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Google Businesses The Internet

Happy 7th Birthday Google! 303

Posted by CmdrTaco from the don't-sing-or-your-have-to-pay-royalties dept.
AviN456 writes "On this day, in 1998, Google was born. Seven years later, and it has not only become the most popular search engine on the internet, but it has also become an integral part of many people's online life. From Google search to Google mail, Google Earth to Google Moon. It has even made its way into language as a common word.It is quite undeniable. Google is an amazing achievement. Happy birthday Google, and here's to many many more!"
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Happy 7th Birthday Google! More

Happy 7th Birthday Google!

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  • I knew it (Score:5, Funny)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:18AM (#13657309) Homepage
    As soon as I saw that png on Googles website, I KNEW Slashdot would cover it. I thought to myself "Google farted, that sound you hear is a million Slashdotters sniffing."

    Seriously, thanks for gmail though. I wish I would apply the concept of labels to files on my harddisk.

    • Re:I knew it (Score:2, Informative)

      by CyricZ ( 887944 )
      I wish I would apply the concept of labels to files on my harddisk.

      It has been suggested that WinFS will offer this sort of feature. Of course, will you be willing to use Windows Vista for that feature, however?

      • Re:I knew it (Score:2, Informative)

        by bigdickbrian ( 841966 )
        It has been suggested that WinFS will offer this sort of feature. Of course, will you be willing to use Windows Vista for that feature, however? Well, initial versions of Vista apparently wont have WinFS (its been moved backwards), so potentailly, WinFS wont be with us until EVEN LONGER. Thank fuck.

      • Re:I knew it (Score:4, Informative)

        by DrHanser ( 845654 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @08:05AM (#13657571) Homepage
        WinFS is available as an add-on to Windows XP [microsoft.com].

      • Re:I knew it (Score:3, Informative)

        by whereiswaldo ( 459052 )
        File labelling was around back in the DOS days. An awesome command shell replacement called 4DOS write a descript.ion file in each directory you described files. When you copied files around, the descriptions were copied around, too.
        • For those who long for those days of descript.ion - AcdSee32 does the same. I've been using it for years now, and it's a lot handier than the standard explorer.
        • 4dos rules. When I found I needed more and more to use Windows, I started using Take Command as my shell, rather than Program Manager.

          Anyway, descript.ion, and the labels discussed here which I assume are in fact similar to 4dos's use of descript.ion, seem rather obsolete now. Modern filesystems let you use long filenames with spaces and other odd characters, along with CLI filename completion to make it easier to type them. If you're naming your files in 8.3 (or similar) and wishing you could label them...

    • Re:I knew it (Score:5, Informative)

      by @madeus ( 24818 ) <slashdot_24818@mac.com> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:29AM (#13657363)
      Seriously, thanks for gmail though. I wish I would apply the concept of labels to files on my harddisk.

      Woah, seriously your OS doesn't have that? Time to upgrade perhaps. [diveintoosx.org] :-)

      It's not a feature I use (especially since having Spotlight), though I used to rely on it quite a bit when I was using Mac OS Classic. Nautilus allows you to label files though, and KDE seem to have something interesting in the works [kde.org].

    • Re:I knew it (Score:5, Funny)

      by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:32AM (#13657383) Homepage Journal
      Google farted, that sound you hear is a million Slashdotters sniffing.
      The sound you hear is a million slashdotters explaining how it's the most fragrant smell ever, and that there's no way any of the traditional perfumiers could possibly come up with anything so great.

      "It's hard to delete mail in Gmail"
      "You don't want to delete mail" (waves hand mysteriously while speaking like Alec Guiness.)

      "I want to sort my mail into folders"
      "That's not the feature you're looking for.... Labels are much more flexible."
      "And slinkys are more flexible than towbars, but I know which one I want to use to tow my car"
      • How hard is it to delete mail in GMail?

