Google Didn’t Just Come Out Of Nowhere

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 31 of October , 2007 at 9:16 am

From WebPro

Sooner or later, it seems that some company would happen upon a good combination of search results and public relations. There’s no telling when this could occur - Google itself seemed to come out of nowhere, and I don’t believe “The Birds” ever explained why those little beasties attacked Bodega Bay - but the search giant might do well to keep its eyes open.

Not so fast there, Ranger. Google didn’t come out of nowhere. There is a history and a story behind Google’s success. It started in the late ’90’s when Yahoo! was top dog for finding websites of interest. At that time, Yahoo! was a directory, not a search engine. But they were a very popular directory. Top search engines at that time included AltaVista, MetaCrawler, Excite, Infoseek, Ask Jeeves (remember Jeeves?), Inktomi and Dogpile, which was really an aggregator more than a search engine. That was 10 years ago, 1997. No one dominated search at the time because search was in its infancy and the companies interested in search as a technology were still themselves vying for recognition.

Google officially launched in 1998 and was developed out of its forerunner, BackRub. The founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, contacted Yahoo! to see if the directory would be interested in purchasing their technology. Instead of seizing the opportunity, Yahoo! founder David Filo told them to start their own search engine and he’d talk to them after their technology “fully developed and scalable”. Brin and Page had no interest in running their own company, but they took Filo’s advice anyway.

It didn’t take long for word to spread and Google began getting press recognition. They were billed as the best search engine in the world within one year. The cold, hard truth is, they were. Over the years, Google has continued to improve its technology and quickly dominated the search market, driving many competitors out of business or into something else.

Anyway, all of this can be found on Google’s own website and Wikipedia. Granted, Google’s rise to fame was very rapid, but it due mainly to word of mouth. As soon as Web aficionados learned of Google’s search technology, able to produce excellent search results based on user queries, then more and more people started using it instead of the alternative. It is perhaps the most successful viral marketing campaign in history, only it wasn’t planned as a viral marketing campaign. It just happened. I’d hardly call that coming out of nowhere.

This does illustrate one principle: To be successful online, you’ve got to have a great product. You have to be ahead of your competition and corner the market in something. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Just improve it. If you can do that and stay ahead of others who are trying to do that then you can succeed online. Oh, and impress Google. It’s called SEO.

Category: Search Engines

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