Bloomberg reports that 17 years ago an Italian professor gave a lecture about a search engine that used an algorithm to rank web pages. Audience member Larry Page aka a founder of Google was inspired by the idea and created Google.
As for the Italian professor, shallow Bloomberg points out that he earns $3,000 per month and drives an 11-year-old-car.
From the article:
“After the speech… [the Professor] returned home in the hopes of realizing his ambitious design. ‘When I came back to Italy, I asked the university for 20,000 euros to develop a search engine, but instead, they financed a project about the history of copper metallurgy in Italy,’ he says.”
3 Worse Things An Italian University Could Have Invested In 17 Years Ago
1. Sbarro LLC. We’re guessing the food is not authentic “Italian” and also note that they have filed repeatedly for bankruptcy, while “Italian History” has never filed for bankruptcy!
2. The History of Sbarro LLC. Not only did we just give away the major history of Sbarro for free, we bet Wikipedia has a more detailed, free history.
3. Irony. Because irony would have paid huge dividends, but not the kind of dividends that make you happy. In this case, the irony is that the school could probably find everything anyone needs to know about the history of copper metallurgy in Italy on Google for free!
