您正在看的时事英语是:Google上市潜在受益者多多。 etscape; Pierre M. Omidyar, a founder of eBay; Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster; and Bill Joy, the software innovator who recently left Sun Microsystems.

Stanford, one of the country's richest universities, also stands to add considerably to its bottom line. Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, who met in 1995 at a party for incoming computer science graduate students, worked together on a university-funded data-mining project. During that collaboration, the pair invented the search technology that would eventually be Google's core technology.

"The university owns the technology," said Katharine Ku, the director of Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing. "We license it to Google, which back then was just these two kids. They pay Stanford royalties annually. We also took a bit of stock in the deal."

Under the terms of that deal, the royalties are evenly split three ways among Mr. Brin and Mr. Page, the computer science department and the university's engineering school. That deal was struck in 1996.

For two years, the university tried to license the deal to existing search companies; at least one company "offered a significant amount of money" to buy Google, but in 1998 "the two decided to start their own company."

Ms. Ku declined to share the terms of the licensing deal, which is still in effect, or to speculate on the potential value of the university's equity stake.

David R. Cheriton, a computer science professor at Stanford, introduced Mr. Bechtolsheim to Google's founders. In August 1998, the four sat on the porch of Mr. Cheriton's Palo Alto home, where Mr. Page and Mr. Brin tried to demonstrate their product for Mr. Bechtolsheim. Before the pair could finish, he had decided to write them the first of two $100,000 checks.

"They needed money to pay the lawyers to incorporate the company," he said. "And I wanted to make sure I was part of this company."

The founders raised roughly $1 million that September, including Mr. Bechtolsheim's investment. Other early investors include Mr. Cheriton and Ram Shriram, a former Netscape and Amazon executive.

"Basically they needed money to buy the machines so they could prove out the concept," Mr. Bechtolsheim said.

The company closed on a second round of financing in June 1999. By then, much of Silicon Valley's elite wanted a piece of Google, which had become the default search engine of choice among the area's digerati.

That is when Ron Conway and Bob Bozeman, two partners in a venture fund called Angel Investors, discovered Google — and, according to an investors list prepared by Angel Investors, brought along many famous people, including Mr. Woods and Mr. Kissinger, and some