Love Story of Narayana Murthy and Sudha (From Sudha's Autobiography)

It was in Pune that I met Narayan Murty through my friend Prasanna who is now the Wipro chief, who was also training in Telco. Most of the books that Prasanna lent me had Murty's name on them which meant that I had a preconceived image of the man.Contrary to expectation, Murty was shy,bespectacled and an introvert. When he invited us for dinner.. I was a bit taken aback as I thought the young man was making a very fast move. I refused since I was the only girl in the group. But Murty was relentless and we all decided to meet for dinner the next day at 7.30 p.m. at Green Fields hotel on the Main Road,Pune.

The next day I went there at 7' o clock since I had togo to the tailor near the hotel. And what do I see?Mr. Murty waiting in front of the hotel and it was only seven. Till today, Murty maintains that I had mentioned (consciously!) that I would be going to the tailor at 7 so that I could meet him...And I maintain that I did not say any such thing consciously or unconsciously because I did not think of Murty as anything other than a friend at that stage. We have agreed to disagree on this matter.

Soon, we became friends. Our conversations were filled with Murty's experiences abroad and the books that he has read. My friends insisted that Murty was trying to impress me because he was interested in me. I kept denying it till one fine day, after dinner Murty said,I want to tell you something. I knew this was it. It was coming. He said, I am 5'4" tall. I come from a lower middle class family. I can never become rich in my life and I can never give you any riches. You are beautiful, bright, and intelligent and you can get anyone you want. But will you marry me? I asked Murty to give me some time for an answer. My father didn't want me to marry a wannabe politician,(a communist at that) who didn't have a steady job and wanted to build an orphanage...

When I went to Hubli I told my parents about Murty and his proposal. My mother was positive since Murty was also from Karnataka, seemed intelligent and comes from a good family. But my father asked: What's his job,his salary, his qualifications etc? Murty was working as a research assistant and was earning less than me.He was willing to go dutch with me on our outings. My parents agreed to meet Murty in Pune on a particular day at10 a. m sharp. Murty did not turn up. How can I trust a man to take care of my daughter if he cannot keep an appointment, asked my father. At 12noon Murty turned up in a bright red shirt! He had gone on work to Bombay, was stuck in a traffic jam on the ghats, so he hired a taxi(though it was very expensive for him) to meet his would-be father-in-law.Father was unimpressed. My father asked him what he wanted to become in life. Murty said he wanted to become a politician in the communist party and wanted to open an orphanage. My father gave his verdict. NO. I don't want my daughter to marry somebody who wants to become a communist and then open an orphanage when he himself didn't have money to support his family.Ironically, today, I have opened many orphanages something, which Murty wanted to do 25 years ago. By this time I realized I had developed a liking towardsMurty which could only be termed as love. I wanted to marry Murty because he is an honest man. He proposed to me highlighting the negatives in his life. I promised my father that I will not marry Murty without his blessings though at the same time, I cannot marry anybody else. My father said he would agree if Murty promised to take up a steady job. But Murty refused saying he will not do things in life because somebody wanted him to. So, I was caught between the two most important people in my life.

The stalemate continued for three years during which our courtship took us to every restaurant and cinema hall in Pune. In those days, Murty was always broke.Moreover, he didn't earn much to manage. Ironically today, he manages Infosys Technologies Ltd., one of the world's most reputed companies. He always owed me money. We used to go for dinner and he would say, I don't have money with me, you pay my share, I will return it to you later. For three years I maintained a book on Murty's debt to me.. No, he never returned the money and I finally tore it up after my wedding. The amount was a little over Rs 4000. During this interim period Murty quit his job as research assistant and started his own software business. Now,I had to pay his salary too! Towards the late 70s computers were entering India in a bigway.

During the fag end of 1977 Murty decided to take up a job as General Manager at Patni Computers in Bombay.But before he joined the company he wanted to marry me since he was to go on training to the US after joining. My father gave in as he was happy Murty had a decent job, now.WE WERE MARRIED IN MURTY'S HOUSE IN BANGALORE ONFEBRUARY 10, 1978 WITH ONLY OUR TWO FAMILIES PRESENT.I GOT MY FIRST SILK SARI. THE WEDDING EXPENSES CAME TO ONLY RS 800 (US $17) WITH MURTY AND I POOLING IN RS400 EACH.I went to the US with Murty after marriage. Murty encouraged me to see America on my own because I loved travelling. I toured America for three months on backpack and had interesting experiences which will remain fresh in my mind forever. Like the time when the New York police took me into custody because they thought I was an Italian trafficking drugs in Harlem.Or the time when I spent the night at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with an old couple. Murty panicked because he couldn't get a response from my hotel room even at midnight. He thought I was either killed or kidnapped.IN 1981 MURTY WANTED TO START INFOSYS. HE HAD A VISION AND ZERO CAPITAL...initially I was very apprehensive about Murty getting into business. We did not have any business background.. Moreover we were living a comfortable life in Bombay with a regular pay check and I didn't want to rock the boat. But Murty was passionate about creating good quality software. I decided to support him.

