Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan
Hector Garcia-Molina passed away less than a month ago but will be remembered by many at Stanford, at Google, and at the Monterrey Tec
Last year, in the middle of the scorching Monterrey summer, Hector Garcia-Molina came from Stanford to give talks and meet some people at the Monterrey Tec, in one of his many and highly appreciated visits. The photo above was from his meeting with the research group on AI where I work. But don’t think it was a very technical discussion about how databases relate to AI. No, we basically catch up with what he was doing at Stanford, and frankly, we gossiped a lot.
I asked him many questions about his role in Google’s creation. You know, my curiosity about Google’s inception came from 10 years ago, when I went to Google campus in Mountain View, invited by them to attend their 2009 Faculty Summit. Besides the technical talks and networking, they offered us an exclusive interview with Larry Page himself. We were a bunch of some 30 researchers, and Larry showed up in a room and said: “We have no order of the day, just ask whatever you want”. One of us asked how the Google idea originated. Larry explained that he met Terry Winograd to check Ph.D. Thesis topics, and Terry proposed to him two problems to choose from: one was to design a self-driving car, and the other was to study the structure of the Internet. After agonizingly pondering the two subjects, he chose the second one, with the results we all know.
So, my question to Hector was more like “What was YOUR role in Google’s inception? He explained that firstly he was the advisor of Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google. Also that, as the Computer Science Lab head, he restled with the Stanford administration to channel some servers to the then called “BackRub” project. With the Stanford servers, the basic Google tech got started and debugged.
Then I asked Hector “Why none of this is even known or told?” He replied “You know, success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan”. Nothing needed to be added to this explanation.
It amused him to remember that he used to pester both Larry and Sergey about their truncated studies: “Just finish your Thesis”, he claimed to them.
In one of our previous meetings, I told Hector that a local Magazine featured him at the cover and main article. He wasn’t aware of this, so later on I sent him a digital copy of that issue. Hector was very unassuming. Son of a former Monterrey Tec rector, he chose to pave his own way in the US instead of taking advantage of his family’s reputation at Monterrey.
Having success in the US means that you have to split your life between the place you live and work at and your hometown. Monterrey has always been very close to Hector’s heart.
May he rest in peace. He will be remembered by many, at both sides of the Rio Grande.
