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Google is a company's name, but it has also grown into a verb that means, "to do an Internet search." Now everyone and their grandma know what it means to Google it. You know that you're doing something big when your company name becomes a verb.

Google wasn't the first company to invent their product. Lycos released their search engine in 1993. Yahoo! came out in 1994. AltaVista began serving results in 1995. Google did not come out until 1998. That is a major head start in the fast moving world of tech. So how did Google overtake(超过)their competitors who had such huge leads in time and money? Maybe one good idea made all the difference.

There are millions of sites on the Internet. How does a search engine know which ones are relevant to your search? This is a question that great minds have been working on for decades. To understand how Google changed the game, you need to know how search engines worked in 1998. Back then most websites looked at the words in your query(查询).They counted how many times those words appeared on each page. Then they might return pages where the words in your query appeared the most. This system did not work well and people often had to click through pages of results to find what they wanted.

Google was the first search engine that began considering links. Links are those blue underlined words that take you to other pages when you click on them. Larry Page, cofounder of Google, believed that meaningful data could be drawn from how those links connect. He was right. Google's search results were much better than their rivals'(对手).They would soon become the world's most used search engine.

It wasn't just the great search results that led to Google becoming so well liked. It also had to do with the way that they presented their product. The home pages of most other search engines were filled with all kinds of things. But Google's homepage was, and still is, clean. There's nothing on it but the logo, the search box, and a few links. In fact, when they were first testing it, users would wait at the home page and not do anything. When asked why, they said that they were "waiting for the rest of the page to load". But the fresh design grew on people once they got used to it.

These days Google has its hands in everything from self-driving cars to helping humans live longer. Though they have many other popular products, they will always be best known for their search engine. Not only is Google search engine a fantastic product, it is a standing example that one good idea(and a lot of hard work)can change the world.

1.Which might be a reason why Google became so popular?

A.Google's homepage was clean.

B.Google's homepage loaded quickly.

C.Google provided a lot of information on their homepage.

D.Google counted the times of the words appeared in query.

2.What is the author's purpose in writing this article?

A.To explain how Google overtook its rivals.

B.To compare Google and other search engines.

C.To persuade readers to use Google for Internet searches.

D.To discuss how companies can influence language over time.

3.What is the main idea of the fourth paragraph?

A.Links allow people to surf from one website to the next.

B.Google is a website that serves important links to users.

C.Larry Page contributed to the Internet by inventing the link.

D.Larry Page's ideas about links helped Google get to the top.

4.What is the best title for the passage?

A.A Short History of Search Engines

B.A Better Way: How Google Rose to the Top

C.Yahoo! vs Google: War of the Big Companies

D.How Search Engines Work and Why They're Important

Giving a Hand

Jaime, a new immigrant(移民)of the USA, was going to watch his daughter's first show in a school play. His daughter, Carol, was five years old. She was a student at the local public school. Carol did not have a very big role in the school play. She was just playing a rain cloud in a play about the drought in California. Carol had just one line. Her line was, "I am sad enough to cry about how dry the state is."

Jaime and his wife made sure to arrive early so that they could get a good seat to watch the show. They found seats in the front row. Before the show began, the schoolmaster made an introductory speech. The speech was about how hard the students and teachers worked together to make the play possible. At the end of the speech, the schoolmaster said, "Let's give the school staff a hand".

Jaime, whose English was not very good, stood up when the schoolmaster said this. He knew that when people said "to give someone a hand" they meant they needed help. Jaime always wanted to help, especially at his daughter's school. Jaime thought maybe they needed help backstage.

Jaime's wife put her arm in front of her husband. "Where are you going?" she asked in a low voice. "They need a hand," Jaime replied. His wife explained that "to give someone a hand" could also mean to applaud(鼓掌)someone. When you applaud someone you clap your hands(拍手)after their performance. You are not supposed to stand up and try to help others. "They don't need help. They just want us to clap," Jaime's wife explained. Jaime felt a little embarrassed. He sat back down and began clapping along with the rest of the audience.

Jaime thought to himself that someone needed to give the English language a hand. How could one phrase mean two different things? He meant the English language needed help.

1.Why did Jaime and his wife arrive at the play early?

A.To talk to other parents. B.To wish their daughter good luck.

C.To get good seats to watch the show. D.To listen to the speech of the schoolmaster.

2.Jaime thought "giving someone a hand" meant __________.

A.helping someone B.clapping your hands

C.holding someone's hand D.giving your hand to someone

3.What can we learn from the passage?

A.Jaime stood up to applaud. B.Jaime is a warm-hearted man.

C.Jaime was better at English than his wife. D.Jaime's daughter played an important role in the show.

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