Typical of Murty, he just had a dream and no money. So I gave him Rs 10,000 which I had saved for a rainy day, without his knowledge and told him, This is all I have. Take it. I give you three years sabbatical leave. I will take care of the financial needs of our house. You go and chase your dreams without any worry. But you have only three years!

Murty and his six colleagues started Infosys in 1981,with enormous interest and hard work. In 1982 I left Telco and moved to Pune with Murty. We bought a small house on loan which also became the Infosys office. I was a clerk-cum-cook-cum-programmer. I also took up a job as Senior Systems Analyst with Walchand group of Industries to support the house. In 1983 Infosys got their first client, MICO, in Bangalore. Murty moved to Bangalore and stayed with his mother while I went to Hubli to deliver my second child, Rohan. Ten days after my son was born, Murty left for the US on project work. I saw him only after a year, as I was unable to join Murty in the US because my son had infantile eczema, an allergy to vaccinations. So for more than a year I did not step outside our home for fear of my son contracting an infection. It was only after Rohan got all his vaccinations that I came to Bangalore where we rented a small house in Jayanagar and rented another house as Infosys headquarters. My father presented Murty a scooter to commute. I once again became a cook, programmer, clerk, secretary, office assistant et al. Nandan Nilekani (MD of Infosys) and his wife Rohini stayed with us. While Rohini babysat my son, I wrote programs for Infosys. There was no car, no phone, and just two kids and a bunch of us working hard, juggling our lives and having fun while Infosys was taking shape. It was not only me but also the wives of other partners too who gave their unstinted support. We all knew that our men were trying to build something good.

It was like a big joint family,taking care and looking out for one another. I still remember Sudha
Gopalakrishna looking after my daughter Akshata with all care and love while Kumari Shibulal cooked for all of us. Murty made it very clear that it would either be me or him working at Infosys. Never the two of us together... I was involved with Infosys initially.

Nandan Nilekani suggested I should be on the Board but Murty said he did not want a husband and wife team at Infosys. I was shocked since I had the relevant experience and technical qualifications.

He said, Sudha if you want to work with Infosys, I will withdraw, happily. I was pained to know that I will not be involved in the company my husband was building and that I would have to give up a job that I am qualified to do and love doing.

It took me a couple of days to grasp the reason behind Murty's request.. I realized that to make Infosys a success one had to give one's 100 percent. One had to be focussed on it alone with no
other distractions. If the two of us had to give 100 percent to Infosys then what would happen to our home and our children? One of us had to take care of our home while the other took care of
Infosys.


I opted to be a homemaker, after all Infosys was Murty's dream. It was a big sacrificebut it was one that had to be made. Even today, Murty says, Sudha, I stepped on your career to make mine. You are responsible for my success. I might have given up my career for my husband's sake.

But that does not make me a doormat....

About Sabeer Bhatia

Rags to riches - the Biography of the man who created Hotmail and is one of the Richest man in US
When he was only 28, Sabeer Bhatia got the call every Silicon Valley entrepreneur dreams of: Bill Gates wants to buy your company. Summoned to Microsoft's command bunker in Redmond, Washington state, he was deposited on the new acquisitions conveyor belt. Round and round the Microsoft campus he went. All 26 buildings. At every stop, Bhatia's guide helpfully pointed out the vastness of the Microsoft empire. The procession ground on until it reached Gates's office. Bhatia was ushered in. Bill liked his firm. He hoped they could work together.


He wished him well. Bhatia was ushered out. "Next thing is we're taken into a conference room where there are 12 Microsoft negotiators,"Bhatia recalls. "Very intimidating." Microsoft's determined dozen put an offer on the table: $160 million. Take it or leave it. Bhatia played it cool. "I'll get back to you," he said. Eighteen months later Sabeer Bhatia has taken his place among San Francisco's ultra-rich. He recently purchased a $2-million apartment in rarified Pacific Heights.


A month after Bhatia walked away from the table, Microsoft ponied up $400 million for his start-up. Today Hotmail, the ubiquitous Web-based e-mail service, boasts 50 million subscribers - one quarter of all Internet users. Bhatia is worth $200 million. He is already working on his follow-up: a "one-click" e-commerce venture called Arzoo! And Bhatia is looking homeward with an ambitious plan to wire India.


Bhatia was born and raised in the southern Indian city of Bangalore. His father, who held a high post at the Ministry of Defence, and mother Daman, a senior official at a state bank, placed great value on education. In 1988, Bhatia won a full scholarship to the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena. When his plane touched down that fall, 19-year-old Bhatia had $250 in his wallet and butterflies in his stomach. "I felt I had made a big mistake," he says. "I knew nobody, people looked different, it was hard for them to understand my accent and me to understand theirs.