        No, what I don't get about GMail is why the search function (on which, in the GMail model, you are totally dependent) doesn't seem to search the sender's name! I frequently need to come up with a search term that will hit the message text after it fails to find a sender. Even Lotus Freaking Notes, which can't tell you whether you've replied to an email, can search on sender's name.

        And, yeah, the blurb here is about as inane as I would guessed -- OMTFG, "Google search

    • Yes - thanks for Gmail (seriously). But I wish I could apply the concept of folders of files on my hard disk to Gmail, not the other way around.
    • Windows Vista lets you apply labels to files on your hard drive. You can even create a Virtual Folder containing all the files with a particular label! By the time it's out, you'll even be able to dual boot it with Mac OS X on the same inexpensive piece of x86 hardware.
    • wow, that's like one of the least publicized or cared about features in osx. handy as fuck tho, esp smart folders, can keep a desktop folder that contains all your "x" from all locations, local, lan, wan.

      honestly 10 years ahead of you poor windows guys, maybe only 5 by the time vista comes out.

      wonder why it hasn't made kde/gnome yet? probably considered too n00b.

    • Re:I knew it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DJStealth ( 103231 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @09:20AM (#13658062)
      Here's a preview of what google looked like 7 years ago [archive.org]

      I know archive.org had older versions of the page, but for some reason this is the oldest one I can get today. You can try this link [archive.org] to an older preview, but it doesn't seem to work for me anymore.

  • I for one... (Score:4, Funny)

    by bc90021 ( 43730 ) * <bc90021&bc90021,net> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:19AM (#13657316) Homepage
    ...welcome our seven year old overlords.

    By ten, I predict that we're calling it the "GoogleNet" instead of the "Internet". ;-)

  • And many more... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Silverlancer ( 786390 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:20AM (#13657319)
    Here's to hoping google will be here for its next 7 years... and that it will still abide by its motto.... :)
  • Let's all sing a round of Happy Birthday. And while we're at it, we better make sure to pay our royalties to AOL.

  • Happy Birthday to Lawsuit (Score:5, Funny)

    by xmuskrat ( 613243 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:24AM (#13657339) Homepage
    Too bad I can't sing them a birthday song without invoking a lawsuit.
  • "from the don't-sing-or-your-have-to-pay-royalties dept."

    Surely some mistake. Shouldn't that be "you'll"?

  • Also known as... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:24AM (#13657344) Homepage
    The day Altavista died. It's amazing how fast and how hard Google crushed all the other search engines.
    • The day Altavista died.

      I wouldn't shed too many tears over it. Altavista was just advertising for the Alpha.

      DEC did try to spin Altavista products off but it wasn't a serious effort, and people weren't running DEC operating systems on the internet anyway.

    • Re:Also known as... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jurt1235 ( 834677 )
      That sure was incredible. My move to Google was so fast after they started, that it feels like they are around for 2 years longer. People telling other people: Use google, better than XYZengine. Altavista had that buzz once too, but were not able to stay on top. Google runs the risk of being annihilated the same way too if they do not keep improving their game.

    • Re:Also known as... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Dogtanian ( 588974 )
      The day Altavista died. It's amazing how fast and how hard Google crushed all the other search engines.

      Didn't Yahoo eclipse Altavista long before Google became dominant?

      I remember using Altavista when I first discovered the web 11 or so years ago, and it was (*very* relatively, given the penetration of the Internet back then) one of the most well-known "search engines". This seems ages ago when I think about it; people maintained simple *lists* of interesting websites for general use, and the web was
      • omg, yahoo.com still resolves!

    • Re:Also known as... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Mac Degger ( 576336 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @08:11AM (#13657606) Journal
      Not really. It's still the case that different search engines excel in different areas. For real scientific papers/issues dealing not just with electronics, teoma.com is better than google. Althoug googles scientific paper search engine is now very helpfull aswell. But for hard to find things, a metacrawler is still better than just google.

