"Search" and "People Power" Provide Insight into history of Internett

Download: The History of the Internet is documentary television series, which first aired on March 3, 2008.  The four-part documentary was hosted by John Heilemann, current journalist for New York Magazine and former staff writer for Wired and The New Yorker.  Part Two of the series, entitled "Search" details how finding information on the web was revolutionalized by college students at Stanford, and the growth of a little company called Google.  The story begins with David Filo and Jerry Yang, two engineering students at Stanford.  When their professor took a sabbaticle to Italy, the pair took a break from academic work to play around on the web.  However, they grew frustrated with the lack of organization, and how they couldn't locate sites they had previously been to.  This started their idea for Yahoo, a search engine which would provide users with a sort of roadmap and access to previously visited sites.  This essentially revolutinized search.  However, Yang and Filo had to find a way to make money with Yahoo, but they were afraid that users would rebel if there were ads.  Yahoo first accepted banner ads in 1995, and therefore showed that there was a way to make money on the web.

At the time, Excite was the biggest competition for Yahoo, but both were what we would think of as a very rudimentary search engine today.  It was difficult to find what you were looking for on the Internet and many linked to sites you didn't want. 

That would all change with Google.  Larry Page and Sergey Brin met on the Stanford campus, and as computer science graduate students, they began to collaborate on a new search engine.  They were able to find the most relevant sites by counting the links.  Page and Brin did not want to be the typical search engine, so they made the gutsy decision to not allow banner ads.  Still there was a problem of how Google would make money.  Page and Brin actually took the idea from Bill Goss, who runs Idealab, and who had just launched Overture.  Goss figured out that search could be like the yellow pages.  Page and Brin tweaked his format by making sure the ads were separate from the organic search.  In 2004, Google went public, and the stock is now worth $628. 

It was so interesting to see how college students have impacted and changed the world forever.  Additionally, Bill Goss's influence on Google and how Page and Brin "tweaked" his idea is something I would not have know had I not watched this documentary.  It will be interesting to see how much larger and more pervasive Google becomes in our world.  It will also be interesting to watch how well Google+ competes with Facebook.

Part Four of the documentary is entitled "People Power" and details the rise and fall of Napster and the creation of Web 2.0.  Shawn Fanning, a student at Boston University, started a little music file sharing company called Napster.  In 1999, the repurcussions of his idea were felt by the music industry, as peers could share music with each other.  That same year, lawyers Howard King and Peter Paterno formed a lawsuit against Fanning and Napster, and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich went with King and Paterno to Napster's doors.  They demanded that Napster ban 300,000 users from the site.  In 2001, Napster was forced to shut down, as the music industry had waged a war against their own customers.  However, Napster launched a new web, a web controlled by the people.  Illegal file sharing continues, and You Tube launched, sparking a lawsuit by Viacom.  However, once monster company Google bought You Tube, the chances of it disappearing are slim to none.

 Now  with Facebook, You Tube, and other sites a new era called Web 2.0 enables people to create contact.  Tim Berners Lee summed it up when he said at the end of the documentary that the Internet should bring back the "common person as the author." 

It was interesting to watch this part of the documentary, especially when it discussed Facebook.  Since the video was made in 2008, the full power of Facebook was not known, and they speak of the uncertainty.  It was fun to see how far Facebook has come in just a few short years.  I remember hearing about Napster, but I didn't realize that Shawn Fanning was the creater.  I had only ever heard the name Sean Parker (mainly from The Social Network).  I did know that Metallica had something to do with Napster being shutdown, but it was fascinating to hear the two lawyers talk about the case and the "meeting" with Napster.