I felt pretty lonely." Ten years later you can still catch a glimpse of the innocent abroad. People say when Bhatia enters a room he owns it. "I call him the Hindu Robot," says Naveen Singha, Bhatia's friend, mentor and proud owner of the third-ever Hotmail address. "He is persistent, focused, disciplined. He's a superior human being." Others say he glows with a beatific, otherworldly air.

Doing his masters of science at Stanford, Bhatia attended lectures by such legends as Steve Jobs of Apple and Scott McNealy and Vinod Khosla of Sun Microsystems. Listening to them speak, Bhatia "realised they were human. And if they could do it, I could do it too." After Stanford, Bhatia found work as a hardware engineer at Apple. In his cubicle, he read about young men starting up for peanuts and selling out for millions.


Bhatia pondered what the Net could do for him, and what he could do for the Net. Then he had an idea. It was called Javasoft - a way of using the Web to create a>personal database where surfers could keep schedules, to-do lists, family photos and so on. Bhatia showed the plan to Jack Smith, an Apple colleague and they got started. One evening Smith called Bhatia with an intriguing notion. Why not add e-mail to Javasoft? It was a small leap with revolutionary consequences: access to e-mail from any computer, anywhere on the planet. This was that rare thing, an idea so simple, so obvious, it was hard to believe no one had thought of it before. Bhatia saw the potential and panicked that someone would steal the idea. He sat up all night writing the business plan.


Hotmail made perfect sense: it included the letters "html" - mthe programming language used to write Web pages. A brand name was born. Bhatia had $6,000 to his name. It was time to find investors. By the time he reached the offices of venture capitalists Draper Fisher Jurvetson, 19 doors had slammed behind him. Steve Jurvetson and his colleagues quickly saw the potential and put up $300,000. Bhatia and Smith stretched the money all the way to launch day, July 4, 1996.


By year-end they were greeting their millionth customer. When Microsoft came knocking, 12 months later, they'd signed up nearly 10 million users. At $350 million, Hotmail's investors agreed: Sell. Bhatia returned to the table, alone, and once more said: "No." The contract was inked on Dec. 30, 1997, Bhatia's 29th birthday. The price: some three million Microsoft shares - worth $400 million at the time and twice that now. Today Hotmail users are signing up at the rate of 250,000 a day, and the firm is valued at some $6 billion.


Yet it is here that Bhatia launched Hotmail and it is here that he hopes once again to transform the Internet with Arzoo! - his latest brainchild. The company is only six weeks old, and the offices are strewn with boxes that once housed computers, monitors - and a ping pong table.

Story of Dhirubhai Ambani

Dhiru Bhai Ambani built India's largest private sector company and created an equity cult in the Indian capital market. Reliance is the first Indian company to feature in the Forbes 500 list Dhirubhai Ambani was one of the most enterprising Indian entrepreneur. His life's story is a real rags to riches story. He is widely remembered as the one who rewrote Indian corporate history and built a truly global corporate

Dhirubhai Ambani (Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani) was born on 28 December 1932, at Chorwad, Junagadh in Gujarat, India to Hirachand Gordhanbhai Ambani and Jamnaben in a family of very moderate means. He was the second son and his father was a school teacher. Dhirubhai Ambani started his entrepreneurial career by selling "pakora" to pilgrims in Mount Girnar over the weekends. By the age of 16 years, he moved to Aden,Yemen and worked as a dispatch clerk with A. Besse & Co. Two years later A. Besse & Co. became the distributors for Shell products and Dhirubhai was promoted to manage the company’s oil-filling station at the port of Aden.He was married to Kokilaben and had two sons, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani and two daughters, Nina Kothari and Deepti Salgaocar.

Reliance Commercial Corporation

In 1958, Dhirubhai returned to India and started the Reliance Commercial Corporation with a capital of Rs.15 thousand only. The primary business of Reliance Commercial Corporation was to import polyester yarn and export spices.The business was setup in partnership with Champaklal Damani, his second cousin, who used to be with him in Aden, Yemen. The first office of the Reliance Commercial Corporation was set up at the Narsinathan Street in Masjid Bunder. It was a 350 Sq. Ft. room with a telephone, one table and three chairs. Initially,Dhirubhai Ambani had just two assistants to help him. In 1965, Champaklal Damani and Dhirubhai Ambani ended their partnership and Dhirubhai started on his own. Interestingly, Mr. Damani was a cautious trader and did not believe in building yarn inventories whereas Dhirubhai was a known risk taker and believed that building inventories, anticipating a price rise, and making profits through that was good for growth.This seems to be the reason for thier parting ways. During this period, Dhirubhai and his family stayed in a one bedroom apartment at the Jaihind Estate in Bhuleshwar, Mumbai.In 1968,Dhirubhai moved to an upmarket apartment at Altamount Road in South Mumbai.