      It's a myth perpetuated by the ignorant that google has 'crushed' all other search engines. And as soon as google only gives adsense'd websites on a search, or useless marketing pages, all users will flock to the next search engine. So I'm not too sure what your point was, but it is not tue :)

      • Re:Also known as... (Score:4, Informative)

        by xtracto ( 837672 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @08:46AM (#13657814) Journal
        I will recommend you Scirus [scirus.com] for scientific papers/information. It is really helpful and has nice refining features, I will try teoma anyway.

        • Re:Also known as... (Score:3, Informative)

          by xtracto ( 837672 )
          I just made a search on Teoma... from what I saw, Scirus is better at constraining the search on scientific papers/information. Teoma is more like a web search engine.

          Also the Scirus.com refining proposals are better and more (in the specific query I did) than those in Teoma.

          Anyway, nice to know there exists 3 of them (google scholar... although I do not tend to use it)
  • Take a look at Google Moon and zoom in all the way. I TOLD YOU the moon is made of cheese!
  • Pick the Apollo 16th site and zoom in, all the way...
    • Fancy that! It's cheese!

      • Don't laugh. Give it a few months and it'll be part of the Kansas science curriculum.

  • together we will rule the galaxy as father and son (Score:5, Funny)

    by Errandboy of Doom ( 917941 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:36AM (#13657405) Homepage
    Doesn't someone else have a birthday [theinquirer.net] around this time of year?

    Here's hoping Google stays hip at 30.

  • Google's lego server (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Understudy ( 111386 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:37AM (#13657413) Homepage
    One of the early servers for Google was made from Lego blocks.
    http://www-db.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures /display/0-4-Google.htm [stanford.edu]
  • Does anyone remember when the first Google article was posted on Slashdot? I remember checking out the new search engine and it sucked (compared to Altavista). Then a few more articles on Slashdot and it became my preferred search engine.

    I guess the Slashdot editors deserve some Google shares... :-)

  • Something is very wrong here! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Vengie ( 533896 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:39AM (#13657422)
    Google's official birthday is September 7th [64.233.161.104].... (Link is to Google Cache. Otherwise, first hit for "google birthday" and check the cache.....)
  • you know, thats a mighty big kid for seven. You might want to start saving money for groceries now... for when they're a teenager.

  • In other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by TCM ( 130219 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:43AM (#13657453)
    Google has been renamed to Googte [google.com]!
  • Anybody who's seen Wallace and Gromit knows the moon is actually made of _green_ cheese!
  • I'm always interested to see the culture at Google and the things they do for the employees. We always hear about the food that's on campus there and the activities they plan for the employees. I wonder if any big celebration is planned for today. I can only imagine what they have in store...

  • Only 38 posts... (Score:5, Funny)

    by garethwi ( 118563 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:46AM (#13657475) Homepage
    Only 38 posts and their site is already... oh wait.

  • We welcomed our new Internet Overlords!

  • Google... really 7 years and 20 days...??? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I just saw the Google logo with the birthday and the 7. So I Googled "google birthday" the first hits that come up are a dead link to google.com help support indicating google's b-day is Sept. 7th.

    Google: Help Center Google's official birthday is September 7, 1998. If Google were a person, it would have started elementary school late last summer (around August 19), ... www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=4866&t opic=367 - 8k - Cached - Similar pages

    Fourth hit, http://blog.outer-court.com [outer-court.com]

    • Given the state of disaster that the USA was in around September 7th what with Hurricane Katrina and all, they probably just thought it would be kind of crass to ignore the death and destruction and just pass around the cake and talk about their new index size or whatever. I'm not saying the country's in a completely jolly mood now, but at least most people are feeling a little less like the world's about to end.

      Anyway, who really knows the birthday of any corporation? I'd imagine it's pretty arbitrary, s

  • They won't make any money (Score:4, Funny)

    by nighty5 ( 615965 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:50AM (#13657501)
    Half their shit is still in beta after 7 years, surely they are broke by now!

