The History of Google – Then and Now

One of the technology companies that has defined modern life from almost all angles is Google. This company has changed how people do most of their things, and they have managed to make everything better. Over the company's two decades, it has managed to get over a billion users worldwide. Google has harnessed most of the world's knowledge and put it all in a central place for everyone to access anywhere they are in the world. Google's platform will give you access to virtually all of human knowledge, allows you to work, consume different media, both pictures, and videos, communicate with people from all over the world, and are open to an endless web of information of data. The company has managed to beat all odds and challenges they encountered since the company was created. Google has managed to create a firm online presence, and everyone knows its name. You as someone for some information, their most likely answer will be Google it. This shows how well the company has managed to integrate into society. Their performance will definitely be one to watch and learn for many corporations, and its path to success will be one everyone wants to emulate.

Google is the subsidiary of one of the world’s biggest corporations, Alphabet. It is steadily rising and is ranked among some of the biggest companies, such as Apple and Amazon, and it has entered the $1 trillion market value. This is a category many companies, regardless of how hard they try, will never get to. It takes a lot of skill, dedication, and some form of luck to achieve this glorious feat. Google has an interesting journey to the top. It is riddled with many setbacks, trials, and tribulations, and it has managed to conquer them to get to the top. When this corporation began, its founders would never have imagined that the company will be undertaking new ventures in smartphone operating systems, self-driving cars, renewable energy, and numerous diversified areas at some point in time. This was definitely a dream too big for anyone to imagine, even the most hopeful founders. This article on the journey of google focuses on its path to the top. Its various product launches have succeeded immensely, the legal challenges the corporation has faced have threatened to almost breaking down the company. This is a look at one of Silicon valley's success stories and how they have managed to continue growing from strength to strength.

Google is launched on Stanford University’s network

This great corporation was made by Stanford university’s very own Larry Page and Sergey Brin. These were young campus students who wanted to get into the tech bubble that was growing rapidly at the time. It was first known as BackRub, a simple name the founders didn't think of much before settling on. The entire venture was a research project for one of the company's founders and a current student enrolled at Stanford University. He was set to graduate with the class of 1995, but while in school, he met another student, who too was very curious about technology. His name was Sergey Brin, and he was a computer science student, and they immediately hit it off. Soon, Page would begin looking into the ways to link into the worldwide web. This fascination led Page into creating a system that would crawl through the world wide web and determine which pages were linking together and how this could be converted into a search engine. His curiosity saw him approach Brin with the idea, and their expertise led them to create a page ranking algorithm whose use was ranking the search results from different search tools. This was about to become the stepping stone to creating the world's best and most powerful search engine. They launched the algorithm onto Stanford's private network, and from there, they were on their path to the top. Stanford University has always been considered one of the best in technology, and the support the university gave its students played a huge role in shaping the world of technology.

Google’s Incorporation

In any new venture, one of the main challenges the innovators get is the lack of funds. This is experienced in technology, just like in all other spheres. It was not different for Page and Brin. In their humble days, the company was run from a garage of one of the people who believed in the duo, Susan Wojcicki. She would later become the CEO of YouTube in California once the company had taken root. The company was initially hosted on Stanford's private network, and soon they run out of bandwidth, and they had to move and find better infrastructure. The founder would later rename the company from PageRank to googol. This is a word that describes the number one, followed by a hundred zeros. It shows that this time they had taken time to research on a name that will bring out their functions better and create a name for themselves among professionals. In its journey to growth, googol secured an angel investor called Sun Microsystems. The company's co-founder saw potential in the entire venture, and the company was incorporated as Google and secured a funding of $100,000. This was a great boost to them, and even though it was not nearly enough to what a technology startup required, it played a huge role in plugging some of the loopholes and making purchases that would make the company more efficient. This allowed the company to move from the garage to a new location, and this created a proper space for efficiency and allowed the founders to work more efficiently. Google took this as a great leap forward, and it would see them begin launching other products and services. They then began taking in new workers into their staff, and this signaled a major step forward for the company.

The company appoints a CEO

In 2001, Google’s prospects had become bigger than anyone thought it would be. It was only a few years old, but the company was getting quite a huge share of the market already. This is not something the initial founders were ready to handle. They had wanted to focus their lives in academia, but the thrust to fame of their company forced them to take a different route. In order to efficiently run the company, Page and Brin employed a CEO named Eric Schmidt. In an interview, Brin admitted that the two needed a guide who would take them through the process of becoming an efficient manager and ensure they drive the company to great profitability and beyond. The strong background Eric had in technology and management made him perfect for the role. Before taking the CEO position, he was the CTO of Sun, the company that had invested in the venture. He was also the CEO of one of the biggest companies at the time, Novell. He also had a strong background in engineering that ensured he understood the workings of Google and could lead the team from an informed position.