Dhirubhai started his first textile mill at Naroda, in Ahmedabad in the year 1966. Textiles were manufactured using polyester fibre yarn.Dhirubhai started the brand "Vimal", which was named after his elder brother Ramaniklal Ambani's son, Vimal Ambani. Extensive marketing of the brand "Vimal" in the interiors of India made it a household name. Franchise retail outlets were started and they used to sell "only Vimal" brand of textiles. In the year 1975, a Technical team from the World Bank visited the Reliance Textiles' Manufacturing unit. This unit has the rare distinction of being certified as "excellent" even by developed country standards" during that period.

Initial public offering

Dhirubhai Ambani is credited with starting the equity cult in India. More than 58,000 investors from various parts of India subscribed to Reliance's IPO in 1977. Dhirubhai was able to convince people of rural Gujarat that being shareholders of his company will only bring returns to their investment.Reliance Industries holds the distinction that it is the only PrivateLimited Company whose several Annual General Meetings were held in stadiums. In 1986, The Annual General Meeting of Reliance Industries was held in Cross Maidan, Mumbai and was attended by more than 35,000 shareholders and the Reliance family.Dhirubhai managed to convince a large number of first-time retail investors to participate in the unfolding Reliance story and put their hard-earned money in the Reliance Textile IPO, promising them, in exchange for their trust, substantial returns on their investments.

Dhirubhai's control over stock exchanges

In 1982, Reliance Industries came up against a rights issue regarding partly convertible debentures.It was rumored that company was making all efforts to ensure that their stock prices did not slide an inch. Sensing an opportunity, a bear cartel which was a group of stock brokers from Calcutta started to short sell the shares of Reliance. To counter this, a group of stock brokers till recently referred to as "Friends of Reliance" started to buy the short sold shares of Reliance Industries on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The Bear Cartel was acting on the belief that the Bulls would be short of cash to complete the transactions and would be ready for settlement under the "Badla" trading system prevalent in Bombay Stock Exchange during those days. The bulls kept on buying and a price of Rs. 152 per share was maintained till the day of settlement. On the day of settlement, the Bear Cartel was taken aback when the Bulls demanded a physical delivery of shares. To complete the transaction, the much needed cash was provided to the stock brokers who had bought shares of Reliance, by none other than Dhirubhai Ambani. In the case of non-settlement, the Bulls demanded an "Unbadla" (a penalty sum) of Rs. 35 per share. With this, the demand increased and the shares of Reliance shot above 180 rupees in minutes. The settlement caused an enormous uproar in the market and Dhirubhai

Ambani was the unquestioned king of the stock markets. He proved to his detractors just how dangerous it was to play with Reliance.The situation was getting completely out of control. To find a solution to this situation, the Bombay Stock Exchange was closed for three business days. Authorities from the Bombay Stock Exchange intervened in the matter and brought down the "Unbadla" rate to Rs. 2 with a stipulation that the Bear Cartel had to deliver the shares within the next few days. The Bear Cartel bought shares of Reliance from the market at higher price levels and it was also learnt that Dhirubhai Ambani himself supplied those shares to the Bear Cartel and earned a healthy profit out of The Bear Cartel's adventure.

After this incident, many questions were raised by his detractors and the press. Not many people were able to understand as to how a yarn trader till a few years ago was able to get in such a huge amount of cash flow during a crisis period. The answer to this was provided by the then finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee in the parliament. He informed the house that a Non-Resident Indian had invested up to Rs. 220 Million in Reliance during 1982-83. These investments were routed through many companies like Crocodile, Lota and Fiasco. These companies were primarily registered in Isle of Man. The interesting factor was that all the promoters or owners of these companies had a common surname Shah. An investigation by the Reserve Bank of India in the incident did not find any unethical or illegal acts or transactions committed by Reliance or its promoters.

Diversification

Over time, Dhirubhai diversified his business with the core specialisation being in petrochemicals and additional interests in telecommunications, information technology, energy, power, retail, textiles, infrastructure services, capital markets, and logistics. The company as a whole was described by the BBC as "a business empire with an estimated annual turnover of $12bn, and an 85,000-strong workforce".

Criticism

Paperback Cover page of The Polyester Prince. The rise of Dhirubhai Ambani. Author: Hamish McDonald, Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited (Australia), ISBN 1-86448-468-3Despite his almost Midas Touch, Ambani has been known to have flexible values and an unethical streak running through him. His biographer himself has cited some instances of his unethical behavior when he was just an ordinary employee at a petrol pump in Dubai. He has been accused of having manipulated government policies to suit his own needs, and has been known to be a king-maker in government elections . Although most media sources tend to speak out about business-politics nexus, the Ambani house has always enjoyed more protection and shelter from the media storms that sweep across the country.

Tussle with Nusli Wadia

Nusli Wadia of Bombay Dyeing was, at one point in time, the biggest competitor of Dhirubhai and Reliance Industries. Both Nusli Wadia and Dhirubhai were known for their influence in the political circles and their ability to get the most difficult licenses approved during the times of pre-liberalized economy.

