Your Tech Story

Google

Larry Page and Sergey Brin : The Intellectual Friendship Behind Google

Founder, Google, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

It is a bit difficult to imagine that a college research project can land you to own one of the biggest companies in the world. But, why not? If you are applying your knowledge and efforts in the right direction, unusual things can happen to you. Same goes for the success story of two college mates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who joined their hands for a college project and are now leading the most powerful company in the world together.

Early Life

Larry Page was born on March 26, 1973, to Carl Victor Page Sr., a computer science professor, and Gloria Page, a computer programming instructor. He lived with his parents and elder brother in East Lansing, Michigan. He grew among the people, who loved computers, and eventually, developed an interest in the same, at an early age. After graduating from East Lansing High School in 1991, he joined the University of Michigan, and did a degree in Computer Science, followed by a master’s degree in the same from Stanford University.

On the other hand, Sergey Brin was just 6 years old when his parents brought him to the US, from the Soviet Union, in 1978. At that time his family has faced a tough time. He joined the Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland for some time, but left the school to continued his education at home. Later, in 1993, Brin attended the University of Maryland and received a Bachelor’s degree in Science. In 1994, he went to the Stanford University to study Computer Science.

The BackRub Project

After his post-graduation, Larry enrolled in the PhD program, at the Stanford University. At the time he became interested in exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web. Larry met Brin during the orientation program for the new students and became close friends.

page_brin
Image Source: vox-cdn.com

Brin was looking for a topic for his PhD thesis project and found Larry’s project the most convincing. He joined Larry for the research and both published a research paper, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”. Ultimately they developed BackRub a web crawler to crawl the backlinks on the web, along with the PageRank algorithm.

In the beginning, both turned their hostel rooms into their lab and office, to create a search engine, based on the PageRank algorithm. The search engine became very popular among the internet users at the university. In 1996, they released the initial version of Google for the users at the Stanford University.

Founding Google

Page admits that he understood the importance of the project only in mid-1998. The popularity of the search engine made him buy more servers to handle the searches. Brin and Larry received their first investment from Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who wrote them a cheque in the name of Google, Inc., worth $100,000. At the time, they did not have a registered company with that name.

In 1998, they finally officially registered Google, Inc. as their company, Larry becoming the CEO of the company and Brin the President of the company. By June 2000, Google became the most comprehensive search engine, indexing one billion Internet URLs. It grabbed the attention of many angel capitalists and raised funding in millions.

New Ventures & Acquisition

In 2005, Google acquired Android for $50 million. This acquisition mainly aimed at the convenience for the user to use Google at any place at any time. In 2008, Larry and Brin with T-Mobile launched the first phone embedded with Android OS, named G1. By 2010, Android became the most popular OS for smartphones beating Apple’s iOS.

Following the lead of Facebook, the team launched a social media platform Google+. The most important products of Google includes the AdWords, YouTube and Gmail. It also owns the Google Chrome web browser and unveiled a Chromebook laptop in 2012. Google as a company has also launched a series of smartphones that are as popular as its rival companies Apple and Samsung.

Personal Life

Both Page and Brin, live in Palo Alto, California, U.S. Page is married to Lucinda Southworth since the year 2007 and have two children with her. Brin was married to Anne Wojcicki for 8 years (from 2007 to 2015). They also have two children together.

Currently, Page is serving as the chief executive officer and Brin is the President in the Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc, that they co-founded in 2015.

Google‘s Indian Payment App Google Tez Becomes Google Pay

Google, India, News, Product, Product Management, Tech News / By
GooglePay
Image Source: vox-cdn.com

Google launched its payment app Google Tez, last September, and after almost a year, it has earned as many as 22 million monthly active users, having done over 750 million transactions. On Tuesday, Google has announced the re-branding of Google Tez as Google Pay, at its annual event, Google for India.

Noticeably, the Google-created app operates on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and in a year, there have been the transactions of an annual average of 2 lakh crore. The rebranding of the app has also got many new features added to it. Google has announced its partnership with the private banks in India, including ICICI, Kotak Mahendra, HDFC, etc. that will offer an easy loan through Google Pay app. The users will be able to get their loan sanctioned in a few clicks, with a minimal paperwork. After all the verification work, the bank will transfer the money into the user’s account instantly and safely.

After the success of Google Pay in India, various other countries have also shown their interest in the Google’s payment app and contacted Google to work with them for their payment app development. Google has also announced that the app will be working globally soon, and will also be available for the online merchants like RedBus, BookMyShow, MakeMyTrip, GoIbibo, Freshmenu, etc.

