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Google - Our History in Depth

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Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#21

Post by nostrademons »

orware wrote: post #9

I just read this article on David Cheriton over the weekend: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/08/01/professor-bil... And surprisingly, the Google Timeline doesn't include him in there (though he should probably be listed around the 1998 time that Andy Bechtolsheim wrote his check...unless they both contributed to the same check?).

I thought that basically David Cheriton made the introduction to Andy, invited the founders and Andy over to his house, and then Andy decided "Cool, lemme write you a check", and then David was like "While I'm here, lemme write you one too." In contemporary fundraising parlance, Andy led the round and David co-invested. The circumstances are covered in a bit more detail in In The Plex, although IIRC that didn't say that David invested, only that the meeting was at his house.

My guess is that David Cheriton, famous for keeping a low profile, didn't want it to be known that he was a billionaire through Google, and they honored that wish. But sometime fairly recently somebody else outed him (I recall reading an article a couple years ago that mentioned him as Silicon Valley's wealthiest unknown billionaire), and at that point the cat's outta the bag.

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#22

Post by bitops »

finnh wrote: post #12
srhngpr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not have had a first female engineer, but in their first 21 employees, 6 of which were females. Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-first-20-employees-wh...

I was making a little joke - I thought it was widely known that Marissa Mayer was Google's first female engineer. Source: her wikipedia page, numerous articles.

Yeah, I was a little saddened to see that they didn't mention her - sure she went to work for the competition but it'd have been classy to mention her.

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#24

Post by bowlofpetunias »

I get this page in Dutch. I didn't ask for it and I can't change it. In fact, I'm logged in with an account which only has one language preference set (English), which Google happily ignores whenever it feels like.

And it would be merely annoying if it only affected the interface language, but it changes features, search results and in this case the entire content.

Which makes it pretty much impossible to participate in this discussion in HN.

This is one of the reasons why by now I dislike Google as much as I disliked Microsoft back in 90's.

Some people may find it hard to identify with, but imagine communicating with someone you know speaks perfect English, who you have politely requested to communicate in English, and who actually speaks English to everyone else in the room except you.

There are less offensive ways to say "fuck you".

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#25

Post by twinge »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #24

I get this page in Dutch. I didn't ask for it and I can't change it. In fact, I'm logged in with an account which only has one language preference set (English), which Google happily ignores whenever it feels like. And it would be merely annoying if it only affected the interface language, but it changes features, search results and in this case the entire content. Which makes it pretty much impossible to participate…

Try adding ?hl=en to the URL. A similar situation happened to my wife after visiting Germany, we had to edit her cookies and clear the "hl" parameter (IIRC) because various random Google sites were entirely in German.

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#26

Post by psbp »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #24

I get this page in Dutch. I didn't ask for it and I can't change it. In fact, I'm logged in with an account which only has one language preference set (English), which Google happily ignores whenever it feels like. And it would be merely annoying if it only affected the interface language, but it changes features, search results and in this case the entire content. Which makes it pretty much impossible to participate…

This is a huge overreaction.

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#27

Post by mavhc »

twinge wrote: post #25
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #24

I get this page in Dutch. I didn't ask for it and I can't change it. In fact, I'm logged in with an account which only has one language preference set (English), which Google happily ignores whenever it feels like. And it would be merely annoying if it only affected the interface language, but it changes features, search results and in this case the entire content. Which makes it pretty much impossible to participate…

Try adding ?hl=en to the URL. A similar situation happened to my wife after visiting Germany, we had to edit her cookies and clear the "hl" parameter (IIRC) because various random Google sites were entirely in German.

If only browsers sent some kind of message to the server to tell it what languages you'd prefer

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#29

Post by ohazi »

yid wrote: post #16

One interesting thing that stood out in terms of Google-the-startup: they incorporated on Sep 4, 1998 and raised $25 million in June 1999, and made their first acquisition in February 2001. The traction they must have been able to show must have staggering.

Keep in mind that (1) the standards for impressive traction were a lot lower back then, and (2) this happened when the first .com bubble was picking up a ton of steam.

Re: Google - Our History in Depth

#30

Post by cbhl »

mavhc wrote: post #27
twinge wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try adding ?hl=en to the URL. A similar situation happened to my wife after visiting Germany, we had to edit her cookies and clear the "hl" parameter (IIRC) because various random Google sites were entirely in German.

If only browsers sent some kind of message to the server to tell it what languages you'd prefer

They do, and have since at least the mid 90s. But most users don't know how to set this preference, so Google assumes GeoIP is the One Source Of Truth(TM) for language (apart from hl= and being signed in).
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