Early history

Began as a research project in January 1996 , by a student at Larry was soon joined in his research project by a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student and close friend. Larry Page hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a pageIt was originally nicknamed, "BackRub", because the system checked to estimate a site's importance A small search engine called was already exploring a similar strategy.

Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on at a friend's garage in

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of " which refers to 10¹⁰⁰ (the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, " was added to the and the in meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.

In the company moved into offices at in home to several other noted technology startups. After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from (SGI) in The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the (a play on the word a 1 followed by a googol of zeros). In, Google bought the property from SGI for 319 million.

The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design In Google began selling associated with search The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click. This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by (later renamed Overture Services, before being acquired by and rebranded as). While many of its rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue

A describing part of Google's ranking mechanism (was granted on The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.

Google's declared a phrase which they went so far as to include in their (aka "red herring" or "S-1") for their noting, "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."

The Google site often includes humorous features such as cartoon modifications of the to recognize special occasions and anniversaries. Known as "Google Doodles", most have been drawn by Google's international webmaster, Dennis Hwang. Not only may decorative drawings be attached to the logo, but the font design may also mimic a fictional or humorous language such as Star Trek and The logo is also notorious among web users for Day tie-ins and about the company.

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Search Engine Cheat Sheets

Have you really, really gotten the most you can out of your friendly neighborhood search engine lately? What I mean is - have you dug under the surface of these search engines and really taken them out for a test drive? Here's something to help you out - check out the the and the All of these are in printable format so you can tape them up to the side of your monitor for easy access.

Related: And speaking of search engines, there are a LOT of search engines out there. In fact, I've profiled and was continually amazed at the variety of search engines available. If you're stumped as to which one is the best for your information needs,

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Social network analysis

Social network analysis (related to has emerged as a key technique in modern and as well as a popular topic of speculation and study.

People have used the social network metaphor for over a century to connote complex sets of relationships between members of social systems at all scales, from interpersonal to international. Yet not until in 1954 did social scientists start using the term systematically to denote patterns of ties that cut across the concepts traditionally used by the public and social scientists: bounded (e.g., tribes, families) and social (e.g., gender, ethnicity). Social network analysis developed with the kinship studies of in in the 1950s and the studies "Manchester School" (centered around and later), done mainly in during the 1960s. It joined with the field of (begun by in the 1930s, an attempt to quantify social relationships. Scholars such as and expanded the use of social networks.

Social network analysis has now moved from being a suggestive metaphor to an analytic approach to a paradigm, with its own theoretical statements, methods and research tribes. Analysts reason from whole to part; from structure to relation to individual; from behavior to attitude. They either study whole networks, all of the ties containing specified relations in a defined population, or personal networks, the ties that specified people have, such as their "personal communities".

Several analytic tendencies distinguish social network analysis:

There is no assumption that groups are the building blocks of society: the approach is open to studying less-bounded social systems, from nonlocal to links among sites.

Rather than treating individuals (persons, organizations, states) as discrete units of analysis, it focuses on how the structure of ties affects individuals and their relationships.

By contrast with analyses that assume that socialization into norms determines behavior, network analysis looks to see the extent to which the structure and composition of ties affect norms.

The shape of a social network helps determine a network's usefulness to its individuals. Smaller, tighter networks can be less useful to their members than networks with lots of loose connections to individuals outside the main network. More open networks, with many weak ties and social connections, are more likely to introduce new ideas and opportunities to their members than closed networks with many redundant ties. In other words, a group of friends who only do things with each other already share the same knowledge and opportunities. A group of individuals with connections to other social worlds is likely to have access to a wider range of information. It is better for individual success to have connections to a variety of networks rather than many connections within a single network. Similarly, individuals can exercise influence or act as brokers within their social networks by bridging two networks that are not directly linked (called filling structural holes).

The power of social network analysis stems from its difference from traditional social scientific studies, which assume that it is the attributes of individual actors -- whether they are friendly or unfriendly, smart or dumb, etc. -- that matter. Social network analysis produces an alternate view, where the attributes of individuals are less important than their relationships and ties with other actors within the network. This approach has turned out to be useful for explaining many real-world phenomena, but leaves less room for individual agency, the ability for individuals to influence their success, because so much of it rests within the structure of their network.

Social networks have also been used to examine how organizations interact with each other, characterizing the many informal connections that link executives together, as well as associations and connections between individual employees at different organizations. For example, power within organizations often comes more from the degree to which an individual within a network is at the center of many relationships than actual job title. Social networks also play a key role in hiring, in business success, and in job performance. Networks provide ways for companies to gather information, deter competition, and even in setting prices or policies.

