegted to legend, but their rguent-

tive bnter ws lost certinly good-ntured. Despite the contrst in per-

sonlities, in soe wys they were twins. Both elt ost coortble in the

eritocrcy o cdei, where brins truped everything else. Both hd

n innte understnding o how the ultrconnected world tht they enjoyed

s coputer science (CS) students ws bout to spred throughout society.

Both shred core belie in the pricy o dt. And both were rock stub-born when it ce to pursuing their belies. When Pge settled in tht

Septeber, he bece close riends with Brin, to the point where people

thought o the s set: LrryAndSergey.

Born in Russi, Brin ws our when his ily iigrted to the

United Sttes. His English still intined Cyrillic vor, nd his speech

ws dotted with nchronistic Old World touches such s the use o wht-

not when peers would sy stu like tht. He hd rrived t Stnord t

nineteen ter whizzing through the University o Mrylnd, where histher tught, in three yers; he ws one o the youngest students ever to

strt the Stnord PhD progr. He skipped illion yers, sys Crig

Silverstein, who rrived t Stnord yer lter, nd would eventully

becoe Googles frst eployee. Sergey ws quirky kid who would zip

through Stnords hllwys on onipresent Rollerbldes. He lso hd n

interest in trpeze. But the proessors understood tht behind the goofness

ws oridble theticl ind. Soon ter rriving t Stnord, he

knocked o ll the required tests or doctorte nd ws ree to sple thecourses until he ound suitble entree or thesis. He suppleented his

cdeics with swiing, gynstics, nd siling. (When his ther sked


15/35

14 in the Plex

hi in rustrtion whether he plnned to tke dvnced courses, he sid

tht he ight tke dvnced swiing.) Donld Knuth, Stnord proes-

sor whose gisteril series o books on the rt o coputer progring

de hi the Proust o coputer code, reclls driving down the Pcifc

cost to conerence with Sergey one ternoon nd being ipressed t his

grsp o coplicted issues. His dviser, Hector Grci-Molin, hd seen

lot o bright kids go through Stnord, but Brin stood out. He ws bril-

lint, Grci-Molin sys.

One tsk tht Brin took on ws nubering schee or the new

Gtes Coputer Science Building, which ws to be the hoe o the de-

prtent. (His syste used theticl ourishes.) The structure ws

ned ter Willi Henry Gtes III, better known s Bill, the coounder

o Microsot. Though Gtes hd spent couple o yers t Hrvrd nd en-dowed building ned ter his other there, he went on sll splurge

o unding pltil new hoes or coputer science deprtents t top

technicl institutions tht he didnt ttend, including MIT nd Crnegie

Mellonlong with Stnord, the triect o top CS progrs. Even s

they sneered t Windows, the next genertion o wizrds would study in

buildings ned ter Bill Gtes.

Did Gtes ever igine tht one o those buildings would incubte

rivl tht ight destroy Microsot?The grdute coputer science progr t Stnord ws built round

close reltionships between students nd culty ebers. They would

te up to work on big, rel-world probles; the resh perspective o the

young people intins the vitlity o the proessors interests. You lwys

ollow the students, sys Terry Winogrd, who ws Pges dviser. (Pge

would oten reind hi tht they hd et during his dds Stnord sb-

bticl.) Over the yers Winogrd hd becoe n expert t fguring out

where students stood on the spectru o brinics who ound their wyinto the deprtent. Soe were kids whose undergrd record ws stright

A pluses, GRE scores scrping perection, who would coe in nd sy,

Wht thesis should I work on? On the other end o the spectru were

kids like Lrry Pge, who would coe in nd sy, Heres wht I think I cn

do. And his proposls were crazy. Hed coe into the ofce nd tlk bout

doing soething with spce tethers or solr kites. It ws science fction

ore thn coputer science, reclls Winogrd. But n outlndish ind

ws vluble sset, nd there ws defnitely plce in the current scienceto chnnel wild cretivity.

In 1995, tht plce ws the World Wide Web. It hd sprung ro the


16/35


restless brin o (then)-obscure British engineer ned Ti Berners-

Lee, who ws working s technicin t the CERN physics reserch lb in

Switzerlnd. Berners-Lee could su up his vision in sentence: Suppose

ll the inortion stored on coputers everywhere were linked . . . there

would be single globl inortion spce.

The webs pedigree could be trced bck to 1945 pper by the Aer-

icn scientist Vnnevr Bush. Entitled As We My Think, it outlined vst

storge syste clled eex, where docuents would be connected,

nd could be reclled, by inortion bredcrubs clled trils o sso-

cition. The tieline continued to the work o Dougls Engelbrt, whose

te t the Stnord Reserch Institute devised linked docuent syste

tht lived behind dzzling interce tht introduced the etphors o win-

dows nd fles to the digitl desktop. Then ce detour to the brillint buterrtic work o n utodidct ned Ted Nelson, whose bitious Xndu

Project (though never copleted) ws vision o disprte inortion

linked by hypertext connections. Nelsons work inspired Bill Atkinson,

sotwre engineer who hd been prt o the originl Mcintosh te; in

1987 he ce up with link-bsed syste clled HyperCrd, which he sold

to Apple or $100,000 on the condition tht the copny give it wy to ll

its users. But to relly ulfll Vnnevr Bushs vision, you needed huge sys-

te where people could reely post nd link their docuents.By the tie Berners-Lee hd his epiphny, tht syste ws in plce:

the Internet. While the erliest websites were just wys to distribute

cdeic ppers ore efciently, soon people begn writing sites with

inortion o ll sorts, nd others creted sites just or un. By the id-

1990s, people were strting to use the web or proft, nd new word,

e-coerce, ound its wy into the lexicon. Azon.co nd eBy

bece Internet gints. Other sites positioned theselves s gtewys, or

portls, to the wonders o the Internet.As the web grew, its linking structure ccuulted ind-boggling

vlue. It treted the ggregte o ll its contents s huge copost o ides,

ny one o which could be reched by the ct o connecting one docuent

to nother. When you looked t pge you could see, usully highlighted

in blue, the pointers to other sites tht the webster hd coded on the

pgetht ws the hypertext ide tht glvnized Bush, Nelson, nd Atkin-

son. But or the frst tie, s Berners-Lee hd intended, the web ws cox-

ing criticl ss o these linked sites nd docuents into single network.In eect, the web ws n infnite dtbse, sort o crzily expnding uni-

verse o hun knowledge tht, in theory, could hold every insight, thought,


17/35

16 in the Plex

ige, nd product or sle. And ll o it hd n intricte lttice o cross-

connections creted by the independent linking ctivity o nyone who hd

built pge nd coded in link to soething elsewhere on the web.

