“How many common English words were invented by Shakespeare?”
How long did it take people to find the answer to this question 15 years ago? And now! You can google it and find the answer immediately!
Google is the most popular Internet search engine（搜索引擎）in the world. It was invented by two students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They met in 1993, when they were studying computer science at Stanford University, USA. They dreamed of producing something that could also answer any question in seconds.
Internet search engines at that time were slow and gave many websites that weren’t useful. In January 1996, Page and Brin decided to make a better and faster search engine. They thought the results should be based on the most popular websites.
Nobody would give them money for their project, so they used their own money. They also borrowed money from family and friends. Then, in 1998, they were given a
cheque for $100,000, and they started their own company(公司). Their first office was in a friend’s garage(車庫).The company name is Google, a word which comes from mathematics. A “google” is a very high number — 1 followed by a hundred zeros.
The Google search engine was soon used by thousands of people worldwide because it was fast, easy and correct. By 2002 it was the biggest search engine on the Internet. Now, more questions have been answered by Google than any other Internet service, from sport to science, and from music to medicine. Google hopes that in the future all the world’s information will be put on the Internet, so that everybody can find everything.
小題1:Why did the writer begin this passage by asking you a question?
| A．Because he or she liked to begin this passage by asking readers a question. |
| B．Because he or she was afraid that the readers didn’t know this question. |
| C．Because he or she wanted to make the readers interested in this passage. |
| D．Because Shakespeare is one of the most famous people in the world. |
小題2:The underlined word “cheque” in the fifth paragraph means _______.
小題3:From the passage we know that at the beginning of their project, _______.
| A．there was not any search engine on the Internet |
| B．nobody supported them except their family and friends |
| C．Larry Page and Sergey Brin dreamed to answer any question |
| D．one of the most popular websites gave them a cheque for $100,000 |
小題4:Which statement is NOT true according to the passage?
| A．Now the Google search engine is widely used in the world. |
| B．The Google search engine was not the biggest one before 2002. |
| C．Larry Page and Sergey Brin named google after a hundred zeros. |
| D．The service of the Google search engine is very popular. |
小題5:The passage mainly tells us _______.
| A．the development of the Google search engine |
| B．about Larry Page and Sergey Brin |
| C．how to find information on the Internet |
| D．how to use the Google search engine |
