mymarkup.net

Ja, jag är fascinerad av Google-imperiet. So sue me. USA Today berättar historien om Susan Wojcicki (på bilden ovan), som hyste Larry och Sergey i sitt garage i Menlo Park när det begav sig och vars syster nyligen gifte sig med den senare. Resten av släkten verkar också jobba för Google. Susan ges credit för att ha uppfunnit Googles AdSense-system, en inte helt oviktig faktor i byggandet av imperiet.

Wojcicki grew up in Palo Alto on the campus of Stanford University. Dad Stanley Wojcicki chairs Stanford's physics department.

Mom Esther, a journalism teacher at Palo Alto High School, says she expected Susan to become an English professor. Instead, after a post-college job at educational software firm MagicQuest, she was bitten by the tech bug.

Now, Google is "such a presence" in their lives that the Wojcickis try to limit family-time chatter about the company, Esther says, though not always successfully. "It's so innovative and exciting. They're doing all sorts of interesting things, and it's fun to hear about it."

That so many of her relatives were drawn to Google isn't unusual, says Susan Wojcicki. "There are lots of people in the Silicon Valley who are interested in working at a fast-moving, dynamic company like Google," she says. "Not just my family members."

Meanwhile, the humble house where Google was incubated was purchased by Google in September. Google won't disclose how much it paid, but homes in the neighborhood sell for more than $1 million. "I haven't had time to think about what we'll do with it," says CEO Schmidt. "But I figured we should buy it sooner rather than later."

Update: Google Blogoscoped reder ut hur det ligger till kring vem som egentligen "uppfann" AdSense.