Simple ideas prove to be big winners

A look at some unlikely winners on the internet in the past six years

After six years at Personal Computer World it's time for me to move on, and I'll be leaving just as soon as this column is done.

In those six years, the world of computers has changed almost beyond recognition. Sure, you still have a keyboard and a screen on your desk, but there are better chances now that they will be combined as parts of a notebook.

When I started, I had an original Pentium PC, running at a mind-blowing 90MHz, and it did everything I could possibly want. It was one of the best in the office, but now it would barely run a firewall.

Perhaps the biggest changes, though, have been online. While a 14Kbytes/sec modem may have seen you gallivanting through pages at a fair whack in 1997, it cuts no mustard in this era of broadband connections where - illogical, but true - a Pentium 4 really does drag streaming media through your ADSL connection faster than a PIII ever did.

Perhaps there is something in the claim that it's more than just your modem after all.

The following year - 1998 - saw the launch of Freeserve, championed by high-street retailer Dixons and since sold off to French ISP Wanadoo.

Freeserve marked a sea-change in the way companies charged (or didn't charge) for internet access. Within a few short months there was a legion of imitators and the UK internet boom had begun.

The virtual value of the companies behind well-known online names rocketed, and millions lost millions on the stock market while a tiny few made millions more on the back of the boom.

And then something rather different came along: Blue Carrots, the ISP owned by its users. Sign up and you were given shares. Jump through a series of fairly simple hoops and you got a whole lot more.

I still have my shares, I think, but have not really kept track of what to do with them so I guess I'll not be making enough to retire on them just yet. Has anybody?

Beyond the widespread rollout of broadband (and some would argue we are still waiting for that) perhaps the biggest indicator of the way the net has changed during my six years on the mag has been the rise of just one brand.

Not BBC Online, not Friends Reunited, but Google. The site is named after a misspelled number (a googol is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes).

According to the company's website: "A googol is a very large number. There isn't a googol of anything in the universe. Not stars, not dust particles, not atoms."

But pretty soon, it seems, perhaps there could be a googol of web pages, and one engine will know all about them.

Sergey Brin and a guy called Larry Page, who had once built a working printer out of Lego, founded Google in a university dorm. They tried to sell the underlying technology to a variety of companies, including Yahoo, which it has since gone on to eclipse, but nobody wanted to know.

It seems that a site that did nothing but search was of little interest to anyone. How wrong they were for, as we all know now, it was this very simplicity that was the secret of its success.

I was first shown Google at the back end of 1998 by a guy called Jim Martin, who at the time worked in VNU's Labs as a tester. I couldn't understand why he'd want to use that over and above Yahoo, but I gave it a go and, a month later, couldn't imagine ever using anything else.

For a while, at least, I couldn't envisage that something bigger and better wouldn't come along in the next few months. But, of course, it didn't.

Google still wins prizes for being the best search engine available, and the name itself has even become a verb (how many of us have not 'Googled' a potential date or interview candidate before a face-to-face meeting?) Microsoft Word still underlines 'Googled' as a spelling mistake, but I'd wager it's in the dictionary of the next release.

Yet while Google has moved away from its roots, offering image searching, news aggregation and even newsgroup archiving, it has retained the simple front page that has kept it on top of the search engine pile.

There are hidden features too. Type 'how many pounds in a kilo' into the search box and Google Calculator will give you an answer ('1 kilogram = 2.20462262 pounds').

Likewise, enter '128/8' and hit Google Search, and its response will be '128 / 8 = 16'. Clever, eh? And a feature pretty much unknown.

The task for which I most often use Google, though, is keeping track of friends and, although I may not be gracing the pages of this fine journal any more, you can always find me through Google. And I hope you will. I'm hit number one.

Right now, though, the production editor is peering over my shoulder. Seems I've reached my word count and it's time to shuffle on and make way for my successor. I hope that they enjoy writing this column each month every bit as much as I have done.

I'll part with a word of thanks to you, the readers of PCW, for all the feedback - good and bad - you've given me over the past six years. Thank you.