PageRank was apparently inspired by it originally, given that.
Google has put considerable effort into custom hardware to greatly optimize its stack, in a way that is quite notable compared to other tech companies.
- 2021 www.theregister.com/2021/03/23/google_to_build_server_socs/ Google vows to build its own server system-on-chips, hires Intel veteran. Inevitable with the end of Moore's law. Instruction set architecture unannounced however. I'll bet ARM instruction set
- 2021 codec acceleration for YouTube: www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/intel-replaces-xeons-with-custom-vcus
The Google Story suggests that this practice existed in academia, where it was brought from. But I can't find external references to it easily:
At Google, the preference is for working in small teams of three, with individual employees expected to allot 20 percent of their time to exploring whatever ideas interest them most. The notion of "20 percent time" is borrowed from the academic world, where professors are given one day a week to pursue private interests.
Bibliography:
Both of them attended Montessori education at some point. Interesting! Mentioned in a talk by Sergey and highlighted at The Google Story.
They stepped down from leading Google roles in 2019: www.npr.org/2019/12/03/784570156/google-founders-brin-page-step-down-pichai-takes-over-as-alphabet-ceo
As The Google Story puts it about Largey:Ciro Santilli likes that.
Scholarship was not just emphasized in their homes; it was treasured.
www.facebook.com/watch/live/?mibextid=qC1gEa&ref=watch_permalink&v=10100156534675351 claims to have a video of Benji Wojin and his cousin Marco Troper from 2018. www.linkedin.com/posts/superintendents_marco-and-benji-wojin-love-these-kids-and-activity-7164448664772435968-siUC/ that links to it is lamenting Marco Troper 's death in 2024.
Claimed photos can be found at:All of the above are likely of the same child.
Bibliography:
ChatGPT produces:Omid Kordestani - Joined in 1999 as Google’s first business hire, focusing on sales and revenue generation.
- Heather Cairns (Employee #4) - Joined in 1998. She handled HR and was one of the earliest administrative hires.
- Harry Cheung (Employee #5) - Joined in 1999. An early engineer.
- Gerald Aigner (Employee #6) - Hired in 1999. Worked as a software engineer.
- Susan Wojcicki (Employee #16) - Joined in 1999. She rented her garage to Larry and Sergey in 1998 and later became an integral part of Google's business and advertising teams.
- Marissa Mayer (Employee #20) - Hired in 1999. Played a major role in Google Search and design.
How Google began by Craig Silverstein part 1 (2006)
Source. Talk given at the University of North Carolina. A possibly official invitation from the time: www.ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/googles-craig-silverstein-at-unc-1026/.Said to be the 5th Google employee, and Eileen Gu's father: gossipnextdoor.com/meet-ray-sidney-eileen-guus-alleged-dad/
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact