'To Be, Or Not To Be': Billionaire Richard Branson Reveals Shakespeare's Role In Google's Creation | CPT PPP Coverage

He continued, “‘To be, or not to be, that is the question.’ But Sergey became most interested in the answer. We were on a Virgin Voyages cruise when he enlightened me with this intel.”

At that time ‘Ask Jeeves’ was the dominant search engine, but it had a problem. “Rather than searching for specific terms, people had to frame their queries as precisely worded questions. Jeeves, an old-fashioned butler (perhaps you remember him?), fetched the answers – not always effectively,” Branson added.

Brin decided to search for ‘To be or not to be’. Ask Jeeves struggled to provide an appropriate answer. This challenge became part of the inspiration for Sergey and Larry Page to create Google. They needed to come up with an algorithm that could cover all search terms, no matter how they were phrased. “‘To be’ was the choice Sergey took, which is always a good idea!” Branson noted.

He went on to reminisce about the time he was on stage with Larry and he mentioned how the billionaire had founded more than 400 companies, while he had only founded one. “Quick as a flash, I replied: ‘I’ll swap!'”

Branson said in his post, “I’m not sure Shakespeare has ever been a source of inspiration for me. However, the process of turning a feeling of frustration into a business idea that no one has ever thought of never fails to put a spring in my step. What about you?”

We compile ‘news of the day’ content in an unbiased manner and contextually classify it to promote the growth of knowledge by sharing it just like 'To Be, Or Not To Be': Billionaire Richard Branson Reveals Shakespeare's Role In Google's Creation