From Garage Business to Household Name in 5 Years

You probably use it every day, but did you know Google is now a word in the dictionary? How can a search engine be so popular that it influences how nearly all businesses market themselves on the Internet? Google's secret was the development of a unique algorithm to not just index the contents of a page, but to help ensure that you get the most relevant results for a particular search. From this starting point, Google has evolved to become a household name and sets the standard for all search engines.

Google was started by Larry Sage and Sergey Brin in 1996. Initially named "Back rub," their search engine started to gain popularity on the Stanford University campus. In 1998, the founder of Sun Microsystems gave the two a check for $100,000 after a quick demo. Sage and Brin leased office space in a friend's garage and started Google.com. 1999 brought dramatic change and growth to Google as the company moved twice and got bigger.

By 2000, 18 million user queries every day were being answered by Google. By 2002, Google had expanded to advertising, search appliances, Google News and Froogle. In 2004, Google had indexed 6 billion items (plus 880 million images, 845 million Usenet messages, and a growing collection of book-related information pages). Google has continued to grow and expand its technology, now offering PDFs of public domain books for download, for example.

Google has made vast amounts of data accessible to the public, such as: years of historical film footage, U.S. Patents, Maps (Earth, Moon and Mars), pictures, video, music, and of course their staple: websites. Google ranks in the top 3 sites for internet traffic, so most internet marketers give serious thought to how Google will see their site.

Google is a big part of the Internet. The public uses it to search, and companies use Google to advertise, or to analyse the competition. Optimizing a site for Google to help your company show up higher in search results can have a big impact on your bottom line, and the effect can carry over to other search engines as well. This has become a fact of life in the web development industry and will continue to be so in the future.

Computers Are Like Cars

Every so often I receive a call from my brother about his computer. You see, he has one of those "technically challenged" personalities. He can tear apart a car engine, replace the pistons, and put it back together; but he can't maintain his computer. This amazes me, because there are really only two things you MUST do with a computer:

1) Make sure your Anti-virus software is installed, updated, and is not EXPIRED.
2) Make sure your Windows updates are installed on a regular basis.

There are other things you can do to enhance your routine maintenance, but these two are the only ones you MUST remember. As an added convenience, both tasks have automated reminders and warning systems built in! You know, those little pop-ups that say "ANTI-VIRUS IS EXPIRED" or "UPDATES ARE READY TO INSTALL".

This seems pretty simple to me, but for some reason I see computers all the time with expired anti-virus software. When I ask about it, the person usually says to me "That pops up all the time and I just close it".

Hello? Didn't that raise an alarm for you?

If the breaks in your car start to sqeek, most people have it checked out (especially if it continues or gets louder). You don't ignore the situation by turning the radio up... do you? You wouldn't consider driving your car for 20,000 miles without getting an oil change, but that's exactly what you're doing by avoiding these two things. Just like a car, a little routine maintance can avoid big (expensive) problems down the road.

So, my advice for you today is to LISTEN TO YOUR COMPUTER. Treat it like a car and when you notice something "unusual", have it checked out. Spend a little time and "change the oil" every few months. Don't call your computer guy after 15 months (20,000 miles) and request routine maintenance on your virus infected computer. As one of those "computer guys", I can speak for everyone that we'd rather answer your questions every 3 months than rebuild your computer every year.

If you still have a problem with this concept and don't understand the value of routine maintenance, suggest to your "computer guy" that he/she start charging you for major problems.

R.I.P. Floppy: 1971-2007

If you still have your resume safely stored away on a floppy disk, you may want to think about converting it soon. In the very near future, you won't be able to purcahse a floppy disk, let alone a floppy drive.

The time has come to bid farewell to one of the PC's more stalwart friends - the floppy disk. Computing superstore PC World said it will no longer sell the storage devices, affectionately known as floppies, once existing stock runs out.

New storage systems, coupled with a need to store more than the 1.44 megabytes of data held by a standard floppy, have led to its demise.

Only a tiny percentage of PCs currently sold still have floppy disk drives.

"The floppy disk looks increasingly quaint and simply isn't able to compete," said Bryan Magrath, commercial director of PC World.

Iconic status

It is not the first time the death-knell for the floppy has been sounded. The first nail in the coffin came in 1998, when the iMac was revealed without a floppy disk drive.

Then in 2003, Dell banished disk drives from its higher spec machines.

In 1998, an estimated 2 billion floppy disks were sold, according to the Recording Media Industries Association of Japan.

Since then global demand has fallen by around two-thirds to an estimated 700 million by 2006.

Only 2% of PCs and laptops currently sold by PC World still have built-in floppy disk drives and by the summer it will phase even these out.

It is with mixed feelings that the computer store has decided call time on the floppy.

"The sound of a computer's floppy disk drive will be as closely associated with 20th Century computing as the sound of a computer dialling into the internet," said Mr Magrath.

But with computer users increasingly using the internet or USB memory sticks - some of which store 2,000 times the capacity of the floppy disk - to transfer data, it is becoming redundant.

It is a far cry from its halcyon days in the 1980s and 1990s, when floppies provided essential back-up as well as playing a crucial role in transferring data and distributing software.

Shrinking disk

The first floppy disk was introduced in 1971 by IBM and heralded as a revolutionary device.

The brainchild of a group of Californian engineers led by Alan Shugart, it replaced old-fashioned punch-cards.

An eight-inch plastic disk coated with magnetic iron oxide, the nickname "floppy" came from its flexibility.

In 1976 the disk shrank to five-and-a-quarter inches - developed again by Alan Shugart, this time for Wang Laboratories.

By 1981, Sony shrank it some more - this time to three-and-a-half inches - the standard used to this day.

By the early 1990s, the growing complexity of software meant that many programs were distributed on sets of floppies. But the end of the decade saw software distribution swap to CD-ROM.

Vista icon

Alternative backup formats, new storage such as the CD-RW and the arrival of mass internet access, consigned the floppy disk to the dusty corner of peoples' desks and, eventually, the bin.

For those in the industry, there is little to mourn in the loss of floppy disks.

"You can get so much more information on other forms of storage. Technology moves on," said Bryan Glick, editor of Computing.co.uk.

But, he said, its demise, could prove problematic for those who have stored precious data on disk.

"There will be shops where they can get the data transferred but it they still have the original data they would be advised to invest in a portable hard drive or put it online," he said.

Interestingly, software giant Microsoft seems to be keeping the flame alight for the floppy.

Its newly-released operating system Vista still pays homage to it by continuing to use a floppy disk as the icon for saving a document in Microsoft Word 2007.

Source: BBC News