Videos From the Old Googleplex

In February 1999, Google moved from Susan Wojcicki's garage to "new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just eight employees" and in August 1999, Google relocated to Mountain View: 2400 E. Bayshore. Five years later, Google moved to "the new Googleplex at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment."

Former Google employee Doug Edwards posted some videos from November 1999 of the old Googleplex. At that time, Google's search engine was only available in English, it didn't include ads or image search results and it was the only Google service.

Larry Page's Business Card

A Reddit user writes:

I met both Carl Page and Larry Page at a party hosted by a Stanford friend of mine in 1998. Carl gave me his card for eGroups and said "we're hiring". Larry gave me his card for Google — a flimsy bit of paper obviously printed by bubble jet — and said "we're hiring". I said, "Nah, who needs another search engine?" and went to graduate school. I still have the card.

He wasn't the only one who thought that search engines aren't very useful. Google's founders faced difficulties in convincing investors that a search engine is a good business. Sun's co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim was the first Google investor, back in September 1998. "Andy Bechtolsheim was one of the few to see the true potential of what Brin and Page had wrought. During their presentation to him, Bechtolsheim said he had to duck out for another meeting and offered to write them a check. It was that hundred-grander, made out to Google Inc., that got the ball (and the bank) rolling. Brin and Page incorporated, managing to attract other investors, with an initial investment of around $1 million."

{ via waxy.org }