In retrospect, the web ws to the digitl world wht the Louisin

Purchse ws to the young United Sttes: the opportunity o century.

Berners-Lees cretion ws so new tht when Stnord got unding

ro the Ntionl Science Foundtion in the erly 1990s to strt pro-

gr clled the Digitl Librry Project, the web wsnt entioned in the

proposl. The thee o tht project ws interoperbilityhow cn we

ke ll these resources work together? reclls Hector Grci-Molin,

who coounded the project. By 1995 though, Grci-Molin knew tht the

World Wide Web would inevitbly be prt o the projects concocted by the

students who worked with the progr, including Pge nd Brin.Brin lredy hd Ntionl Science Foundtion ellowship nd didnt

need unding, but he ws trying to fgure out disserttion topic. His loose

ocus ws dt ining, nd with Rjeev Motwni, young proessor he

bece close with, he helped strt reserch group clled MIDAS, which

stood or Mining Dt t Stnord. In rsu he posted on the Stnord

site in 1995, he tlked bout new project to generte personlized ovie

rtings. The wy it works is s ollows, he wrote. You rte the ovies you

hve seen. Then the syste fnds other users with siilr tstes to extrpo-lte how uch you like other ovies. Another project he worked on with

Grci-Molin nd nother student ws syste tht detected copyright

violtions by utoting serches or duplictes o docuents. He ce

up with soe good lgoriths or detecting copies, sys Grci-Molin.

Now you use Google.

Pge ws lso seeking disserttion topic. One ide he presented to

Winogrd, collbortion with Brin, seeed ore proising thn the oth-

ers: creting syste where people could ke nnottions nd coentson websites. But the ore Pge thought bout nnottion, the essier it

got. For big sites, there would probbly be lot o people who wnted to

rk up pge. How would you fgure out who gets to coent or whose

coent would be the one youd see frst? For tht, he sys, We needed

rting syste.

Hving hun being deterine the rtings ws out o the question.

First, it ws inherently iprcticl. Further, huns were unrelible. Only

lgorithswell drwn, efciently executed, nd bsed on sound dtcould deliver unbised results. So the proble bece fnding the right

dt to deterine whose coents were ore trustworthy, or interesting,


18/35


thn others. Pge relized tht such dt lredy existed nd no one else

ws relly using it. He sked Brin, Why dont we use the links on the web

to do tht?

Pge, child o cdei, understood tht web links were like cit-

tions in scholrly rticle. It ws widely recognized tht you could identiy

which ppers were relly iportnt without reding thesiply tlly

up how ny other ppers cited the in notes nd bibliogrphies. Pge

believed tht this principle could lso work with web pges. But getting

the right dt would be difcult. Web pges de their outgoing links

trnsprent: built into the code were esily identifble rkers or the

destintions you could trvel to with ouse click ro tht pge. But it

wsnt obvious t ll wht linked to pge. To fnd tht out, youd hve to

soehow collect dtbse o links tht connected to soe other pge.Then youd go backward.

Thts why Pge clled his syste BckRub. The erly versions o

hypertext hd trgic w: you couldnt ollow links in the other direc-

tion, Pge once told reporter. BckRub ws bout reversing tht.

Winogrd thought this ws gret ide or project, but not n

esy one. To do it right, he told Pge, youd relly hve to cpture sig-

nifcnt chunk o the World Wide Webs link structure. Pge sid, sure,

hed go nd downlod the web nd get the structure. He fgured it wouldtke week or soething. And o course, he lter reclled, it took, like,

yers. But Pge nd Brin ttcked it. Every other week Pge would coe

to Grci-Molins ofce sking or disks nd equipent. Thts fne,

Grci-Molin would sy. This is gret project, but you need to give e

budget. He sked Pge to pick nuber, to sy how uch o the web he

needed to crwl, nd to estite how ny disks tht would tke. I wnt

to crwl the whole web, Pge sid.

Pge indulged in little vnity in ning the prt o the syste thtrted websites by the incoing links: he clled it PgeRnk. But it ws

sly vnity; ny people ssued the ne reerred to web pges, not

surne.

Since Pge wsnt world-clss progrer, he sked riend to help

out. Scott Hssn ws ull-tie reserch ssistnt t Stnord, working or

the Digitl Librry Project progr while doing prt-tie grd work. Hs-

sn ws lso good riends with Brin, who hed et t n Ultite Frisbee

ge during his frst week t Stnord. Pges progr hd so ny bugsin it, it wsnt unny, sys Hssn. Prt o the proble ws tht Pge ws

using the reltively new coputer lnguge Jv or his bitious project,


19/35

18 in the Plex

nd Jv kept crshing. I went nd tried to fx soe o the bugs in Jv

itsel, nd ter doing this ten ties, I decided it ws wste o tie, sys

Hssn. I decided to tke his stu nd just rewrite it into the lnguge I

knew uch better tht didnt hve ny bugs.

He wrote progr in Python ore exible lnguge tht ws

becoing populr or web-bsed progrstht would ct s spider, so

clled becuse it would crwl the web or dt. The progr would visit

web pge, fnd ll the links, nd put the into queue. Then it would check

to see i it hd visited those link pges previously. I it hdnt, it would put

the link on queue o uture destintions to visit nd repet the process.

Since Pge wsnt ilir with Python, Hssn bece eber o the

te. He nd nother student, Aln Stereberg, bece pid ssistnts to

the project.Brin, the th prodigy, took on the huge tsk o crunching the th-

etics tht would ke sense o the ess o links uncovered by their

onster survey o the growing web.

Even though the sll te ws going soewhere, they werent quite

sure o their destintion. Lrry didnt hve pln, sys Hssn. In re-

serch you explore soething nd see wht sticks.

