CHAPTER 2: Starting in a Garage

27 revenues that would reach . . . laptop PCs: time line on Microsoft.com.

27 I visited Gates: author interview with Bill Gates, 1998, for my book World War 3.0 Microsoft and Its Enemies, Random House, 2001.

28 “a reflexive belief”: author interview with John Battelle, March 20, 2008.

28 “a penchant for pushing boundaries”: “The Story of Sergey Brin,” Moment, February 2007.

28 Accounts of Michael and Eugenia Brin’s life in the Soviet Union and Sergey Brin’s boyhood from: author interview with Brin, September 18, 2008; Google Story, David A. Vise and Mark Malseed, Bantam Dell, 2005; Mark Malseed, “The Story of Sergey Brin,” Moment, February 2007; and Guy Rolnik, “I’ve Been Very Lucky in My Life,” Haaretz.com, May 24, 2008.

30 “a nerd” ... “pretty inspiring”: author interview with Brin, September 18, 2008, and Brin interview with the Academy of Achievement, a Museum of Living History, in Washington, D.C., October 28, 2000.

30 he was non-practicing . . . “I was never comfortable with that”: Guy Rolnik, “I’ve Been Very Lucky in My Life,” Haaretz.com, May 24, 2008.

30 the couple stood in bathing suits: Guy Rolnik, “I’ve Been Very Lucky in My Life,” Haaretz, May 24, 2008.

30 “What part of your success”: author interview with Sergey Brin, September 18, 2008.

31 treated by faculty as a peer . . . maybe become a professor: author interview with Brin, September 18, 2008.

31 “he passed all his tests”: author interview with Craig Silverstein, September 17, 2007.

31 “We were offended”: author interview with Sergey Brin, September 18, 2008.

32 Larry was born: e-mail exchange with Larry Page, April 24, 2009.

33 Larry was inspired . . . by a biography of Nikola Tesla: author interview with Page, March 25, 2008; John Battelle, Search: Inside Story of How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business, Portfolio, 2005.

33 Page discusses childhood and Tesla in speech to the 2005 graduating class of engineers at the University of Michigan; http://disruptionmatters.com/2007/12/14/larry-pages-commencement-speech-at-the-2005-university-of-michigan/.

33 “I knew I was going to build a company eventually”: Larry Page interview with the Academy of Achievement, a Museum of Living History, in Washington, D.C., October 28, 2000.

33 his grandfather, an assembly-line morker: author interview with Larry Page, March 25, 2008.

33 “My dad actually said to me”: Larry Page speech to graduates at the engineering school of the University of Michigan, 2005.

33 Larry Page discusses his grandfather, parents, and college years as the commencement speaker at the University of Michigan graduation ceremonies, May 2, 2009, and available online.

34 “I kept complaining”: Page in Michigan Engineer, Spring/Summer 2001.

34 he was on the orientation team: author interview with Sergey Brin, September 18, 2008.

35 “I was thinking: what if we could download the whole Web”: Larry Page speech at University of Michigan graduation ceremonies, May 2, 2009 (available online).

35 Larry downloaded: John Battelle, Search, Portfolio, 2005.

35 fifteen million people: Mary Lu Carnevale, “The World-Wide Web,” Wall Street Journal, November 15, 1993.

36 memo to Bill Gates: Nathan P. Myhrvold, “Impact of the Internet,” November 15, 1994, gathered by the author for a May 12, 1997, profile of Myhrvold in The New Yorker.

36 Myhrvold presciently warned: Nathan P. Myhrvold, “No More Middleman: The Broad Impact of the Internet,” November 27, 1995.

36 Bill Gates galvanized his troops: “The Internet Tidal Wave,” May 25, 1995, and available via a Google search.

36 “In this report”: Mary Meeker and Chris DePuy, The Internet Report, HarperBusiness, 1996.

37 “He had a dial-up Web connection”: author interview with Mary Meeker, January 23, 2009.

37 twenty-two billion dollars on wireless services: Mark Landler, “An Aerial Assault on the Wired Nation,” in the New York Times, February 26, 1996.

37 he drew a distinction between incremental changes: Nathan P. Myhrvold, “Upcoming Sea Changes,” January 29, 1995.

37 “how things work” : author interview with Terry Winograd, September 25, 2007.

37 “the paradox of technology”: Donald A. Norman, Design of Everyday Things, Basic Books, 1988.

37 an obsession of Larry’s: author interview with Larry Page, March 25, 2008.

38 disdained games like golf: author interview with Omid Kordestani, April 15, 2008.

38 “two swords sharpening each other”: author interview with John Battelle, March 20, 2008.

38 “they were not”: author interview with Terry Winograd, September 25, 2007.

38 Page and Brin’s breakthrough: Search, John Battelle.

39 “they didn’t have this false respect”: author interview with Rajeev Motwani, October 12, 2007.

39 snuck onto the loading dock: author interview with Terry Winograd: September 16, 2008.

39 “We wanted to finish school”: Page and Schmidt appearance at Stanford, May 1, 2002, available on YouTube.

40 “You guys can always come back”: author interview with Larry Page, March 25, 2008; confirmed in a May 5, 2008 e-mail to the author from Jeffrey Ullman.

40 They chose the name Google: Sergey Brin interview with John Ince on PodVentureZone, January 2000.

40 “two important features”: Page and Brin, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”; a printed version, “The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the Web,” was published January 29, 1998, and is available on the Web.

40 “Brin and Page . . . are expressing a desire”: Nicholas Carr, Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.

41 “They were . . . part of an engineering tribe”: author interview with Lawrence Lessig, March 30, 2009.

41 “This is going to change the way”: author interview with Rajeev Motwani, October 12, 2007.

41 “free of many of the old prejudices”: Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1995.

42 “Fortunately, I had taken up lock picking”: author interview with Sergey Brin, September 18, 2008.

42 They “thought it was sleazy”: author interview with Rajeev Motwani, October 12, 2007.

43 “I’ll take stock”: author interview with Craig Silverstein, September 17, 2007.

43 Information about Google’s early days in 1998 from author interviews with Ram Shriram, September 16, 2008, and June 12, 2008; Craig Silverstein, September 14, 2007, and September 17, 2007; Jeff Bezos, July 9, 2008; Sergey Brin, September 18, 2008; and Susan Wojcicki, September 10, 2007, and April 16, 2008.

45 ten thousand search queries: Google’s “Google Milestones” chronology

45 Search really “does have a potential”: Karsten Lamm, Stern, January 1999.