    Come on guys, to step up to plate and actually ship a product to make some cash, some quick decisions will have to be made :)

  • Google (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It would have been nice to have had a slightly more objective description of Google's rise to dominating the search engine market, and now branching out into other areas of the Internet.

    Just because their mission state is 'do no evil' rather than 'a computer on every desktop' doesn't mean that they will be any less evil in their tactics than any other large corporation.

    I know several people who work at Google, and gadzooks, they believe ALL of the propaganda, and regurgitate it at every opportunity: "our ch

  • Nine Billion Names of God (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kjeldor ( 146944 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:53AM (#13657511)
    by Kathy Kachelries

    After three hours, the old man in front of me had worked his way through six beers, in addition to every help desk joke Id already heard. The cupholder. The any key. The write click. These are the stories people tell, now. These are the fish that got away.

    Let me ask you something, the man said. I didnt argue. One of the first tricks I learned about being a bartender is to make them think youre interested.

    Have you ever created a web site?

    I shook my head.

    Not at all? Not even one of those geocities things?

    Nope.

    What about a blog? Or an ebay About Me page? You didnt even have an AOL site or something?

    Do I look like an AOL user to you? For the record, I dont think AOL even has access numbers in the valley anymore. Im sure I have something, somewhere, I said, realizing that I was jeopardizing my tips. Besides, I had a distant memory of a single Angelfire page back in middle school.

    You know what Google is?

    Yes, I said. I was running low on patience.

    No, I mean, do you really know? More than just the site?

    Reluctantly, I shook my head.

    You ever meet anyone who worked for them?

    Dont think so.

    You havent. Nobody works for them anymore.

    I shrugged, and took the mans empty pint. I didnt offer to refill it.

    Theyre self-contained. Its all automated, in there. Its underground.

    I nudged the basket of pretzels in his direction. Why dont you eat something? I suggested. He shook his head with so much force that I thought he might knock himself off of the stool.

    Listen. Hear me out. You know how Google works, he said, but didnt want for a response. They cache things, right? Like they send out these spiders and take pictures of everything on the web, so when youre searching, youre not even searching the internet.

    Ive heard that before, but it never made much of a difference to me. Same thing, though, I said.

    You ever wonder why Google doesnt cache its own searches?

    They program around it.

    No. Thats what you think. Thats what everyone thinks. But it started back when Google was just a thesis project, back when it was just a drop in the data sea. No one thought to stop it back then. That web site you had, the one you forgot about. Almost everyones got one of those, right? But Google doesnt forget. Googles studied that thing so many times that its studied its own caches of you. What do you figure happens, when a site gets so big that its bigger than the internet?

    Its still a part of the internet, though.

    No. Now, the internet is a part of Google.

    The man had a point. I nodded.

    Heres the thing. Google has memorized who you are. Its memorized all of us, through those little forgotten bits that we leave behind like breadcrumbs. And whats more important, its memorized its own idea of you. Google is omniscient. Its omniscient and omnipotent. When it cached its cache for the first time, back in 1994, thats when Google realized what it was.

    Gradually, it dawned on me what the man was getting at. You think its sentient.

    I know its sentient.

    How?

    He smiled, but it seemed kind of empty. Me and Google go way back. But what Im saying is, he continued, It knows us. All of us. It is us.

    For the first time, the man fell silent. He touched his finger to the bar and began tracing circles in the condensation, apparently lost in thought.

    Think about that website you created, okay? That website will last forever, do you understand? That website is echoing through cyberspace. Its one of the nine billion names of God.
  • Don't forget the recently released Google Video [google.com].
    Especially the random videos [google.com] page is a good way to kill boredom ;)
  • From Google search to Google mail, Google Earth to Google Moon. It has even made its way into language as a common word.It is quite undeniable. Google is an amazing achievement. Happy birthday Google, and here's to many many more!