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Web 2.0 for Designers

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In Web 1.0, a small number of writers created Web pages for a large number of readers. As a result, people could get information by going directly to the source: Adobe.com for graphic design issues, Microsoft.com for Windows issues, and CNN.com for news. Over time, however, more and more people started writing content in addition to reading it. This had an interesting effect—suddenly there was too much information to keep up with! We did not have enough time for everyone who wanted our attention and visiting all sites with relevant content simply wasn’t possible. As personal publishing caught on and went mainstream, it became apparent that the Web 1.0 paradigm had to change.

The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we’re looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways.

Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into “microcontent” units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we’re looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways.

These tools, the interfaces of Web 2.0, will become the frontier of design innovation.

The evidence is already here with RSS aggregators, search engines, portals, APIs (application programming interfaces, which provide hooks to data) and Web services (where data can be accessed via XML-RPC, SOAP and other technologies). (in beta) provides the same functionality as similar competing services but features a far superior interface. s interface is one of the most intuitive and beloved around. offers personal and social functionality, and reaches far beyond its own site. Interfaces like these are changing the way we store, access, and share information. It matters very little what domain content comes from.

Web 2.0 has often been described as “the Web as platform,” and if we think about the Web as a platform for interacting with content, we begin to see how it impacts design. Imagine a bunch of stores of content provided by different parties—companies, individuals, governments—upon which we could build interfaces that combine the information in ways no single domain ever could. For example, makes its database of content accessible to the outside world. Anyone can design an interface to replace Amazon’s that better suits specific needs (see The power of this is that content can be personalized or remixed with other data to create much more useful tools.

There are six trends that characterize Web 2.0 for designers. In this introductory article we’ll summarize each of those trends and give brief examples. In upcoming articles we’ll explore each trend in more detail.

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Women in web design: just the stats

The underrepresentation of women and minorities in the information technology workforce is like the weather: everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything.

In February 2007, Jason Kottke called our community on its inertia by publishing information showing the low percentage of female speakers at conferences about design, technology, and the web. One conference he cited was An Event Apart, which I founded with Eric Meyer.

How can conference organizers, employers and educators help our field better reflect the world we live in? One problem in deciding what to do about the issue is that, as is so often the case with matters of equality and justice, surprisingly little is known about the phenomenon or its causes. Feelings and anecdotes are plentiful, facts are scarce.

So An Event Apart commissioned a fact-finding mission. We hired researchers at The New York Public Library to find out everything that is actually known about the percentage of women in our field, and their positions relative to their male colleagues. Because such research could go on indefinitely, we assigned the project a budget and time-frame; researchers worked within those constraints.

The data they mined concerned women and minorities in the information technology (IT) workforce. IT was as close as we could come to our specific field. There is no data on web design and web designers. Web design is twelve years old, employs hundreds of thousands (if not millions), and generates billions, so you’d think there would be some basic research data available on it, but there ain’t. (Maybe A List Apart will gather such data one day, perhaps in collaboration with a logical partner like Boxes and Arrows.)

So the first disclaimer is that our research covers IT, not just web design. The second is that we’re still sifting the data we received. This is nothing like a final report. If a final report emerges, it will come from An Event Apart.

All that out of the way, the picture that emerges is disturbing:

• Men outnumber women in this workforce by over three to one.
• The percentage of women employed in the field is declining instead of growing.
• Women who participate in the field may not be promoted as often or as high as their male colleagues.

Here, briefly cited, is a small portion of “Untapped Talent: Diversity, Competition, and America’s High Tech Future,” a 21 June 2007 special report by the Information Technology Association of America:

This study by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) finds that women and most racial minorities remain significantly underrepresented in today’s U.S information technology (IT) workforce. By examining data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Current Population Surveys, this report, like previous ITA diversity studies conducted in 1998 and 2003, documents the percentages of women and minorities in BLS occupational classifications that comprise the IT workforce in 2004 and compares them to previous years to determine the progression and regression of diversity. The data presentation is followed by a discussion of possible barriers to entry for underrepresented groups and solutions to overcoming those barriers. The report also highlights successful public- and private-sector groups that encourage more diversity and support women and minorities in IT.

The news here is not good: The percentage of women in the IT workforce has declined by 18.5% since 1996, from a high of 41% in 1996 to 32.4% in 2004. This is true even while the percentage of women in the overall workforce remained relatively unchanged. Women are also far less likely to return to the IT workforce….

The declining representation of women is due largely to the fact that one out of every three women in the IT workforce fall into administrative job categories that have experienced significant overall declines in recent years. When those categories are excluded from the analysis, the percentage of women in IT drops from 32.4% to 24.9%. The figures represent no progress in the numbers of women in the professional or management ranks from the relatively low 25.4% mark achieved in 2002. At best, the data suggest that the number of all women in the IT industry is dropping substantially; at worst, these statistics illustrate a situation in which women are failing to advance in the managerial and professional ranks and the IT industry is failing to draw on a critical talent base.

Clearly, there is much to be done. Stay tuned.

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