To celebrate their 10th anniversary Google have put up their search index from January 2001 (their oldest surviving index). These were the good ‘ol days when Google indexed a mere billion or so web pages, iPod meant Image Proof of Deposit Document Processing System and the iPhone was produced by a company called InfoGear. Try Googling your product name and see what comes up.
While I don’t regard myself as a Google fan-boy I am continually amazed by the speed and accuracy of their search engine. It must be one of the most impressive and successful pieces of software ever written. It is indexing billions of pages while fighting a never ending war against those trying to game the system. Yet I can get pretty good answers to many questions in a fraction of a second, and Google sends traffic to my blog posts within hours of posting. I’m not even sure niche products such as my own would be financially viable without Google. Some of their other tools, such as Google maps, are also pretty impressive. Happy tenth birthday Google!
Successful Software 
Million? That’s billion right? :D
>Million? That’s billion right?
Oops. Slip of the brain. I have fixed it now – thanks.
Google can search billions of web pages much faster than Windows can search a few hundred files on my computer.
I agree about Google Web search being possibly one of the best pieces of software ever written. It’s just amazing how powerful and useful it is.
Related: in case you hadn’t checked it out, the book “The Google Story” is pretty interesting. I read it a while ago. As the name suggests, it is all about Google’s start and growth.
– Vasudev