By Ryan Redding • 11 Dec, 2019 •

The year is 1995. Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin—who reportedly described one another as “obnoxious” when they first met—develop a program, from their dorm rooms, to determine the relative importance of web pages. Given that the guys dubbed their new search engine Backrub, I’d like to they think had no earthly idea what they’d hit on. Regardless, it didn’t take long for Silicon Valley to take notice. Only three years later, an investor bought in for $100K, Backrub rebranded as Google, Inc., and an empire was born. It’s not just that Google is now used as a verb: “Google it.” It’s not just that an adorable Italian grandmother has renamed it “Goo Goo.” It’s not just that it's the most visited website in both the U.S. and around the world. And it’s not just that 3.5 billion searches occur on the platform every day.