By Mrch 1996, they begn test, strting t single pge, the Stn-

ord coputer science deprtent hoe pge. The spider locted thelinks on the pge nd nned out to ll the sites tht linked to Stnord,

then to the sites tht linked to those websites. Tht frst one just used the

titles o docuents becuse collecting the docuents theselves required

lot o dt nd work, sys Pge. Ater they snred bout 15 illion o

those titles, they tested the progr to see which websites it deeed ore

uthorittive.

Even the frst set o results ws very convincing, Hector Grci-

Molin sys. It ws pretty cler to everyone who sw this deo tht thisws very good, very powerul wy to order things.

We relized it worked relly, relly well, sys Pge. And I sid,

Wow, the big proble here is not nnottion. We should now use it not

just or rnking nnottions, but or rnkingsearches. It seeed the obvi-

ous ppliction or n invention tht gve rnking to every pge on the

web. It ws pretty cler to e nd the rest o the group, he sys, tht i

you hve wy o rnking things bsed not just on the pge itsel but bsed

on wht the world thought o tht pge, tht would be relly vlublething or serch.


20/35


The leder in web serch t tht tie ws progr clled AltVist tht

ce out o Digitl Equipent Corportions Western Reserch Lbor-

tory. A key designer ws Louis Monier, droll Frenchn nd idelistic

geek who hd coe to Aeric with doctorte in 1980. DEC hd been

built on the inicoputer, once innovtive ctegory now rendered

dinosur by the personl coputer revolution. DEC ws very uch liv-

ing in the pst, sys Monier. But they hd sll groups o people who

were very orwrd-thinking, experienting with lots o toys. One o those

toys ws the web. Monier hisel ws no expert in inortion retrievl

but big n o dt in the bstrct. To e, tht ws the secretdt,

he sys. Wht the dt ws telling hi ws tht i you hd the right tools,

it ws possible to tret everything in the open web like single docu-

ent.Even t tht erly dte, the bsic building blocks o web serch hd

been lredy set in stone. Serch ws our-step process. First ce

sweeping scn o ll the worlds web pges, vi spider. Second ws index-

ing the inortion drwn ro the spiders crwl nd storing the dt on

rcks o coputers known s servers. The third step, triggered by users

request, identifed the pges tht seeed best suited to nswer tht query.

Tht result ws known s serch qulity. The fnl step involved ortting

nd delivering the results to the user. Monier ws ost concerned with the second step, the tie-

consuing process o crwling through illions o docuents nd scoop-

ing up the dt. Crwling t tht tie ws slow, becuse the other side

would tke on verge our seconds to respond, sys Monier. One dy,

lying by swiing pool, he relized tht you could get everything in

tiely shion by prllelizing the process, covering ore thn one pge

t tie. The right nuber, he concluded, ws thousnd pges t once.

Monier fgured out how to build crwler working on tht scle. On single chine I hd one thousnd threds, independent processes sking

things nd not stepping on ech others toes.

By lte 1995, people in DECs Western Reserch Lb were using

Moniers serch engine. He hd tough tie convincing his bosses to open

up the engine to the public. They rgued tht there ws no wy to ke

oney ro serch engine but relented when Monier sold the on the

public reltions spect. (The syste would be testent to DECs pow-

erul new Alph processing chip.) On lunch dy, AltVist hd 16 illiondocuents in its indexes, esily besting nything else on the net. The big

ones then hd ybe illion pges, sys Monier. Tht ws the power o


21/35

20 in the Plex

AltVist: its bredth. When DEC opened it to outsiders on Deceber 15,

1995, nerly 300,000 people tried it out. They were dzzled.

AltVists ctul serch qulity techniqueswht deterined the

rnking o resultswere bsed on trditionl inortion retrievl (IR)

lgoriths. Mny o those lgoriths rose ro the work o one n,

reugee ro Nzi Gerny ned Gerrd Slton, who hd coe to

Aeric, got PhD t Hrvrd, nd oved to Cornell University, where he

coounded its coputer science deprtent. Serching through dtbses

using the se conds youd use with hunnturl lnguge

bece the ter o rtws Sltons specilty.

During the 1960s, Slton developed syste tht ws to becoe

odel or inortion retrievl. It ws clled SMART, supposedly n cro-

ny or Sltons Mgicl Retriever o Text. The syste estblished nyconventions tht still persist in serch, including indexing nd relevnce

lgoriths. When Slton died in 1995, his techniques still ruled the feld.

For thirty yers, wrote one cdeic in tribute yer lter, Gerry Slton

wasinortion retrievl.

The World Wide Web ws bout to chnge tht, but the cdeics

didnt know itnd neither did AltVist. While its cretors hd the insight

to gther ll o the web, they issed the opportunity to tke dvntge

o the link structure. The innovtion ws tht I ws not rid to etchs uch o the web s I could, store it in one plce, nd hve relly st

response tie. That ws the novelty, sys Monier. Menwhile, AltVist

nlyzed wht ws on ech individul pgeusing etrics like how ny

ties ech word pperedto see i pge ws relevnt tch to given

keyword in query.

Even though there ws no cler wy to ke oney ro serch,

AltVist hd nuber o copetitors. By 1996, when I wrote bout serch

or Newsweek, executives ro severl copnies were ll bosting theost useul service. When pressed, ll o the would dit tht in the rce

between the onivorous web nd their burgeoning technology, the web

ws winning. Acdeic IR hd thirty yers to get to where it iswere

breking new ground, but its difcult, coplined Grh Spencer, the

engineer behind the serch engine creted by strt-up clled Excite.

AltVists director o engineering, Brry Rubinson, sid tht the best p-

proch ws to throw ssive ounts o silicon towrd the proble nd

then hope or the best. The frst proble is tht relevnce is in the eye othe beholder, he sid. The second proble, he continued, is king sense

o the inuritingly brie nd cryptic queries typed into the AltVist serch


22/35


feld. He iplied tht the tsk ws kin to voodoo. Its ll wizrdry nd

witchcrt, he told e. Anyone who tells you its scientifc is just pulling

your leg.

No one t the web serch copnies entioned using links.

