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Search Engine Wars: Google's Cinderella Story

In the 1990s, Stanford students Sergey Brin and Larry Page figured out how to use the structure of the Internet — the way pages link to one another — to put the most relevant items at the top of a search list. Their discovery transformed their garage startup, Google, into the Internet's top search engine, a household name and even a verb. NPR's Rick Karr reports.

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Rick Karr contributes reports on the arts to NPR News. He is a correspondent for the weekly PBS public affairs show Bill Moyers Journal and teaches radio journalism at Columbia University.