During the Janata Party rule between 1977 - 1979, Nusli Wadia obtained the permission to build a 60,000 tonnes per annum Di-methyl terephthalate (DMT) plant. Before the letter of intent was converted into a licence, many hurdles came in the way.

Finally, in 1981, Nusli Wadia was granted the license for the plant. This incident acted as a catalyst between the two parties and the competition took an ugly turn.

The Indian Express Articles

At one point in time, Ramnath Goenka was a friend of Dhirubhai Ambani. Ramnath Goenka was also considered to be close to Nusli Wadia. On many occasions, Ramnath Goenka tried to intervene between the two warring factions and bring an end to the enmity. Goenka and Ambani became rivals mainly because Ambani's corrupt business practices and his illegal actions that lead to Goenka not getting a fair share in the company. Later on, Ramnath Goenka chose to support Nusli Wadia. At one point of time, Ramnath Goenka is believed to have said "Nusli is an Englishman. He cannot handle Ambani. I am a bania. I know how to inish him"....

Ramnath Goenka, the patriarch of The Indian Express Group. As days passed by, The Indian Express, a broadsheet daily published by him, carried a series of articles against Reliance Industries and Dhirubhai in which they claimed that Dhirubhai was using unfair trade practices to maximise the profits. Ramnath Goenka did not use his staff at the Indian Express to investigate the case but assigned his close confidante, advisor and chartered accountant S. Gurumurthy for this task. Apart from S. Gurumurthy, another journalist Maneck Davar who was not on the rolls of Indian Express started contributing stories. Jamnadas Moorjani, a businessman opposed to the Ambanis was also a part of this campaign.

Both Ambani and Goenka were equally criticized and admired by sections of the society. People criticized Goenka that he was using a national newspaper for the cause of a personal enmity. Critics believed that there were many other businessman in the country who were using more unfair and unethical practices but Goenka chose to target only Ambani and not the others. Critics also admired Goenka for his ability to run these articles without any help from his regular staff. Dhirubhai Ambani was also getting more recognition and admiration, in the meantime. A section of the public started to appreciate Dhirubhai's business sense and his ability to tame the system according to his wishes.

The end to this tussle came only after Dhirubhai Ambani suffered a stroke. While Dhirubhai Ambani was recovering in San Diego, his sons Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani managed the affairs. The Indian Express had turned the guns against Reliance and was directly blaming the government for not doing enough to penalize Reliance Industries. The battle between Wadia - Goenka and the Ambanis took a new direction and became a national crisis. Gurumurthy and another journalist, Mulgaokar consorted with President Giani Zail Singh and ghost-wrote a hostile letter to the Prime Minister on his behalf. The Indian Express published a draft of the President’s letter as a scoop, not realizing that Zail Singh had made changes to the letter before sending it to Rajiv Gandhi. Ambani had won the battle at this point. Now, while the tussle was directly between the

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Ramnath Goenka, Ambani made a quiet exit. The government then raided the Express guest house in Delhi’s Sunder Nagar and found the original draft with corrections in Mulgaokar’s handwriting. By 1988-89, Rajiv’s government retaliated with a series of prosecutions against the Indian Express. Even then, Goenka retained his iconic stature because, to many people, he seemed to be replaying his heroic defiance during the Emergency regime.

Dhirubhai and V.P.Singh

It was widely known that Dhirubhai didn't enjoy a cordial relation with Vishwanath Pratap Singh, who succeeded Rajiv Gandhi as the Prime Minister of India. In May 1985, he suddenly removed the import of Purified Terephthalic Acid from the Open General License category. As a raw material this was very important to manufacture polyester filament yarn. This made it very difficult for Reliance to carry on operations. Reliance was able to secure, from various financial institutions, letters of credit that would allow it to import almost one full year’s requirement of PTA on the eve of the issuance of the government notification, changing the category under which PTA could be imported. In 1990, the government-owned financial institutions like the Life Insurance Corporation of India and the General Insurance Corporation stonewalled attempts by the Reliance group to acquire managerial control over Larsen & Toubro. Sensing defeat, the Ambanis resigned from the board of the company.
Dhirubhai, who had become L&T's chairman in April 1989, had to quit his post to make way for D. N. Ghosh, former chairman of the State Bank of India.

Death

Dhirubhai Ambani's funeral saw thousands of people attending. Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani can be seen carrying their father's body as per Hindu traditionsDhirubhai Ambani was admitted to the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai on June 24, 2002 after he suffered a major "brain stroke". This was his second stroke, the first one had occurred in February 1986 and had kept his right hand paralyzed. He was in a state of coma for more than a week. A battery of doctors were unable to save his life. He breathed his last on July 6, 2002, at around 11:50 P.M. (Indian Standard Time).His funeral procession was not only attended by business people, politicians and celebrities but also by thousands of ordinary people. His elder son, Mukesh Ambani, performed the last rites as per Hindu traditions. He was cremated at the Chandanwadi Crematorium in Mumbai at around 4:30 PM (Indian Standard Time) on July 7, 2002.