The links were the reson tht reserch project running on

coputer in Stnord dor roo hd becoe the top perorer. Lrry

Pges PgeRnk ws powerul becuse it cleverly nlyzed those links nd

ssigned nuber to the, etric on scle o 1 to 10, tht llowed

you to see the pges proinence in coprison to every other pge on

the web. One o the erly versions o BckRub hd siply counted the

incoing links, but Pge nd Brin quickly relized tht it wsnt erely

the nuber o links tht de things relevnt. Just s iportnt ws who

ws doing the linking. PgeRnk reected tht inortion. The oreproinent the sttus o the pge tht de the link, the ore vluble the

link ws nd the higher it would rise when clculting the ultite Pge-

Rnk nuber o the web pge itsel. The ide behind PgeRnk ws tht

you cn estite the iportnce o web pge by the web pges tht link

to it, Brin would sy. We ctully developed lot o th to solve tht

proble. Iportnt pges tended to link to iportnt pges. We convert

the entire web into big eqution with severl hundred illion vribles,

which re the PgeRnks o ll the web pges, nd billions o ters, whichre ll the links. It ws Brins thetic clcultions on those possible

500 illion vribles tht identifed the iportnt pges. It ws like looking

t p o irline routes: the hub cities would stnd out becuse o ll the

lines representing ights tht originted nd terinted there. Cities tht

got the ost trfc ro other iportnt hubs were clerly the jor cen-

ters o popultion. The se pplied to websites. Its ll recursive, Pge

lter sid. In wy, how good you re is deterined by who links to you

nd who you link to deterines how good you re. Its ll big circle. Butthetics is gret. You cn solve this.

The PgeRnk score would be cobined with nuber o ore tr-

ditionl inortion retrievl techniques, such s copring the keyword

to text on the pge nd deterining relevnce by exining ctors such

s requency, ont size, cpitliztion, nd position o the keyword. (Those

ctors help deterine the iportnce o keyword on given pgei

ter is proinently etured, the pge is ore likely to stisy query.)

Such ctors re known s signals, nd they re criticl to serch qulity.There re ew crucil illiseconds in the process o web serch during

which the engine interprets the keyword nd then ccesses the vst index,


23/35

22 in the Plex

where ll the text on billions o pges is stored nd ordered just like n

index o book. At tht point the engine needs soe help to fgure out how

to rnk those pges. So it looks or signlstrits tht cn help the engine

fgure out which pges will stisy the query. A signl sys to the serch en-

gine, Hey, consider e or your results! PgeRnk itsel is signl. A web

pge with high PgeRnk nuber sends essge to the serch engine

tht its ore reputble source thn those with lower nubers.

Though PgeRnk ws BckRubs gic wnd, it ws the cobin-

tion o tht lgorith with other signls tht creted the ind-blowing

results. I the keyword tched the title o the web pge or the doin

ne, tht pge would go higher in the rnkings. For queries consisting

o ultiple words, docuents contining ll o the serch query ters in

close proxiity would typiclly get the nod over those in which the phrsetch ws not even close. Another powerul signl ws the nchor text

o links tht led to the pge. For instnce, i web pge used the words Bill

Clinton to link to the White House, Bill Clinton would be the nchor

text. Becuse o the high vlues ssigned to nchor text, BckRub query

or Bill Clinton would led to www.whitehouse.gov s the top result be-

cuse nuerous web pges with high PgeRnks used the presidents ne

to link the White House site. When you did serch, the right pge would

coe up, even i the pge didnt include the ctul words you were serch-ing or, sys Scott Hssn. Tht ws pretty cool. It ws lso soething

other serch engines iled to do. Even though www.whitehouse.gov ws

the idel response to the Clinton nvigtion query, other coercil en-

gines didnt include it in their results. (In April 1997, Pge nd Brin ound

tht copetitors top hit ws Bill Clinton Joke o the Dy.)

PgeRnk hd one other powerul dvntge. To serch engines tht

relied on the trditionl IR pproch o nlyzing content, the web pre-

sented terrible chllenge. There were illions nd illions o pges, nds ore nd ore were dded, the perornce o those systes inevitbly

degrded. For those sites, the rpid expnsion o the web ws proble,

drin on their resources. But becuse o PgeRnk, BckRub got betters

the web grew. New sites ent ore links. This dditionl inortion

llowed BckRub to identiy even ore ccurtely the pges tht ight be

relevnt to query. And the ore recent links would iprove the reshness

o the site. PgeRnk hs the beneft o lerning ro the whole o the

World Wide Web, Brin would explin.O course, Brin nd Pge hd the logisticl proble o cpturing the

whole web. The Stnord te did not hve the resources o DEC. For


24/35


while, BckRub could ccess only the bndwidth vilble to the Gtes

Building10 egbits o trfc per second. But the entire university rn

on gint T3 line tht could operte t 45 egbits per second. The Bck-

Rub te discovered tht by retoggling n incorrectly set switch in the

bseent, it could get ull ccess to the T3 line. As soon s they toggled

tht, we were ll the wy up to the xiu o the entire Stnord net-

work, sys Hssn. We were using ll the bndwidth o the network. And

this ws ro single chine doing this, on desktop in y dor roo.

In those dys, people who rn websitesny o the with inil

technicl svvywere not used to their sites being crwled. Soe o the

would look t their logs, nd see requent visits ro www.stnord.edu, nd

suspect tht the university ws soehow steling their inortion. One

won ro Wyoing contcted Pge directly to dend tht he stop,but Googles bot kept visiting. She discovered tht Hector Grci-Molin

ws the projects dviser nd clled hi, chrging tht the Stnord co-

puter ws doing terrible things to her coputer. He tried to explin to her

tht being crwled is hrless, nondestructive procedure, but shed hve

none o it. She clled the deprtent chir nd the Stnord security ofce.

In theory, coplinnts could block crwlers by putting little piece o

code on their sites clled /robots.txt, but the ngry websters werent re-

ceptive to the concept. Lrry nd Sergey got nnoyed tht people couldntfgure out /robots.txt, sys Winogrd, but in the end, they ctully built

n exclusion list, which they didnt wnt to. Even then, Pge nd Brin be-

lieved in sel-service syste tht worked in scle, serving vst popultions.

Hndcrting exclusions ws nthe.

Brin nd Pge ell into pttern o rpid iterting nd lunching.