Caesar Sengupta, the manager at Google Pay, said at the event that the app is created for India, so the features can be modified for other countries. Also, with the rebranding, some global features will be added to the Indian Google Pay app. He also stated that in future Google Pay is also going to help more than 1.2 million local businesses in India.

Citation 500 : Harman Kardon’s $700 Google Assistant Speaker

Google, News, Product, Tech News / By
Harman Kardon Citation-500
Image Source: pocket-lint.com

Harman Kardon is a leading speaker producer company that is known for its unmatched audio quality. The company is about to launch its new range of speaker Citation 500 that is going to be a high-end Google Assistant speaker.

Unlike, the other Harmon Kardon speakers, the Citation 500 is higher in price, i.e. about $700. The company has rendered the speaker in two shades, grey and black, and is covered with the similar coloured woollen fabric. The speaker boasts 200W of stereo audio having high-resolution 24-bit/96kHz support and is smart enough to receive your commands, responding in the same way. But, with the LCD screen and the playback control buttons, available on the top of the speaker, you can adjust the volume, skip the songs or select a particular song manually without shouting at it.

The Citation 500 is a high-end Google Assistant speaker that you get at a mid-range price. It is like a smart-home hub that is feature-rich and goes with your decor.

Harmon Kardon is planning to unveil the smart speaker at the IFA 2018, in Berlin, later this week. And, will start taking preorders, by the end of the September, from its customers, in Europe only. The company has not commented on when the speakers will be available in other regions of the world.

Google One Launched : Replacing Google Drive?

Google, News, Product, Tech News / By
Google One
Image Source: techcrunch.com

In May 2018, Google had announced its new cloud storage product Google One and had been working on it for past few months. Finally, it has launched Google One, on the 15 August of this year. The ones, who have already used Google Drive, might know that Google provides you with 15 GB of free storage on Google Drive and after 15 GB, you have to pay for more storage.

Google One is similar to Google Drive and is a paid cloud storage provided for the users all over the world. No! It is not replacing Google Drive, but, Google Drive will be upgraded to Google One after its 15 GB free plan with some added perks for its Consumer.

1) Increased Data Storage: Google has been working on its newly launched Google One for a quite some time now and, has already been updating the Google Drive’s paid user’s subscriptions for the last few months. Google has come with many subscription plans, according to the user’s requirements and, that too at a good price.

The monthly plan of Google One starts with 100 GB of storage for $1.99, followed by 200 GB tier for $2.99, a 2 TB option for $9.99 and the plan ends at 30 TB of storage that will cost $299.99. Interestingly, Google has reduced the price of 2 TB storage by $10, i.e. $9.99 that was the previous price of 1 TB storage. The consumers can subscribe to any of the plans according to their need. Also, the subscription can be shared with five of the family members without paying any extra money and equal storage for all of them.

2) Customer Support: This time Google has also come with a one-tap help button, that is for the live-customer support. Meaning that the Google users can connect with the real experts, for their queries related to any Google product, instead of any AI chatbots. The customer-support will be available 24/7 and, you can contact them via a phone call or through an e-mail.

Right now, Google One is only available in the US. But, it will soon be rolling out for the consumers across other countries too. Also, the G-Suite users with the business account will get no additional benefits and their plans will remain as it is.

Google has come with some other perks for its subscribers and, will offer credits on their purchase on Google Play and Google Express. Also, if the user will search and book the Hotels through Google maps, they can earn good deals on the bookings.

So, now you can share more data like high-resolution pictures, 4K videos, documents with your family and friends with any of the above-mentioned subscription plans. And, if you are not a US citizen, you have to wait for sometime. Google is also working on launching an app for the users, to help them choose for their easy subscription to the different plans. So, hopefully, the app and Google One will be launched together in the other countries soon.

Mozilla & Chrome Supports the Latest Transport Layer Security 1.3

Google, News, Tech News / By
firecrome
Image Source : wordpress.com

It has been more than eight years, when the last version of TLS, i.e. TLS 1.2, was updated. TLS stands for Transport Layer Protocol and, is responsible for secure communication between web browser and the server. It took a long time for Internet Engineering Task Force to develop this new encryption protocol update, TLS 1.3. Late but nevertheless, it has come with high-security features and enhanced performance. It uses symmetric cryptography with faster the encrypted connections. Although it is a successor of TLS 1.2, it is loaded with more features.

