Wired Magazine hits the drums hard in Google's pre-IPO quiet period with a huge 13-page article. A real piece of tech-business journalism.

«They named their new search engine Google, for the biggest number they could imagine. But it wasn't big enough. Today Google's a library, an almanac, a settler of bets. It's a parlor game, a dating service, a shopping mall. It's a Microsoft rival. It's a verb. At more than 200 million requests a day, it is, by far, the world's biggest search engine. And now, on the eve of a very public stock offering, it's cast as savior, a harbinger of rebirth in the Valley. How can it be so many things? It's Goooooooooogle.»

Now take this for the goose-bumps:

«Going Public Day is the great money moment of the entrepreneurial saga. It's the jackpot that justifies why the founders took all those foolish risks - quitting established careers, assuming crushing debt, putting their families through unbearable strain. Sometimes lightning strikes: Every few years, a rising superstar goes public in a blaze of headlines, speculation, and envy and in the process mints a few billionaires whose improbable success sways the next generation of risk-takers to jump off similar cliffs. In the most exceptional cases - Intel in '71, Apple in '80, Netscape in '95 - a hot IPO can even burn a hole in the zeitgeist, creating an entrance for a fresh batch of products, companies, and visionaries to spill out on society, changing it forever.»

Belive me, you need to read this. Wired's Complete Guide to Googlemania!

* As voted by Brandchannel's readers in 2002 and 2003.