Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by duggelz 271 days ago
Technically true but misleading. translate.google.com was launched in beta in 2001. But it took until 2005ish to convince Larry and Sergey that "Google Translate" was a better name than "translate.google.com". They had a lot of strong ideas about branding but never did think of a better name. Source: I wrote translate.google.com starting in 2000. Sergey told me it would take "a couple months" when I was hired. Also the Wayback machine shows a version from August 2002 so you don't have to trust a rando on the internet. I entirely agree that it wasn't any good until I handed it off to people who actually knew what they were doing.
1 comments

Wow, I'd love to read your stories from that time, writing Google Translate from the ground.