Videos From the Old Googleplex

In February 1999, Google moved from Susan Wojcicki's garage to "new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just eight employees" and in August 1999, Google relocated to Mountain View: 2400 E. Bayshore. Five years later, Google moved to "the new Googleplex at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment."

Former Google employee Doug Edwards posted some videos from November 1999 of the old Googleplex. At that time, Google's search engine was only available in English, it didn't include ads or image search results and it was the only Google service.

Larry Page's Business Card

A Reddit user writes:

I met both Carl Page and Larry Page at a party hosted by a Stanford friend of mine in 1998. Carl gave me his card for eGroups and said "we're hiring". Larry gave me his card for Google — a flimsy bit of paper obviously printed by bubble jet — and said "we're hiring". I said, "Nah, who needs another search engine?" and went to graduate school. I still have the card.

He wasn't the only one who thought that search engines aren't very useful. Google's founders faced difficulties in convincing investors that a search engine is a good business. Sun's co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim was the first Google investor, back in September 1998. "Andy Bechtolsheim was one of the few to see the true potential of what Brin and Page had wrought. During their presentation to him, Bechtolsheim said he had to duck out for another meeting and offered to write them a check. It was that hundred-grander, made out to Google Inc., that got the ball (and the bank) rolling. Brin and Page incorporated, managing to attract other investors, with an initial investment of around $1 million."

{ via waxy.org }

Yahoo Could've Bought Google In 2001

Terry Semel, Yahoo's CEO feels sad about something that didn't happen in 2001. Semel met with Larry Page and Sergey Brin and talked about the possibility of acquiring Google. Google's founders said that Google was worth $1 billion, but it's not for sale. After a week, Google's price was $3 billion. Terry Semel didn't understand why Google had a such a big price, since their revenue was almost non-existent.

"And I said, well you still have the same business you had two weeks ago, right? Which adds up to nothing. So obviously we couldn't and didn't buy the company."

Well, that's lack of vision. Google had a lot of problems convincing investors that a search engine is a good place to put your money. Andy Bechtolsheim, one of Sun's founders was the first to invest $100,000 in Google.

Google Pages You've Never Seen

Google Moms
A tribute to Googlers' moms.

Google AdSense for domains
AdSense for domains allows domain name registrars to fill the otherwise blank pages with AdSense ads.

Google Sets
Google Sets is the oldest Google product that never graduated Google Labs. Using Google Sets, you can create sets of items from a few examples.

Google Dance 2004
Also Google Dance 2005.

Get stock with Google
Google provides stock and mutual fund information since 2001.

Google doesn't sell search results
Google talks about the integrity of its results and answers this tricky question: "In a world where everything seems to be for sale, why can't advertisers buy better position in our search results?"

Google WiFi
Google provides free WiFi in Mountain View through Google Secure Access, a client that makes the WiFi connection more secure.

Google Newsletter
You knew Google has a blog, but you didn't know they have a newsletter called Google Friends. You can read the full archive.

Chad's journey to Jersey
One bike. One Googler. One really long ride.

Google Easter Eggs
A Java game with an Easter bunny.

Follow-up: more strange Google pages.