All of which raises some intriguing alternative history: Would Brin and Page have remained true to noncommercial search had they met at a top-class school with a less go-go culture, like, say, MIT? Could they and we have avoided this reimagining of Google’s relationship with its users? Or would we instead be talking about a different pair of brilliant Stanford graduate students who researched how to improve Web search and inevitably found their way to Sand Hill Road, while our alternative-universe Brin and Page would be obscure but distinguished computer science professors?