I the pges or given query were not quite in the proper order, theyd

go bck to the lgorith nd see wht hd gone wrong. It ws tricky

blncing ct to ssign the proper weights to the vrious signls. You dothe rnking initilly, nd then you look t the list nd sy, Are they in the

right order? I theyre not, we djust the rnking, nd then youre like, Oh

this looks relly good, sys Pge. Pge used the rnking or the keyword

o university s litus test. He pid prticulr ttention to the reltive

rnking o his l ter, Michign, nd his current school, Stnord. Brin

nd Pge ssued tht Stnord would be rnked higher, but Michign

topped it. Ws tht w in the lgorith? No. We decided tht Michi-

gn hd ore stu on the web, nd tht ws resonble, sys Pge.This listing showed the power o PgeRnk. It de BckRub uch

ore useul thn the results youd get ro the coercil serch engines.


25/35

24 in the Plex

Their list o institutions or the university query seeed totlly rndo.

The nuber one result or tht generic ter in AltVist would give you

the Oregon Center or Optics. Pge reclls converstion bck then with

n AltVist engineer who told hi tht with the wy pges were scored,

query or university ws likely to get pge where tht word ppered

twice in the hedline. Tht doesnt ke ny sense, Pge sid, noting tht

such serch ws ore likely to get inor university with redundncy in

its title.

I you wnt jor universities, you should type jor universi-

ties, sid the engineer. Pge ws pplled. I like, well, they tech you

in hun coputer interction, which is y brnch, tht the user is never

wrong. The person in the syste is never wrong.

Until tht oent, the tsk o copiling list o universities ndrnking the in signifcnce hd been coplicted, intellectully chlleng-

ing, nd lbor-intensive. Soe gzines eployed lrge tes working

or onths to do just tht. I you were to try to tech coputer to do tht,

your instinct would be to eed it dt bout SAT scores, grdution rtes,

prizewinners ong culty, nd thousnd other ctors. Then youd hve

to fgure out how to weigh the. The odds were low tht chine would

crnk out rting tht squred with the gut eeling o well-educted

citizen. But BckRub knew nothing bout those sttistics. It just knew howto tke dvntge o the ct tht links creted by the web counity hd

iplicitly produced rnking tht ws better thn ny group o gzine

editors or knowledge curtors could coe up with. Lrry Pge nd Sergey

Brin hd fgured out how to ine tht knowledge beore the inortion

retrievl estblishent nd coercil serch engines even relized tht it

existed.

The whole feld hd suered blinders, sys the coputer scientist

Ait Singhl, then Bell Lbs resercher who hd been protg o JerrySlton. In soe sense, serch relly did need two people who were never

tinted by people like e to coe up with tht shke-up.

Lrry Pge ws not the only person in 1996 who relized tht exploiting

the link structure o the web would led to drticlly ore powerul

wy to fnd inortion. In the suer o tht yer, young coputer

scientist ned Jon Kleinberg rrived in Cliorni to spend yerlong

postdoctorl ellowship t IBMs reserch center in Alden, on the south-ern edge o Sn Jose. With new PhD ro MIT, he hd lredy ccepted

tenure-trck job in the CS deprtent t Cornell University.


26/35


Kleinberg decided to look t web serch. The coercil opertions

didnt see eective enough nd were urther hobbled by sp. AltVists

results in prticulr were becoing less useul becuse websites hd ged

it by word stufnginserting ultiple repetitions o desirble keywords,

oten in invisible text t the botto o the web pge. The recurring re-

rin, sys Kleinberg, ws tht serch doesnt work. But he hd n intu-

ition o ore eective pproch. One thing tht ws not being used t

ll ws the ct tht the web ws network, he sys. You could fnd people

sying in the cdeic ppers tht links ought to be tken dvntge o, but

by 1996 it still hdnt been.

Kleinberg begn to ply round with wys to nlyze links. Since he

didnt hve the ssistnce, the resources, the tie, or the inclintion, he

didnt ttept to index the entire web or his link nlysis. Insted he did kind o prewsh. He typed query into AltVist, took the frst two hun-

dred results, nd then used tht subset or his own serch.

Interestingly, the best results or the query were oten not included in

those AltVist solutions. For instnce, i you typed in newspper, Alt-

Vist would not give you links or The New York Timesor The Washington

Post. Thts not surprising, becuse AltVist is bout tching strings,

nd unless The New York Timeshppened to sy, I newspper! AltVist

is not going to fnd it, Kleinberg explins. But, he suspected, hed hveore luck i he checked out wht those 200 sites pointed to. Aong those

200 people who were sying newsppers, soeone ws going to point to

The New York Times, he sys. In ct, bunch o people were going to point

to The New York Times, becuse ong those 200 pges were soe people

who relly liked to collect links or newsppers on the web. I you pulled

in those links, nd got set o 5,000 to 10,000 o the, in sense, youd

hve vote. The winner would be the one with the ost in-links ro

the group. It ws the se lightbulb tht hd brightened over LrryPges hed.

Soetie in Deceber 1996, Kleinberg got the blnce right. One

o his vorite queries ws Olypics. The suer ges hd been held

in Atlnt tht yer, nd there were thousnds o sites tht in soe wy

delt with the thletic contests, the politics, the bob tht doestic ter-

rorist hd plnted. The AltVist results or tht keyword were riddled with

sp nd were generlly useless. But Kleinbergs top result ws the ofcil

Olypics site.Kleinberg begn showing his brekthrough round IBM. His ng-

ers quickly put hi in touch with the ptent lwyers. Most people took


27/35

26 in the Plex

look t wht Kleinberg hd set up nd wnted hi to fnd stu or the.

Even the ptent ttorney wnted Kleinberg to help hi fnd sources or his

hobby, edievl siege devices. By Februry 1997, he sys, ll sorts o IBM

vice presidents were trooping through Alden to look t deos o this

thing nd trying to think bout wht they could do with it. Ultitely, the

nswer ws . . . not uch. IBM ws $70 billion business, nd it ws hrd

to see how reserch project bout links on this World Wide Web could

ke dierence. Kleinberg shrugged it o. He ws going to tech co-

puter science t Cornell.

