Itay Talgam did not mean to address this question when he appeared at Google’s 2008 Zeitgeist Conference, but he inadvertently offered an answer. Talgam, a renowned Israeli orchestra conductor, stood on a small semicircular stage wearing a wrinkled cotton polo shirt with a sweater draped over his shoulders, his sparse hair shooting in several directions. For a … Read more

This began a long and intense period of brainstorming. The team liked the idea of charging by the click, thinking it was a way they could farm out not just search, as they had done with Netscape and Yahoo, but also advertising. “We knew we needed a lot of ads, and to have a lot … Read more

The new search engine, at first called BackRub, was an object of some secrecy. Spurred by Page’s obsession with Tesla, who unwittingly gave away his inventions by sharing them with others, Page and Brin zealously guarded the algorithms that created Page Rank. But as PhD. Candidates, they were expected to present their work, so to … Read more