高考英语外刊时事命题阅读理解：谷歌联合创始人双双宣布“退出江湖”。how two obnoxious students changed the internet.pdf

howtwoobnoxiousstudentschangedtheinternet 谷歌联合创始人双双宣布 “退出江湖” ON THE SUMMER OF 1995, a second-year graduate student named Sergey Brin was giving a tour of Stanford University to prospective (潜在的) students. Larry Page, an engineering graduate from the University of Michigan,was one ofthosebeing shown around thecampus. “I thought hewaspretty obnoxious (令人讨厌的),” Page said ofthe encounter.“Hehad really strongopinionsabout things,andI guessIdid,too.” “We both found each other obnoxious,” said Brin. “But we said it a little bitjokingly. Obviously,we spent alot oftimetalkingtoeach other,sotherewassomethingthere.” The technology of the web at the time meant that people could tell where a webpage linked tojust by reading its code (代码). However, to get a complete list of every page to which it linked,theyneededtocheck every otherwebsiteontheinternet. Page’s “BackRub” project aimed to qualify these backlinks (反向链接). It was a complex task that not only demanded vast computing resources, but also required extremely complexmathematics,whichwaswherethemathprodigy (奇才)Brin camein. In 1996, Page and Brin came up with the PageRank algorithm (算法) — a ranking system which wouldprovetobeabreakthrough idea.Thealgorithmwasdevisedtogivemore weight to links that came from more authoritative (权威性的) pages. The more backlinks a site had, the more likely it was to be a good source.And the more the web grew, the better BackRub got. In August 1996, BackRub became Google, a play on the term “googol,” meaning “10100.” The first version appeared on the Stanford homepage, run from computers cobbled together (七拼八凑)by Page andBrin.The system successfully enabledusersto search all24 millionpages storedin itsdatabase. On September 15, 1997, G was registered. In August 1998, it got its first funding in the form of a check for $100,000 written by Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems,to “Google Inc.”Thetroublewasthat Google Inc