Through utul riends t Stnord, Kleinberg herd bout Lrry

Pges project, nd in July 1997 they et t Pges ofce in the Gtes Build-

ing. Kleinberg ws ipressed with BckRub. In cdei, when theres

hrd proble everyone wnts to solve, youre lwys iplicitly copetingwith the other people who re working on it, sys Kleinberg. But neither

entioned tht issue. Kleinberg encourged Pge to publish his fndings,

but Pge wsnt receptive. Lrry ws worried bout writing pper, sys

Kleinberg. He ws wry becuse he wnted to see how r he could get

with it while he refned it.

Kleinberg could see tht his gols were dierent ro Pges. They

wnted to crwl the whole web nd get it on rcks o servers tht they

would ccuulte, Kleinberg sys. My view ws How cn I solve thisproble without hving to sink three onths into indexing the web? We

hd the se core ide, but how we went bout it ws lost dietriclly

opposite. Kleinberg ws trying to understnd network behvior. Pge

nd Brin were buildingsoething. Kleinberg hd this notion o uthority,

where your pge cn becoe good just by linking to the right pges, sys

Pge. Wheres wht I ws doing ws ore o trfc siultion, which is

ctully how people ight serch the web.

Kleinberg kept up with Google. He turned down job eelers in 1999nd gin in 2000. He ws hppy t Cornell. Hed win teching wrds nd

McArthur ellowship. He led the lie in cdei hed set out to led,

nd not becoing billionire didnt see to bother hi.

There ws yet third person with the ide, Chinese engineer ned

Ynhong (Robin) Li. In 1987, he begn his studies t Beijing University, n

institution tht clied proinence in the country by wy o etric: The

Science Cittion Index, which rnked scientifc ppers by the nuber oother ppers tht cited the. The index ws used in Chin to rnk universi-


28/35


ties. Beijing University, esured by the nuber o cittions its proessors

got ro their ppers, ws rnked nuber one, sid Li.

Li ce to the United Sttes in 1991 to get sters degree t

SUNY Bulo, nd in 1994 took job t IDD Inortion Services in

Scotch Plins, New Jersey, division o Dow Jones. Prt o his job ws

iproving inortion retrievl processes. He tried the serch engines

t the tieAltVist, Excite, Lycosnd ound the ineectul nd

sp-ridden. One dy in April 1996 he ws t n cdeic conerence.

Bored by the presenttion, he begn to ponder how serch engines could

be iproved. He relized tht the Science Cittion Index phenoenon

could be pplied to the Internet. The hypertext link could be regrded s

cittion! When I returned hoe, I strted to write this down nd relized

it ws revolutionry, he sys. He devised serch pproch tht clcultedrelevnce ro both the requency o links nd the content o nchor text.

He clled his syste RnkDex.

When he described his schee to his boss t Dow Jones, urging

the copny to pply or ptent, he ws t frst encourged, then disp-

pointed when nothing hppened. So couple o onths lter, I decided to

write the ppliction by ysel. He bought sel-help book on ptent p-

plictions nd fled his in June 1996. But when he told his boss, Dow Jones

resserted itsel nd hired lwyer to review the ptent, which it refledin Februry 1997. (Stnord University would not fle its ptent or Lrry

Pges PgeRnk syste until Jnury 1998.) Nonetheless, Dow Jones did

nothing with Lis syste. I tried to convince the it ws iportnt, but

their business hd nothing to do with Internet serch, so they didnt cre,

he sys.

Robin Li quit nd joined the West Cost serch copny clled Ino-

seek. In 1999, Disney bought the copny nd soon thereter Li returned

to Chin. It ws there in Beijing tht he would lter eetnd copetewithLrry Pge nd Sergey Brin.

Pge nd Brin hd lunched their project s stepping-stone to possible

disserttions. But it ws inevitble tht they begn to eye their cretion s

soething tht could ke the oney. The Stnord CS progr ws

s uch corporte incubtor s n cdeic institution. Dvid Cheri-

ton, one o the proessors, once put it this wy: The unir dvntge

tht Stnord hs over ny other plce in the known universe is tht weresurrounded by Silicon Vlley. It ws not uncoon or its proessors to


29/35

28 in the Plex

strddle both worlds, intining posts in the deprtent while plying

in the high-tech scru o strt-ups striving or the big score. There ws

even joke tht culty ebers couldnt get tenure until they strted

copny.

Cheriton hisel ws prie exple o how the Stnord network

lunched copnies nd enriched the ounders. One o the erlier gold

strikes ro Stnord ws the ounding o Sun Microsystes by group

tht included Andy Bechtolshei, Vinod Khosl, nd Bill Joy. Cheriton ws

close to Bechtolshei, so in 1995, when the ltter decided to strt Grnite

Systes, networking strt-up, the two collborted. Eighteen onths

lter, Cisco bought the copny or $220 illion.

Sergey Brin, Rollerblding his wy round the corridors o Gtes

Hll, took notice. Though Brin nd Pge didnt hve clsses with Cheri-ton, they heded to his ofce or soe dvice. They specifclly wnted to

know how they ight interest copny into using PgeRnk in its own

serch technology. Cheriton told the tht it would be difcultSun Mi-

crosystes, he reinded the, hd been strted out o rustrtion when

copnies hd spurned Bechtolsheis ttepts to sell his worksttion

technology.

Yet Brin nd Pge were reluctnt t tht point to strike out on their

own. They hd both heded to Stnord intending to becoe PhDs liketheir dds.

But licensing their serch engine wsnt esy. Though Brin nd Pge

hd good eeting with Yhoo ounders Jerry Yng nd Dvid Filo, orer

Stnord students, Yhoo didnt see the need to buy serch engine technol-

ogy. They lso et with n AltVist designer, who seeed interested in

BckRub. But the wise en bck in DEC hedqurters in Mynrd, Ms-

schusetts, nixed the ide. Not Invented Here.

Mybe the closest Pge nd Brin ce to del ws with Excite, serch-bsed copny tht hd begunjust like Yhoowith bunch o

shrp Stnord kids whose copny ws clled Architext beore the ven-

ture cpitlists (VCs) got their hnds on it nd degeekifed the ne. Terry

Winogrd, Sergeys dviser, ccopnied the to eeting with Vinod

Khosl, the venture cpitlist who hd unded Excite.

