Google Part I: Origins of Search

How two grad students turned a ranking algorithm nobody would buy into the most profitable company in America.

With Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal

"Probably when I was 12, I knew I was going to start a company eventually. I wanted to make the world better, and in order to do that, you need to do more than just invent things." — Larry Page

Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal, on the episode

Most people hear this episode and expect the clean origin myth. Clever Stanford kids, a search box, word of mouth, destiny. That story is mostly wrong, and the wrongness is the lesson. Google was nowhere near the first search engine. It was the last. What carried it past a dozen rivals was not the algorithm alone. It was a series of cold business decisions about distribution, infrastructure, and pricing that any operator can copy.