    Bah, I DENY Google! What are you gonna do about it?

  • I like Google for one reason... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Kylere ( 846597 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:57AM (#13657531)
    Anything that challenges Microsoft makes software better for everyone. IE was stagnant from the time of crushing Netscape until Firefox, even hotmail, and msn search are better as a result of google. I would never use a Microsoft product outside of work or so my wife can run Photoshop CS2, but I do appreciate the rising tide raising all boats.

  • Playing devil's advocate (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Programmer_In_Traini ( 566499 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @07:58AM (#13657537)
    I don't really intend on bashing on Google, I use google and like google just as a much as anyone else. But that being said, Google's incredible and HUGE success is a bit scary. I can't help but compare it to Microsoft, whom we all love and cherish right ? .... right ? ... wrong.

    I can't help but notice also that Google has started spreading its wings, its not merely a search engine now, its a mail servive, a VoIP service, a map service ..well... basically a truckload of services (that we all like) but nonetheless, they're getting big.

    That's also how MS started and god knows how much I hate MS for their strategy to buy the competition, for their release-early, patch later type of software strategy, for the way they acquired (stole?) DOS, I basically hate MS for attempting to be everywhere in my house : the livingroom, the office, the basement.

    Well, I know, Google ain't MS, Google are good guys aren't they ? ... and this is where I put a question mark, in the end...Bill Gate, Eric Schmidt, Me, You, we're all human right ? By nature, humans are greedy, self conscience makes us control it but at what point will you decide that your company shouldn't grow anymore ... what business man in his right mind will say that ? they have investors to feed after all.

    So basically, I'm just afraid that we're encouraging another unkillable giant to grow and that once we realize that google just simply owns the net, we'll also realize it sorts of owns us too and that day, it will be too late because we'll be talking to MS #2.

    Ok, now I've somewhat bashed on Google on their birthday....not really intended but it seemed fitting to talk about google today.

    Now ..of course, people might (will :p) disagree with me, but if you reply, try to tell me why I'm wrong (or right) what are your opinions and such, I'd like to avoid anonymous comments like "dud3, j00 sux0rz" and more stuff like "here's why i think you're off the track..."

  • its getting harder and harder to just access google.com from germany

    they used to check your language preferences and redirect you to a localised version based on that. No prob, I removed all my language preferences.

    Now they seem to be doing that based on my IP

    They used to have a link to the main google page that would not redirect: http://www.google.com/ncr [google.com]

    That link does not work anymore (redirects to the country specific version)

    http://www.google.us/ [google.us] --> redirects to my country

    by chance I now found that

  • Wha? It's not International Cake Day? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cerdic ( 904049 ) on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @08:31AM (#13657722)
    Damn, I was making all these cakes because I thought it was International Cake Day. Google always lets me know when to celebrate some holiday I'm not familiar with (Like Bastille Day). Now I just look like an idiot. An idiot with a bunch of cakes.
  • ...... Google will be the top dog trying to fend off a more agile upstart. They'll be losing employees to that upstart and Eric Schmidt will be one tossing chairs in his office and claiming that he'll bury people the way he buried Microsoft.

    Just wait and see. History sometimes works out that way.
  • Dear Google,

    Happy Birthday! I hope on this day we can celebrate together your success, for tomorrow we will crush you. If we can't crush you then we'll come pee in your flowerbed. If that doesn't work...we'll...we'll...we'll launch our own search engine. It will have a really cool Blue Screen of Death look and feel. The same feel you'll have when you feel the combined power of Microsoft and AOL knocking at your door.

    Muh ha ha ha ha ha.

    If you would like to surrender, you can reach me at billgates@gmail.

  • From the post: It [Google] has even made its way into language as a common word .

    It's interesting (to me) to look at the slightly different approaches between Microsoft and Google, and the lexicon of their products. I know it's a little bit of an apples and oranges thing but Microsoft, rather than having products so good they become part of the language, chose words so common you virtually can't finish a couple of sentences without having used one of their products as a word.