Tht led to eeting with Excites ounders, Joe Krus nd Grh

Spencer, t Fuki Sushi, Plo Alto resturnt. Lrry insisted tht the whole

BckRub te coe long. He lwys likes to hve ore people on hisside thn the opposite side, to get the upper hnd, sys Scott Hssn, who


30/35


31/35

30 in the Plex

Internet into BckRub. The frst two results delivered pges tht told you

how to use browsers. It ws exctly the kind o helpul result tht would

ost likely stisy soeone who de the query.

Bell ws visibly upset. The Stnord product ws too good. I Excite

were to host serch engine tht instntly gve people inortion they

sought, he explined, the users would leve the site instntly. Since his d

revenue ce ro people stayingon the sitestickiness ws the ost

desired etric in websites t the tieusing BckRubs technology would

be counterproductive. He told us he wnted Excites serch engine to be

80 percent s good s the other serch engines, sys Hssn. And we were

like, Wow, these guys dont know wht theyre tlking bout.

Hssn sys tht he urged Lrry nd Sergey right then, in erly 1997,

to leve Stnord nd strt copny. Everybody else ws doing it, hesys. I sw Hotil nd Netscpe doing relly well. Money ws owing

into the Vlley. So I sid to the, The serch engine is the ide. We should

do this. They didnt think so. Lrry nd Sergey were both very dnt

tht they could build this serch engine t Stnord.

We werent . . . in n entrepreneuril re o ind bck then, Ser-

gey lter sid.

Hssn quit the project. He got job with new copny clled

Alex nd worked prt-tie on strt-up clled eGroups. In ct, Lrry ndSergeythis ws beore they hd gotten dollr in unding or Google

pitched in $5,000 ech to help hi buy coputers or eGroups. (The in-

vestent pid o less thn three yers lter when Yhoo bought eGroups

or n estited $413 illion.)

But or the next yer nd hl, ll the copnies they pproched

turned the down. We couldnt get nyone interested, sys Pge. We

did get oers, but they werent or uch oney. So we sid, Whtever,

nd went bck to Stnord to work on it soe ore. It wsnt like wewnted lot o oney, but we wnted the stu to get relly used. And they

would wnt us to work there nd wed sk, Do we relly wnt to work or

this copny? These copnies werent going to ocus on serchthey

were becoing portls. They didnt understnd serch, nd they werent

technology people.

In Septeber 1997, Pge nd Brin rened BckRub to soething

they hoped would be suitble or business. They gve serious consider-

tion to The Whtbox, until they relized tht it sounded too uch likewetbox, which wsnt ily-riendly. Then Pges dor roote sug-

gested they cll it googol. The word ws theticl ter reerring to


32/35


the nuber 1 ollowed by 100 zeros. Soeties the word googolplex ws

used genericlly to reer to n insnely lrge nuber. The ne reected

the scle o wht we were doing, Brin explined ew yers lter. It ctu-

lly bece better choice o ne lter on, becuse now we hve billions

o pges nd iges nd groups nd docuents, nd hundreds o illions

o serches dy. Pge isspelled the word, which ws just s well since

the Internet ddress or the correct spelling ws lredy tken. Google

ws vilble. It ws esy to type nd eorble, sys Pge.

One night, using new open-source grphics progr clled GIMP,

Sergey designed the hoe pge, spelling the new copny ne in dier-

ent colors, king logo tht resebled soething de ro childrens

blocks. It conveyed sense o ible whisy. He put n excltion point

ter the ne, just like Yhoo, nother Internet copny ounded by twoStnord PhD dropouts. He wnted it to be plyul nd young, sys Pge.

Unlike lot o other web pges, the Google hoe pge ws so sprse it

looked unfnished. The pge hd box to type in requests nd two buttons

underneth, one or serch nd nother lbeled I Feeling Lucky, str-

tling bid o confdence tht iplied tht, unlike the copetition, Google

ws cpble o niling your request on the frst try. (There ws nother

reson or the button. The point o I Feeling Lucky ws to replce the

doin ne syste or nvigtion, Pge sid in 2002. Both Pge ndBrin hoped tht insted o guessing wht ws the ddress o their web des-

tintion, theyd just go to Google.) The next dy Brin rn round the CS

deprtent t Stnord, showing o his GIMP cretion. He ws sking

everybody whether it de ny sense to put other stu on the pge, sys

Dennis Allison, Stnord CS lecturer. And everybody sid no. Tht ws

fne with Pge nd Brin. The ore stu on the pge, the slower it would

run, nd both o the, especilly Pge, believed tht speed ws o the es-

sence when it ce to plesing users. Pge lter ound it huorous thtpeople prised the design or its Zen-like use o white spce. The inil-

is is tht we didnt hve webster nd hd to do it ourselves, he sys.

Menwhile, BckRub-turned-Google ws growing to the point where

it ws difcult to run using Stnords cilities. It ws becoing less re-

serch project thn n Internet strt-up run ro privte university. Pge

nd Brins reluctnce to write pper bout their work hd becoe notori-

ous in the deprtent. People were sying, Why is this so secret? This is

n cdeic project, we should be ble to know how it worked, sys TerryWinogrd.

Pge, it seeed, hd conict bout inortion. On one hnd, he


33/35

32 in the Plex

subscribed hertily to the hcker philosophy o shred knowledge. Tht

ws prt o wht his project ws ll bout: king hun knowledge c-

cessible, king the world better plce. But he lso hd strong sense o

protecting his hrd-won proprietry inortion. He reebered Nikol

Tesl, who hd died in poverty even s his inventions enriched others.

Lter, there would be specultion whether Pge, privte person to begin

with, hd pulled bck little ore ter his thers deth in June 1996.

Scott Hssn reclls tht the te conveyed its condolences to Pge tht

onth, but Hssn didnt spek uch bout the loss with Pge. Mostly we

tlked bout technicl stu, he would recll. Mike Moritz, one o the ven-

ture cpitlists who would und Google, lter surised tht lrge prt

o Pges lter wriness could be ssocited with tht loss. He elt tht the

world ws pulled out ro underneth hi, Moritz sid. It kes it hrdto trust nything gin.