He is survived by Kokilaben Ambani, his wife, two sons, Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani, and two daughters, Nina Kothari and Deepti Salgaonkar.

Dhirubhai Ambani started his long journey in Bombay from the Mulji-Jetha Textile Market, where he started as a small-trader.

As a mark of respect to this great businessman, The Mumbai Textile Merchants' decided to keep the market closed on July 8, 2002. At the time of Dhirubhai's death, Reliance Group had a gross turnover of Rs. 75,000 Crore or USD $ 15 Billion. In 1976-77, the Reliance group had an annual turnover of Rs 70 crore and Dhirubhai had started the business with Rs.15,000(US$350)

The Google Story

The Google Story : From 2 students to 15000+ team members and a revenue in excess of 11 billion US $





Google is derived from the word googol.It refers to the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the web.

The Beginning, 1995-98
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Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin first met as Stanford University graduate students in computer science in 1995. Larry was a 24-year-old University of Michigan alumnus on a weekend visit; Sergey, 23, was among a group of students assigned to show him around. They argued about every topic they discussed. Their strong opinions and divergent viewpoints would eventually find common ground in a unique approach to solving one of computing's biggest challenges: retrieving relevant information from a massive set of data.

By January of 1996, Larry and Sergey had begun collaboration on a search engine called BackRub, named for its unique ability to analyze the "back links" pointing to a given website.A year later, their unique approach to link analysis was earning BackRub a growing reputation among those who had seen it. Buzz about the new search technology began to build as word spread around campus.Larry and Sergey continued working to perfect their technology Meanwhile Sergey set up a business office, and the two began calling on potential partners who might want to license a search technology better than any then available. Despite the dotcom fever of the day, they had little interest in building a company of their own around the technology they had developed.

Among those they called on was friend and Yahoo! founder David Filo. Filo agreed that their technology was solid, but encouraged Larry and Sergey to grow the service themselves by starting a search engine company. "When it's fully developed and scalable," he told them, "let's talk again." Others were less interested in Google."

Unable to interest the major portal players of the day, Larry and Sergey decided to make a go of it on their own. All they needed was a little cash to move out of the dorm – and to pay off the credit cards they had maxed out buying a terabyte of memory. So they wrote up a business plan, put their Ph.D. plans on hold, and went looking for an angel investor. Their first visit was with a friend of a faculty member.

Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems took One look at their demo and he knew Google had potential – a lot of potential.As Sergey tells it, "We met him very early one morning on the porch of a Stanford faculty member's home in Palo Alto. We gave him a quick demo. He had to run off somewhere, so he said, 'Instead of us discussing all the details, why don't I just write you a check?' It was made out to Google Inc. and was for $100,000." It sat in Larry's desk drawer for a couple of weeks while he and Sergey scrambled to set up a corporation and locate other funders among family, friends, and acquaintances. Ultimately they brought in a total initial investment of almost $1 million.

In September 1998, Google Inc. opened its office in Menlo Park, California. This office had included a washer and dryer and a hot tub. It also provided a parking space for the first employee hired by the new company: Craig Silverstein, now Google's director of technology.By this time, Google.com was answering 10,000 search queries each day. The press began to take notice of the upstart website with the relevant search results, and articles extolling Google appeared in USA TODAY and Le Monde. That December, PC Magazine named Google one of its Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines for 1998. Google was moving up in the world.
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1999
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Google Ink by February 1999, moved to an office on University Avenue in Palo Alto. At eight employees, the staff had nearly tripled, and the service was answering more than 500,000 queries per day. Interest in the company had grown as well. On June 7, the companysecured a round of funding that included $25 million from the two leading venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In a replay of the convergence of opposites that gave birth to Google, the two firms - normally fiercely competitive, but eye-to-eye on the value of this new investment - both took seats on the board of directors. Michael Moritz of Sequoia and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins - who between them had helped grow Sun Microsystems, Intuit, Amazon, and Yahoo! - joined Ram Shriram, CEO of Junglee, at the ping pong table that served as formal boardroom furniture.In short, key hires began to fill the company's modest offices. Omid Kordestani left Netscape to accept a position as vice president of business development and sales, and Urs Hölzle was hired away from UC Santa Barbara as vice president of engineering. It quickly became obvious that more space was needed. AOL/Netscape selected Google as its web search service and helped push traffic levels past 3 million searches per day. What had been a college research project was now a real company offering a service that was in great demand.

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2000
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At the Googleplex, a unique company culture was evolving. To maximize the flexibility of the work space, large rubber exercise balls were repurposed as highly mobile office chairs in an open environment free of cubicle walls. Sections of the parking lot were roped off for twice-weekly roller hockey games and so on.The informal atmosphere bred both collegiality and an accelerated exchange of ideas.