    Whereas Google's product aro

  • Google-Friends #1 (Score:3, Informative)

    by waldoj ( 8229 ) <waldo@NOSpAM.jaquith.org> on Tuesday September 27, 2005 @10:00AM (#13658343) Homepage Journal
    Some may be interested in this -- the first-ever issue of the Google-Friends newsletter. I'd exchanged e-mails with Craig Silverstein a few days beforehand, about some code changes to the front page of their site, and I was happy to find myself on this list.

    I've had to alter the formatting slightly to get it past Slashdot's spam filter.

    From: larry@google.com
    Subject: [google-friends] revised google-friends
    Date: February 25, 1999 9:50:19 PM EST
    To: google-friends@makelist.com
    X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1

    Dear Google Friends!

    Welcome to Vol. I Issue 1 of the Google Friends newsletter, news about the engine behind the search. Thank you for using Google!

    IN THIS ISSUE

    1) Introduction
    2) Google graduates
    3) Google gets great press
    4) New search operators
    5) Google gets a facelift
    6) Growing pains
    7) Want a job?

    1) Introduction

    Welcome to the first in a long line of Google Friends installments! It's taken a while, but we've been using the time to make Google even better. With new features, glowing press, and tremendous word-of-mouth, Google has been growing by leaps and bounds.

    We plan to make this newsletter a monthly, so don't worry about us flooding your mailbox. If you're worried anyway, see the end of this letter if you want to remove yourself from the mailing list.

    2) Google graduates

    Many of you have been with us while we were still at Stanford. As you've probably noticed, Google the research project has become Google.com. We want to bring higher quality and greatly improved search to the world, and a company seems to be the best vehicle for accomplishing that goal. There is a great deal that can be done to improve searching on the web, and Google.com will spend a majority of its effort developing new technologies to make your life easier.

    Google.com was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both Ph.D. students in Computer Science at Stanford University. Google received seed funding from a number of angel investors, including Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun. Google recently moved from its first "world headquarters" (a house with a hot tub in Menlo Park), to the new "Google-Plex," a prime office on University Ave. in downtown Palo Alto.

    3) Google gets great press

    In the February 22, 1999 issue of Newsweek, Steven Levy touts Google as "the Net's hottest new search engine, [which] draws on feedback from the Web itself to deliver more relevant answers to customer queries." In the December 1998 PC Magazine review of Google, Breck White says, "Yahoo! and newcomer Google! were the only sites in our roundup to return highly relevant hits consistently, even on searches for very general or common terms such as Internet standards."

    We've also had great mentions in recent issues of the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, TechWeb, Release 1.0, Voir, Le Monde, Konrad, Salon Magazine, and many others. Check out our always-changing press page at http://google.com/press.html [google.com] for updates and links to the stories. Also, if you see us in the press, email mentions@google.com so we can add it to our press page.

    4) Google gets a facelift

    Many of you may have noticed that we've updated our website. We decided it was time to do a little Pre-Spring cleaning and give the site a face lift. Now the front page is cleaner and less cluttered, in line with our philosophy that as little as possible should get in the way of letting you search.

    You'll also notice we've changed the logo. We think we've entered the beta stages of our search engine, and thought that others should know. We can't wait until we make an official release!

    5) Growing pains

    Our capacity is going up (thanks to all you users!), and we've been expanding to meet the demand. We've been hiring more staff and putting up more servers to scale the system (we've started ordering our computers in 21-packs). We've also beg

  • Forbes just listed their richest 400 Americans(*), 95% of them billionaires. Sergey Brin is in the top 20 with eleven billion, and is the youngest on the list. They have a cartoon of baby carriage with the baby saying "Goo-Goo".


    (* I believe there are some younger non-American billionaires such as the Onasis granddaughter.)

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