The always entertaining Dan linked to something I hadn't seen before-- an archived page of the Google server hardware circa 1999:
Weird coincidence: that mousepad on the table looks exactly like a crazy blue/red liquid filled mousepad with a white background that I had. I recently found it sitting forgotten under magazines, and just threw it out before I moved.
I used to collect weird mousepads, and I had never seen one quite like that before.
Here’s the official google history page, which documents the timeline more authoritatively:
Wow, Google sucked back then and little has changed! Screw google, it sucks and always has
I visited Alta Vista the other day, wow, not much has changed.
that computer setup is still up from what i understand and serves as the backbone for the main splash page at google.
Excellent. I love stuff like this: even though I’ll probably never achieve anywhere near what Sergey and Larry have, it’s encouraging to think that it’s possible. Nice post.
How so, Darganot? How exactly does it suck?
Because Darganot wishes he had thought of the idea himself and made money from it first, dunbar.
Resentment is a powerful little bitch.
Darganot,
Just because you got rejected by Google doesn’t mean you should have any resentment against awesome Google. I’m sorry but maybe your less than average IQ will get you into Yoohoo or MS. AH HAHAHAHA!!!
The first time I used Google was when I noticed AltaVista had links to other search engines, and Google was one of them.
Excellent! I love this kind of thing.
You decided to estimate processor performance by adding up the megahertz?
I hope you feel ashamed.
If it scales, it’s OK to start small.
Our company is at the same stage right now and hopefully it’ll become one of the " Google"s
Just looks like any other university lab of the era - amazing what thoughts and a bit of equipment can turn in to! Also interesting to note that when the internet wasn’t up to much, it didn’t take much equipment to make it a whole lot better!
“You decided to estimate processor performance by adding up the megahertz?”
No one said anything about estimating… Take it easy.
On topic: This is great stuff, but from what I remember back then that hardware would have been pretty expensive, especially anything dual- or quad-core. Memory is lacking though even for the time 
More pictures, including closeups, of the early Google hardware in the above picture:
http://backrub.tjtech.org/May1998/hardware.htm
Complete early Google archive:
Isn’t America the best place iin the world to live? Two guys with a shoe string budget take a few towers and make millions. It just goes to show you can get a piece of the pie still, if you are willing to work at it an have a little luck, My hat’s off to you guys.
Does anybody know how to combine all that hardware into a sigle box? How do they do it?