谷歌19岁了，如何从车库走到今天的GooglePlex

谷歌联合创始人Larry和Sergey在斯坦福宿舍

Google今年9月4号就满19岁了，特发此文纪念。我们一起来看看Google官网讲述的成长故事，如何从斯坦福宿舍，到车库，再到今天的谷歌帝国。

Our story: from the garage to the Googleplex

我们的故事：从车库到Googleplex

The Google story begins in 1995 at Stanford University. Larry Page was considering Stanford for grad school and Sergey Brin, a student there, was assigned to show him around. By some accounts, they disagreed about nearly everything during that first meeting, but by the following year they struck a partnership. Working from their dorm rooms, they built a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub.

谷歌的故事始于1995年，在斯坦福大学。那一年，拉里·佩奇（Larry Page）正在考虑从斯坦福大学毕业，而那里的另一名学生谢尔盖·布林（Sergey Brin），被派往他身边。记忆中，他们在第一次见面时，似乎格格不入，对于很多问题的看法都是针锋相对。但不知道为什么，到了第二年，他们却开始了合作。他们在斯坦福大学宿舍里开始工作，创建了一个搜索引擎，它使用链接来确定万维网上各个页面的重要性。他们称这个搜索引擎为Backrub。 

Soon after, Backrub was renamed Google (phew). The name was a play on the mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros and aptly reflected Larry and Sergey's mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

不久之后，Backrub被重命名为Google（感谢上帝）。这个名字的数学表达是1后面再加100个零，完美地表达了拉里和谢尔盖的伟大使命 － “收集和整理全世界的信息，使其普遍可及和有用”。

谷歌早期团队，1999年

Over the next few years, Google caught the attention of not only the academic community, but Silicon Valley investors as well. In August 1998, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Larry and Sergey a check for $100,000, and Google Inc. was officially born. With this investment, the newly incorporated team made the upgrade from the dorms to their first office: a garage in suburban Menlo Park, California, owned by Susan Wojcicki (employee #16 and now CEO of YouTube). Clunky desktop computers, a ping pong table, and bright blue carpet set the scene for those early days and late nights. (The tradition of keeping things colorful continues to this day.)

在接下来的几年中，Google不仅引起了学术界的关注，而且引起了硅谷风投的关注。 1998年8月，Sun Microsystems联合创始人Andy Bechtolsheim给Larry和Sergey写了一张10万美元的支票，Google Inc. 正式诞生（官网生日 1998年9月4日）。有了天使投资，新成立的团队从斯坦福宿舍升级到第一个办公室：位于加州Menlo Park市郊区的一个车库，由Susan Wojcicki（员工＃16，现任YouTube CEO）拥有。笨笨的台式电脑，乒乓球桌和明亮的蓝色地毯成为无数个清晨和深夜的风景（保持色彩鲜艳的传统持续到了到今天）。

谷歌第一条爱犬Yoshka

Even in the beginning, things were unconventional: from Google’s initial server (made of Lego) to the first “Doodle” in 1998: a stick figure in the logo announcing to site visitors that the entire staff was playing hooky at the Burning Man Festival. “Don't be evil” and “The ten things we know to be true” captured the spirit of our intentionally unconventional methods. In the years that followed, the company expanded rapidly — hiring engineers, building a sales team, and introducing the first company dog, Yoshka. Google outgrew the garage and eventually moved to its current headquarters (a.k.a.“The Googleplex”) in Mountain View, California. The spirit of doing things differently made the move. So did Yoshka.

即使在初期，一切都是非常规的：从Google的第一台服务器（用乐高搭建）到1998年的第一个“涂鸦”：标志中的一个棒子，向网站访客说明，整个谷歌团队在火人节上玩起了钩子。 “不作恶”，“我们所知道的十件真实的事情”，捕捉到了我们特意追求非同凡响的精神。在随后的几年中，公司迅速扩大，招聘工程师，建立了销售团队，并有了第一条公司爱犬Yoshka。 Google从车库里长大，最终搬到了加州山景城的现任总部（“Googleplex”）。我们追求标新立异，不同凡响。我们的爱犬 Yoshka也如此。

The relentless search for better answers continues to be at the core of everything we do. Today, with more than 70,000 employees in 50 different countries, Google makes hundreds of products used by billions of people across the globe, from YouTube and Android to Smartbox and, of course, Google Search. Although we’ve ditched the Lego servers and added just a few more company dogs, our passion for building technology for everyone has stayed with us — from the dorm room, to the garage, and to this very day.

不断寻求更好的答案仍然是我们至今所做的一切的核心。今天，在50个不同的国家拥有超过7万名员工，Google为全球数十亿人提供数百种产品，从YouTube和Android到Smartbox，当然还有Google搜索。虽然我们已经放弃了乐高服务器，还多了几条公司爱犬，但是我们为你开发最酷的技术的热忱一直都在 - 从斯坦福宿舍到郊区车库，直到今天。

祝福谷歌，生日快乐！19岁，每天都是新的。

－ 千读专稿