Monday, April 21, 2003 | 8:25 a.m.
As if the Internet hasn't given us enough popular jargon: "IM" for instant messaging, "ISP" for Internet service provider, or even the basic term, "online."
Now there's a new phrase that's popping up everywhere from TV shows such as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to a news report on National Public Radio:
"Google."
As in, "I Googled the information." Or, "I Googled my girlfriend." Even, "You should have seen what happened when I Googled my boss's name."
It seems the Internet's most popular search engine is no longer limited to pronoun status, but is now used as a verb.
Why all the fuss over a search engine?
"Millions of pages are being added to the Internet every day. We're in a position where you can drown in data, there's so much information out there," said Scott Frost, chairman of the Technology Business Alliance of Nevada (TBAN), a Las Vegas-based trade association dedicated to fostering the growth of high technology in Nevada.
"But Google has positioned themselves to be the preeminent company that will bring order to the chaos."
With 150 million searches a day, Google has become a "brand name" users have come to trust and rely on.
"That's the hook. They've created an emotional bridge between their technology and their brand name, and that's very hard to unseat," Frost said.
"I've always said this: In the high-tech world, I'll take superior marketing over superior technology. It's proven to win out time and time again."
It's been quite a ride for the Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up company.
Named as a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, Google was founded in September 1998 by Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were working on their Ph.D.s.
"We weren't really much of a company then," recalled Craig Silverstein, Google's director of technology and the first employee hired by Page and Brin.
"When we got the first check from our initial investors, the check was made out to 'Google Incorporated,' which didn't exist. That was the incentive to fill out the paperwork to create the company so we could cash the check."
Nearly five years later Google has 800 employees and is the largest search engine on the Web, offering access to more than 3 billion URLs, or websites, to users.
"We're definitely not a start-up anymore," Silverstein joked.
But even he never imagined Google would be this big -- or, more pointedly, this popular. "I hoped, but I didn't expect it. But if I didn't believe it would do well, I wouldn't have left in the middle of grad school" to work for Google, Silverstein said. "I believed in it, but I also knew from experience, when you look at the (industry) it's not always the best technology that took off."
It wasn't until a trip home to Florida during December 2000 that Silverstein first became aware of his company's popularity, as well as its potential.
"I was talking to people who had heard of Google. But I found out they hadn't heard about it from my mom," he said. "I realized word-of-mouth had spread so far, they were finding out about Google through non-family members."
For much of its early years, Google's biggest competition came from Yahoo, which employed a simple search engine along with other features, such as free e-mail service.
Google, however, focused solely on scouring the Internet. With a single-minded purpose, the search engine was able to perform its tasks easier and better than its competition.
For example: Instead of simply counting how often a word or phrase appeared on a website, as Yahoo did, Google also assigned a rank and relevance to each listing.
"The search-engine business wasn't around five years ago; it didn't exist," Frost said. "(Google) helped to define the search engine space by first identifying the problems that people were having with all this data overload; and two, doing a great job of selling this service. And then refining the message as to why people had to use Google."
Google was so successful with its product, it wasn't long before other search engines -- MetaCrawler and Dogpile, using similar technology -- appeared, as well as those from MSN and AOL. Even Yahoo has upgraded its search capabilities, incorporating Google as part of its own search engine.
While the competition might seem slight, given Google's overwhelming popularity, the company isn't taking any chances.
"Something could be happening right now" with a new development in search-engine technology, said Silverstein. "We work hard to make sure the next big idea comes from Google, but you can't be for sure."
So the company has taken every opportunity to expand its service, from intranet use in the form of a "Google in a box," as well as to cell phone and PDA users.
The company even has support for 88 languages -- Klingon and pig Latin, among them.
With the additional profits from 100,000 advertisers worldwide, analysts say the company made anywhere from $60 million to $300 million last year.
With that cash support and increasing popularity, Frost said Google is poised as one of the few juggernauts, along with eBay, Amazon and Yahoo, to emerge from the recent dot-com bust.
"They've got the cash, so they're putting money into R&D (research and development), which is critical to stay on top," he said. "Plus, it's very hard to supplant them when you've got people in companies using Google technology and they've got a brand name like they do.
"I'd love to be able to say there are certain engines out there that can probably out-perform Google. But again, it does what you need it to do, and it's simple."
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