Return To Innocence

In 1999, Google didn't sign any deal with Dell, did not censor the search engine results in China, wasn't sued for promoting child pornography or for click fraud. In 1999, Google could say it's not a portal and it didn't have problems with financial reports because there wasn't too much to report.

But what did Google do in 1999?

"I won't say we won't add services, but we wouldn't put free email on our site unless we thought we could do a much better job," Larry Page said in July 1999. "Google is about high quality products. If we add random services, we don't think that adds value."

In September 21, Google got out of beta and upgraded its index to 200 million web pages.

Google moved to Googleplex, won Technical Excellence Award for Innovation in Web Application Development from PC Magazine and let people wonder how it will make money. "I don't know exactly how they're going to do it," said Red Hat Chief Technology Officer Marc Ewing. "They're not idiots over there. They must have some sort of plan. They're just not sharing it."