Google

Today was the day, nine years ago that Sergery Brin and Larry Page (Michigan Alumnus!!!!!) recieved a $100,000 check to start one of the most powerful internet companies, Google. Larry and Sergery invented a revolutionary way to search for information using backlinks, this checked the links that referenced to certain sites and ranked webpages in that manner.

The check was written by Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems and using this money they were able to raise $1 million to create Google inc. Now Google is a powerhouse on the internet and they keep other monsters like Microsoft and Yahoo on their heals. Chances are you use Google, a lot, and even if you do not, the websites you use, use Google. For example Multiply makes its money with the ads on the webpages brokered by Google. And Blogger is owned by Google, as is Youtube. Google is valued now at around $160 billion (wow and Yahoo could have bought it 7 years ago for a measly $2 billion) and is the best place to work supposedly.

Far way to go in less than 10 years, eh?