Google

[David Bergdahl]

[snip]
Like every Silicon Valley story worth remembering, this one begins in a
garage. Actually, it begins in the computer science department at Stanford
University, but that's so much less compatible with the demands of dot-com
lore. In 1995, Sergey Brin, a native of Moscow, and Larry Page, a native of
Michigan, met as students in Stanford's PhD computer science program. They
began tinkering with search-engine technology, focusing on how Web pages
link to one another. By 1998, that work led them to found Google, with the
help of nearly $1 million collected from friends, family, and a couple of
Valley investors. That same year, with their new search engine online, they
moved the operation out of their Stanford dorm rooms and into the garage
(and three bedrooms and two baths) of a five-bedroom house their friend
Susan Wojcicki had just bought in Menlo Park.

She wanted them to pay her $1,500 a month in rent and give her a piece of
their new company. They were smart enough to offer her a straight $1,700,
with no equity. She didn't fight too hard. Although Brin and Page were as
brash and confident then as they are now, telling her, " 'We're going to
take over the Net,' " Wojcicki says, "I didn't take them seriously. Inktomi
[the search engine powerhouse at the time] was worth like $20 billion, and
these guys were renting out my garage." They were fairly good tenants,
though she occasionally found herself having to bang out e-mails -
"Googlers, you need to clean up!" - and was a little freaked out when their
intimate holiday gathering grew to a 400-person guest list.

In the beginning, Google - which takes its name from "googol," the
mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros - was a hit mostly in
techie circles. Brin and Page began building a staff; Craig Silverstein, a
classmate from Stanford, was the first on board. "Google's first hire" is
how he's still known around the company, even though his official title is
director of technology. Wojcicki eventually began working for her tenants
and is now director of product management, though most people still think
of her as Sergey and Larry's former landlord. [end snip]

http://www.boston.com/globe/magazine/2003/0202/coverstory_entire.htm
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"We are all New Yorkers"
       --Dominique Moisi