Two men in this graph wrote the first two
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
David Cheriton and Andy Bechtolsheim each wrote $100,000 into Google before the company legally existed. Both appear in this graph for other reasons entirely, which is the point of recording it here.
Each entry below carries its own provenance — the source, and how it was processed. That is the condition on which this graph can be extended by anyone without degrading.
The trail exists so that people who were there can reconstruct their own memories, recognize what they helped incubate, and add to or correct the record — or forward the few pages that belong to someone they know.
By Jonathan Hare's recollection of the period, Page and Brin walked the PageRank algorithm around Stanford and Silicon Valley trying to sell it outright for about a million dollars. They wanted to finish their doctorates. Nobody could see how to monetize an algorithm, because there was no business model attached to one.
There is no single root. This is one view of the graph, from this node — what you see depends on where you enter and what you are looking for.
The introduction that produced everything downstream
Open →wrote the otherGave Hare Bill Joy's personal email address
Open →became chief executive in 2001Known before he was Eric Schmidt
Open →Everything above is a distillation. The primary source is published in full, so that any claim on this page can be walked back to what was actually said — and where the two differ, the source governs.
This entry is deliberately incomplete. The gaps below are the things only certain people can settle — and settling one is a contribution like any other: recorded, timestamped and attributed to whoever made it.
Correct anything wrong, add what only you know, or claim this entry as your own. Write to evidence@qpncatalyst.io and Jonathan directly (both are on the button) — a timestamped confirmation comes back with your submission attached, as your own independent record. No account, no permission, no institutional standing required.
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