1) Full Handshake Signature: The TLS 1.2 included a multi-steps communication thread added with renegotiations, that was completed in an average of 300ms. In the latest updated TLS 1.3, the data transmitted by the client to the server comprises the supported cypher, guesses key agreement protocol, key share and sent in one go, at which the server responds by negotiating the security settings, saving the number of steps in the communication thread making the communication faster.

2) Downgrade protection: The earlier version of TLS failed in the case of security as it came to be vulnerable to the downgrade attacks. A downgrade attack includes a middle-person in the client-server communication, who uses the weakest cypher supported by both parties to hack the data. In the TLS 1.3, the server automatically provides a key in the handshake process, the client or the middle-person has no authority to use any older forms of encryption.

Along with the speed and enhanced security features added to the TLS 1.3, it has eliminated a few features that were included in the TLS 1.2, like Static RSA handshake, Compression, Renegotiation, etc. Also, it has been already updated to a few famous browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Even Facebook has already been using it for quite a sometime now.

Security is a must for the data sharing online. The TLS 1.3 claims to give the highest security for the client-server communication, avoiding any kind of vulnerability to the various exploits like SLOTH, Lucky 13, POODLE, CRIME, etc. The TLS 1.3 has been a bit late but is going to last more than 20 years due to its high-security measures and speed.

Steve Chen – Co-Founder of YouTube

Founder, Google, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Young and enthusiastic minds always take their ideas to next level starting from scratch. Many of these revolutionary ideas have led to innovations that have changed the way our world is connected. Now you can be connected to any part of the world in just a few clicks. You are also able to see what’s happening in the world, on the largest video streaming network – YouTube. The idea for this video streaming service was born into one such young mind of Steve Chen.

Early Life

Born on August 18, 1978, in Taipei, Taiwan, Steve Chen and his family immigrated to the United States of America, in 1993 and, got settled in Prospect Heights, Illinois. Chen took his middle school education from River Trails Middle School, which is situated in Mount Prospect. Then for the first year of high school, he went to John Hersey in Arlington Heights. He spent the next three years of high school at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois. Finally, Chen went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to pursue a degree in Computer Science. and graduated in 2002.

Initial Career Stages

Just after graduating, Chen landed his first job with industry financial company PayPal. It was this company, where he met his future co-founders Jawed Karim and Chad Hurley. He also spent some time as an early employee at Facebook, but, left the company in few months to focus on his own venture.

Steve Chen
Image Source: wikimedia.org

He had a knack for innovative ideas and one such idea was lurking in his mind. It was to develop a video streaming platform, and Chen, along with Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, founded YouTube in 2005. Steve took the position of Chief Technical Officer in the company.

Just within few months, Chen announced that YouTube was receiving around 100 million views per day and around 65000 videos were being uploaded from different parts of the world each day. The popularity of YouTube skyrocketed and quickly came to the notice of Google. Next thing they knew was Google offering to acquire YouTube. The online video streaming site was ranked among the top 10 most popular websites.

Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for a mind-boggling $1.65 billion. From then on, YouTube has never looked back and is constantly achieving new heights of success. Chen received 625,366 shares in Google and extra 68,721 in trust as the part of the sale. These shares are valued at $729 million in 2018.

After YouTube

Steve Chen is an energetic person who does not prefer to stop at one success. The definition of success is to keep moving forward and achieve greater heights than the previous ones. The next venture Chen started was named AVOS Systems, Inc. He founded this venture along with Chad Hurley and Vijay Krishnamurthy. One of the services known as Mixbit, which is a video sharing service is quite well known. AVOS acquired Delicious from Yahoo! Inc. The founders sold AVOS Systems, Inc. to Science, Inc. in 2014.

Along with founding a couple of most successful companies, Chen is also well-known for his investments in promising start-ups and businesses. He has invested in HonestBee, Drama Fever, Spool, Wish, Road Hero and many more.

Personal Life

In 2009, Chen got married to the Google Korea product marketing manager, Park Ji-Hyun also known as Jamie Chen. The couple lives in San Francisco with their two sons. Chen is a huge art admirer and makes a humble contribution towards The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

In 2008, Chen along with his partner Chad Hurley was awarded Vanguard Award. The Magazine 2.0 nominated Chen as one of the ’50 people who matter now’ in business. The Asian Scientists Magazine listed Chen as one of the 15 Asian Scientists to Watch.