Publicly funded research played a big role in creating Google. In the 1990s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) gave money to Stanford University for a project called the Stanford Digital Library Project. This research helped graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin study how to organize and search through huge amounts of information online. Brin was also awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship during his graduate studies at Stanford. This fellowship supported his research in computer science, providing both financial assistance and recognition for his academic potential. Page and Brin’s graduate work on ranking web pages based on importance led to the creation of Google’s search engine.

Other government programs also helped support early research that made Google possible. Agencies like DARPA and the intelligence community funded projects on managing and searching big sets of data. This gave Page and Brin access to the tools and ideas they needed to build something new. With support from their professors and government grants, they turned their research into a powerful tool for finding information on the internet—changing how the world uses technology.