The clients began ti sign up to use Google's search technology on their own sites. With the launch of a keyword-targeted advertising program, Google added another revenue stream that began moving the company into the black. By mid-2000, these efforts were beginning to show real results.On June 26, Google and Yahoo! announced a partnership that solidified the company's reputation – not just as a provider of great technology, but as a substantial business answering 18 million user queries every day. In the months that followed, partnership deals were announced on all fronts, with China's leading portal NetEase and NEC's BIGLOBE portal in Japan both adding Google search to their sites.

To extend the power of keyword-targeted advertising to smaller businesses, Google introduced AdWords, a self-service ad program that could be activated online with a credit card in a matter of minutes. And in late 2000, to enhance users' power to search from anywhere on the web, Google introduced the Google Toolbar. The introduction of Google Toolbar proved enormously popular and has since been downloaded by millions of users.As 2000 ended, Google was already handling more than 100 million search queries a day
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2001
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As Google's search capabilities multiplied, the company's financial footing became even more solid. By the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2001, it announced that we had found something that had eluded many other online companies: profitability. Around the world, Google's circle of friends continued to widen. An agreement with Lycos Korea brought Google search to a new group of Asian Internet users. In October, a partnership with Universo Online (UOL) made Google Latin America's premier search engine. New sales offices opened in Hamburg and Tokyo to satisfy growing international interest in Google's advertising programs.

Meanwhile the Google search engine evolved and learned to crawl several new kinds of information. File type search added a dozen formats to Google's roster of searchable documents. In December, Google Image Search, first launched during the summer with 250 million images, came out of beta with advanced search added and an expanded image index. Online shopping took a leap forward with the beta launch of Google Catalog Search, which made it possible for Google users to search and browse more than 1,100 mail order catalogs that previously had been available only in print.
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2002
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In February of 2002, with the introduction of the Google Search Appliance, a plug-and-play search solution in a bright yellow box. Soon it was crawling company intranets, e-commerce sites, and university networks, with organizations from Boeing to the University of Florida powering their searches with "Google in a box." Google's web application programming interfaces (APIs) enabled software programs to query Google directly, drawing on the data in billions of web documents. Their release sparked a flurry of innovation, from Google-based games to new search interfaces.Google Compute, newly added to the Google Toolbar, took advantage of idle cycles on users' computers to help solve computation-intensive scientific problems. The first beneficiary: Folding@home, a non-profit Stanford University research project to analyze the structure of proteins with an eye to improving treatments for a number of illnesses.

In February of 2002, AdWords, a self-service advertising system, received a major overhaul, including a cost-per-click (CPC) pricing model that makes search advertising as cost-effective for small businesses as for large ones. Google's approach to advertising has always followed the same principle that works so well for search: Focus on the user and all else will follow. For ads, this means using keywords to target ad delivery and ranking ads for relevance to the user's query. As a result, ads only reach the people who actually want to see them – an approach that benefits users as well as advertisers

Google News launched in beta in September of 2002, offering access to 4,500 leading news sources from around the world. Headlines and photos are automatically selected and arranged by a computer program which updates the page continuously. The free service lets users scan, search, and browse, with links from each headline to the original story.
Froogle, a product search service launched in test mode in December of 2002, continued Google's emphasis on innovation and objective results. Searching through millions of relevant websites, Froogle helps users find multiple sources for specific products, delivering images and prices for the items sought.
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2003
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Google's innovations continued to reshape not only the world of search, but also the advertising marketplace and the realm of publishing. In 2003, we acquired Pyra Labs and became the home for Blogger, a leading provider of services for those inclined to share their thoughts with the world through online journals (weblogs). Not long thereafter, the Google AdSense program was born, offering web sites of all sizes a way to easily generate revenue through placement of highly targeted ads adjacent to their content.

Google Version 2.0 of the Google Toolbar was released in the Spring and the Google Deskbar joined it in the Fall. The Toolbar's enhancements included a pop-up blocker and form filler, while the Deskbar's location in the Windows Taskbar made it possible to search using Google without even launching a web browser. And there was so much more to find, thanks to several advanced search features, including a calculator, parcel tracking, flight information, VIN numbers and more, all accessible through the familiar Google search box.
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2004
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On February 17 we announced an expanded web index with more than 6 billion items (including the aforementioned 4.28 billion web pages plus 880 million images, 845 million Usenet messages, and a growing collection of book-related information pages).On April 1, we posted plans to open a research facility on the Moon and announced a new web-based mail service called Gmail, which at launch included a gigabyte of free storage for each user. It soon became apparent that Gmail was no joke. The first serious re-examination of web-based email in years, Gmail offered a powerful built in search function, messages grouped by subject line into conversations and enough free storage to hold years' worth of messages. Using AdSense technology, Gmail was designed to deliver relevant ads adjacent to mail messages, giving recipients a way to act on this information.

On July 13, 2 Google announced the acquisition of Picasa, Inc. This Pasadena, Calif.-based digital photo management company helps users to organize, manage and share their digital photos.Google SMS became a new beta offering in October, enabling people who are away from their computers to quickly and easily get instant, accurate answers to queries.

