Page 60 - Prime Time 1-5 Leaflet

b
3 a) Complete the sentences with words/
phrases from the
box.
1 Google made the Internet more .......................
for everyone.
2 They thought of a ............................................
name to attract attention.
3 It’s very ................................... when you can’t
find the information you want on the Internet.
4 The company’s new ............... are in New York.
5 The company’s plans received a lot of ..............
......................... so they didn’t go ahead.
Check these words
28
2 Times change
Google was the brainchild of Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They met in 1995 at
Stanford University, USA, while they were studying Computer Science. You could say
Google started with an argument as, at first, Sergey and Larry didn’t really get on!
In fact, they argued and disagreed on just about everything. However, there was
one thing they did share: a commitment to making the Internet more user-
friendly.
At that time, Internet search engines were slow and complicated. They listed
search results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a
page. Larry and Sergey found this frustrating. An idea came to them: why not list
search results according to a website’s popularity?
So, they set about creating a search engine that could calculate how important a
particular web page was. At first, their research received a fair amount of criticism
from experts, but the two friends didn’t give up and managed to raise enough
money from investors, family and friends to support themselves.
While they were developing the search engine, Larry and Sergey realised it needed a
catchy name. They were inspired by a mathematical word, ‘googol’ which means ‘1
followed by a hundred zeros’. They thought it was a really good name, considering the
endless amount of information available on the Net, and so ‘googol’ became ‘google’.
In 1998, Larry and Sergey set up their office in a friend’s garage and Google went
online. Soon, they were answering thousands of search requests per day. People
really liked Google’s simple, neat design and, of course, it’s speedy performance!
Before long, Sergey and Larry moved their operations to a new headquarters they
called Googleplex.
In 2000, Google introduced ten foreign language versions and officially became
the world’s most popular search engine. Google now responds to about a billion
search requests per day and its success shows no signs of fading. For most people
seeking information, Google is the place to go!
2 Read the text again and mark the sentences
below T (true) or F (false).
1 Larry and Sergey usually shared the
same opinions. .......
2 Google was the first search engine
on the Net. .......
3 From the very beginning, everybody
thought Google was a good idea. .......
4 It took a while for Google to become
successful with Internet users. .......
5 Google is gaining popularity nowadays. .......
brainchild, argument,
search engine,
commitment,
user-friendly, complicated,
frustrating, popularity,
calculate, a fair amount,
criticism, investor, catchy,
inspired, neat,
performance, headquarters,
respond, fade
Check these words
Reading & Speaking
1 What is Google? What does its name mean?
How do you think it got started?
Listen and read to find out.
5
10
15
20
25
b) Match the words in bold with their
meanings: fast , difficult, idea , promise ,
work out , help , negative comments, formally ,
disagreement, easy to remember, becoming less.