But it wsnt just the secrecy tht stlled Brin nd Pge. Writing

pper wsnt s interesting to the s building soething. Inherently,

Lrry nd Sergey rent pper-orientedtheyre product-oriented, sys

Winogrd. I they hve nother ten inutes, they wnt to ke soething

better. They dont wnt to tke ten inutes to tell you soething they

did. But fnlly Winogrd convinced the to explin PgeRnk in pub-

lic oru. They presented pper clled The Antoy o Lrge-ScleHypertextul Web Serch Engine t conerence in Austrli in My

1998.

Arthur Clrke once rerked tht the best technology ws indis-

tinguishble ro gic. The geeks o Silicon Vlley, ssuing he ws

tlking bout the, hve never orgotten tht nd hve invoked the quote

in countless press releses bout their cretions. But Google serch relly

did eel like gic. At Stnord, Lrrys nd Sergeys proessors nd riends

were using the serch engine to nswer questions nd telling their riendsbout it. Google ws hndling s ny s 10,000 queries dy. At ties it

ws consuing hl o Stnords Internet cpcity. Its ppetite or equip-

ent nd bndwidth ws vorcious. We just begged nd borrowed, sys

Pge. There were tons o coputers round, nd we nged to get

soe. Pges dor roo ws essentilly Googles opertions center, with

otley ssortent o coputers ro vrious nucturers stued into

hoede version o server rck storge cbinet de o Legos.

Lrry nd Sergey would hng round the loding dock to see who oncpus ws getting coputerscopnies like Intel nd Sun gve lots o

ree chines to Stnord to curry vor with eployees o the uture


34/35


nd then the pir would sk the recipients i they could shre soe o the

bounty.

Tht still wsnt enough. To store the illions o pges they hd

crwled, the pir hd to buy their own high-cpcity disk drives. Pge,

who hd tlent or squeezing the ost out o buck, ound plce tht

sold reurbished disks t prices so low tenth o the originl costtht

soething ws clerly wrong with the. I did the reserch nd fgured out

tht they were oky s long s you replced the [disk] operting syste, he

sys. We got 120 drives, bout nine gigs ech. So it ws bout terbyte

o spce. It ws n pproch tht Google would lter dopt in building

inrstructure t low cost.

Lrry nd Sergey would be sitting by the onitor, wtching the

queriest pek ties, there would be new one every secondnd itwould be cler tht theyd need even ore equipent. What next? theyd

sk theselves.Maybe this is real.

Stnord wsnt kicking the outthe coplictions o running the

nscent Google were outweighed by pride tht soething interesting ws

brewing in the deprtent. It wsnt like our lights were diing when

they would run the crwler, sys Grci-Molin, who ws still hoping tht

Lrry nd Sergey would develop their work cdeiclly. I think it would

hve de gret thesis, he sys. I think their ilies were behind theto get PhDs, too. But doing copny bece too uch o n ttrction.

There ws no lterntive; no one would py enough or Google. And

the hppy visitors they were ttrcting gve the confdence tht their e-

orts could ke dierence. Ater yers o dreing how his ides could

chnge the world, Lrry Pge relized tht hed done soething tht ight

do just tht. I the copny iled, too bd, sys Pge. We were relly

going to be ble to do soething tht mattered.

They went bck to Dve Cheriton, who encourged the to just getgoing. Money shouldnt be proble, he sid. Cheriton suggested tht

they eet with Andy Bechtolshei. Brin dshed o n eil to Bechtol-

shei tht evening round idnight nd got n iedite reply sking

i the two students could show up t eight the next orning t Cheritons

house, which ws on the route Bechtolshei used to go to work ech

dy. At tht ungodly hour Pge nd Brin deoed their serch engine or

Bechtolshei on Cheritons porch, which hd n ethernet connection.

Bechtolshei, ipressed but eger to get to the ofce, cut the eetingshort by oering to write the duo $100,000 check.

We dont hve bnk ccount yet, sid Brin.


35/35

Deposit it when you get one, sid Bechtolshei, who rced o in

his Porsche. With s little nre s i he were grbbing ltte on the wy

to work, he hd just invested in n enterprise tht would chnge the wy

the world ccessed inortion. Brin nd Pge celebrted with Burger

King brekst. The check reined in Pges dor roo or onth.

Soon terwrd, Bechtolshei ws joined by other ngel investors,including Dve Cheriton. One ws Silicon Vlley entrepreneur ned

R Shrir, whose own copny hd recently been purchsed by

Azon.co. Shrir hd et Brin nd Pge in Februry 1998; lthough

he hd been skepticl bout business odel or serch engines, he ws so

ipressed with Google tht he hd been dvising the. Ater the Bechtol-

shei eeting, Shrir invited the to his house to eet his boss Je

Bezos, who ws enthrlled with their pssion nd helthy stubbornness,

s they explined why they would never put disply ds on their hoe pge.Bezos joined Bechtolshei, Cheriton, nd Shrir s investors, king or

totl o illion dollrs o ngel oney.

On Septeber 4, 1998, Pge nd Brin fled or incorportion nd

fnlly oved o cpus. Sergeys girlriend t the tie ws riendly with

nger t Intel ned Susn Wojcicki, who hd just purchsed house

on Snt Mrgrit Street in Menlo Prk with her husbnd or $615,000.

To help eet the ortgge, the couple chrged Google $1,700 onth to

rent the grge nd severl roos in the house. At tht point theyd tken

on their frst eployee, ellow Stnord student Crig Silverstein. Hed

originlly connected with the by oering to show the wy to co-

press ll the crwled links so they could be stored in eory nd run ster.

(It ws bsiclly to get y oot in the door, he sys.) They lso hired n

ofce nger. But lost s i they were still hedging on their PhDs, they

intined presence t Stnord tht ll, coteching course, CS 349,

Dt Mining, Serch, nd the World Wide Web, which et twice week

tht seester. Brin nd Pge nnounced it s project clss in which the

students would work with the repository o 25 illion web pges tht they

hd cptured s prt o wht ws now privte copny. They even hd

reserch ssistnt. The frst ssigned reding ws their own pper, but

lter in the seester clss ws devoted to coprison o PgeRnk nd

Kleinbergs work.

In Deceber, ter the fnl projects were due, Pge eiled the

students prty invittion tht lso rked ilestone: The Stnord Re-

serch Project is now Google.co: The Next Genertion Internet Serch

Copny.

in the plex by steven levy

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