Towards the end of October, Google announced the acquisition of Keyhole Corp., a digital and satellite image mapping company based in our own headquarter town, Mountain View, Calif. The acquisition gave Google users a powerful new search tool to view 3D images across earth, and the ability to tap a rich database of roads, businesses and many other points of interest.

In December, launches included Google Groups, a new version of the venerable Usenet archive of 1 billion posts on thousands of topics that Google has managed since 2001. The new Google Groups enables users to create and manage their own email groups and discussion lists. And the Google Print program announced agreements with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford, and The New York Public Library to digitally scan books from their collections so that users worldwide can search them in Google.
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2005
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The Google Search Appliance added blue Google Mini, a smaller and lower-cost solution for small and medium-sized businesses that want Google quality search for their documents and sites. The latest version of Google Desktop Search rolled out, now with the ability to locate many more file types including PDF and MP3. Another new feature launched in Google Local: Google Maps, a dynamic online mapping feature users in North America use to find location information, navigate through maps, and get directions quickly and easily. Google Maps is distinguished by easy navigation, detailed route directions, and business locations related to the requested query.
Also in 2005, it seemed all the world took notice of blogs and feeds – two important ways to publish quickly and easily, and to subscribe to many timely publication sites. After a year of learning and growing, our own Google Blog runs frequent postings about Google products. And in May we launched AdSense for feeds, a way for every blogger to gain ad revenue by running targeted AdSense ads within the feed. As for Blogger, we continue to develop features, including the ability to post new items and photos from anywhere – even a mobile phone. As midyear beckoned, we announce an option on Google Labs that some people have asked for: a Personalized Homepage on which you can add news headlines from any sources offering feeds, as well as stock quotes, weather, movie showtimes, even driving directions. Some people want their Google in "classic" (plain) form . In mid-September we released Google Blog Search, a tool to help people find lively content as soon as it's live on blogs around the world. And in recognition of our indebtedness to visionaries, we announced the hiring of Internet pioneer Vint Cerf to continue his global Internet thinking on our behalf.

DGoogle Print was also renamed Google Book Search, which may more accurately reflect how people use it. And part of Book Search is our project to scan public domain books, which we hope will make them much more easily accessible to a global audience of readers.As we closed in on the finish of 2005, we launched a music search feature that delivers a mix of information on artists, titles, links to albums, reviews and where to buy information for a wide range of musicians and performers.
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2006
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2006 arrived with a bang: a brand new Google Video store, featuring many titles from numerous content partners, and the ability to view or download them using a new Google Video Player. And filmmakers can set the price and level of copy protection for their productions, giving fans far more variety than ever before.Google Chat connected people through Gmail and Talk, becoming the first service to integrate email and instant messaging within a web browser. An updated version of Google Desktop made it easier for people to find and share information on their own computers. Google Page Creator made it even easier for anybody to design and create web pages quickly and simply.

On the advertising front, AdWords further expanded its access to local businesses. We announced click-to-play Video Ads, followed soon after by a partnership with MTV. Then, to help advertisers better observe and understand their clickstreams and how visitors accessed their websites, we integrated AdWords with Google Analytics. Not long after, we opened Analytics to anybody with a website, regardless of whether they use AdWords.
During 2006, Google Book Search partnered with several more major libraries: the University of California, University of Wisconsin, and University of Virginia, and also our first non-English partnership, with Universidad Complutense de Madrid, to digitize and make searchable millions of pages of books and holdings across these libraries, which of course feature much that is rich with historical and literary value. Google also began to offer a PDF download of books in the public domain, which proved to be a popular option. In related archival news, we added an Archive Search to Google News, so that history no longer seems so distant. Now you can find news stories going back more than 200 years and arranged using a simple timeline.

In the classrooms, Google released Google Apps for Education to help teachers handle their challenges and students succeed on their work both independently and collaboratively. Incorporating Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and Page Creator, Google Apps for Education helps the process of learning by making it easier to share information and ideas.
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2007
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In January, Google launched Google SketchUp 6, the newest version of the 3D software modeling tool in Google Earth. Other first quarter updates in our geo-sphere: an Australia-specific domain for Google Maps and the ability to see up-to-date traffic info for 30 major U.S. cities on Google Maps. We also updated Google Maps for Mobile to include current traffic information so that you can have details about freeway slowdowns when you need it most – in your car. (But please don't use Google Maps for Mobile while you're actually driving, or you'll contribute to those red lines depicting trouble!) Also, Google Groups got some new features that moved it from a message board forum to an easy-to-build home on the web for people to share and maintain information, and orkut became even more socially useful with its SMS feature.

Now you have the ability to link your Picasa photos and albums to Google Maps or Google Earth. Google Docs & Spreadsheets has a new interface to help you keep your online and shared documents better organized. We're looking forward to bringing you the ability to create and share online presentations as well, so with that goal in mind, we acquired Zenter.
source: http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html