That's interesting. There's quite a few places around the world where it would've been different, but how different depends on the targeting. At the time Googl

That's interesting. There's quite a few places around the world where it would've been different, but how different depends on the targeting. At the time Google started up, Yahoo! was the biggest (IIRC, it was a long time ago). Both were American companies and both initially targeted the US (I distinctly remember using Google and finding it crap for UK-specific stuff, so went back to flitting between Lycos and Altavista. Had Google started up in Cambridge or Oxford, I imagine they would've targeted the UK and possibly Europe initially, focusing on different search patterns, different promotional strategies and so on. They may well have been intimidated by Yahoo in some respects but would've seen an opportunity to attack Yahoo's poor local search. Had they have started in China they could've been Baidu.cn. Of course, all this is academic but an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. I think if Google started in the US at the same time as a UK search engine, the UK engine would've been more reliant on the UK market and would've seen slower growth once there's initial traction, but Google's search domination isn't completely global.