Page and Brin's remarkable idea, which they started to develop in 1996, exploits the structure of Web links to locate relevant and valuable information. Epitomizing the industry's low interest in search was Microsoft, which by February 1998 was still mired in the planning stages to construct its own search engine. Although it seems obvious now that the best way to speed navigation as the Web expanded at Big Bang velocity in the 1990s was going to be better search engines, many leading Internet companies, such as Microsoft and America Online, were more enthusiastic about pushing "portals" and "channels" that sent inquiring users to curated Web pages. Levy chronicles how two Stanford University computer science graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founded the company that gave search primacy on the Web. By Steven Levy (Simon & Schuster 424 pages $26) The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) By Siva Vaidhyanathan (University of California Press 265 pages $26.95)Īlmost nothing can stop a remarkable idea executed well at the right time, as Steven Levy's brisk-but-detailed history of Google, "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives," convincingly proves.
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