Eric played a vital role in the shaping of Google into the market leader it is today. He served as a CEO and a member of the board for an impressive ten years, most of which was during the company's takeoff stage. Some of the greatest google moments he took part in include the initial public offering (IPO) of google in the New York security exchange. This was in 2004, and he saw the company get one of the highest listings on its opening day. He was also at the helm of the company when it acquired YouTube, a very smart investment. The platform has since become one of the largest video streaming services in the world, with billions of visitors every day. He was also instrumental in the launching of Google Docs and Gmail. The latter is the biggest email messaging software in the world owing to its innovation and ease of use. The company was able to attract many users fast as it could accommodate all the people with google accounts. Ever since its commencement several years later, no competitor has been able to replicate the impressive work they had done. In 2011, Eric had finally taught the dynamic duo enough to ensure they would continue to guide the company in the right direction. He stepped down as the company's CEO and was replaced by Page. He moved into the role of an executive chairman but has still continued to offer his vast knowledge to Page and Brin.

An attempt at an acquisition

Most of the decisions google made in 2000 have continued to affect the company in a big way. One of these is how they managed to battle an acquisition attempt by Yahoo in 2002. Before the dawn of the century, Yahoo was the biggest search engine in the world. It controlled the entire market space virtually, and since there was no meaningful competitor, it continued to dominate year in year out. One of the main disadvantages that come from a lack of strong competition is a decline in creativity, lack of innovation, and poor customer service. Unfortunately, Yahoo found itself in this situation owing to the slow moves of the management. One of Yahoo's biggest misses is when page and Brin offered to sell the company to the then CEO of Yahoo. They demanded an even $1 million for it. At the moment, Yahoo was at the top of their game and didn't see any way a new market entrant was going to displace their dominance. The CEO shrugged it and only offered $700,000, an amount he believed it was worth. Page and Brin, however, stuck to their guns and refused to go any lower. This prompted the deal to fall through, and the Google founders decided to work on the company. They abandoned their initial aspiration of becoming academicians and ventured into the business full time.

Realizing the error, they had made the Yahoo team later tried to acquire Google in 2002 for $3 billion. This was after they saw its potential of rising into a worthy competitor. Google, however, turned this offer down and insisted on a $5 billion payment, an amount they felt was fair. The company, however, seemed to have repeated their initial mistake and turned down the offer once more. Later that year, Google went into an overdrive expansion initiative, and they launched Google News. This turned out to be a huge leap forward that would redefine how content is distributed online. It became the cornerstone of digital media we see and use today. These mistakes would cost Yahoo dearly as their business went under, and they managed to sell to Verizon for lower than $5 billion. Alphabet, on the other hand, Google's parent company, is now worth more than $850 billion. This decision to work on themselves is part of what has gotten them there.

The move to GooglePlex

When Google first got an angel investor, they moved from the garage they were located into an office in Palo Alto. The company was, however, growing too rapidly, and they acquired more locations in the Silicon Valley-based town. In no time, however, this too was not enough for them, and they had to move to a new location. At this time, Google had an impressive 1000-person workforce and was still on an expansion trajectory. They leased the Amphitheatre technology center from Silicon Graphics. The location was later renamed to the GooglePlex and featured great aesthetics that are Google-inspired. This is also their largest location, and they have acquired offices all around the world.

The launch of Gmail

In the past, there was a great communication challenge between individuals all across the country. This mainly affected large companies such as Google as their internal communication became sluggish and numerous delays were being experienced. This was costing the company heavily in terms of resources and time. Google sought to find a solution to this, and in 2001, an engineer at Google named Paul Buchheit was tasked with working on an internal communication and storage tool that would streamline the operations of Google. The engineer had had previous experience in the task, and he thus decided to make a better and faster version of the previous web-based email. He used Ajax, a more convenient web development tool that would allow the user to receive emails without having to refresh the entire page. This offered a revolution in the market that dwarfed all other offers from competitors. To make the product more appealing, Google added an additional one gigabyte of storage space. They also incorporated advanced search capabilities that enabled their users to get their content faster and more efficiently. This was quite an unbelievable feat as most email providers only provided several megabytes of storage. When the service was finally completed and launched on 1 April, many people thought it was a joke. This was later confirmed to be factual, and people have been using the service ever since.

Google is listed in the security's exchange.

Setting up a profitable technology company requires heavy investments in infrastructure. If a business uses its own funds for the process, it is likely to become insolvent. One of the best answers to this problem is going public. This is where a company's shares are issued at the security's exchange, and investors are welcomed to purchase a share of it. There are several rules a company must abide by before going public. One of these is revealing their financial position. For Google, this was not a problem. Their financial position had been great for quite a long time, with profits soaring every financial year. Some of the most prominent players in the market saw the potential that google had to offer. Key among them include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. They also received an additional boost of $25 million from investors in Silicon Valley. This was huge compared to their initial funding of a mere $100,000. Some of these venture capitalists who took a stake in Google include Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins. With the backing of such huge firms, more people began to get interested and had faith in the future of Google. This confidence was witnessed when the company made a secondary price offering at a share price of $85. In this second listing, the company managed to raise a whopping $1.7 billion, ranking it among the highest in the New York security exchange. The share price of google has been stable for a long time as investors are hopeful in its performance in the long run. This has set it on a path to success and is soon going to become a trillion-dollar company such as Amazon and Apple. The amounts raised in this offering were used to improve its infrastructure and acquire additional power. This has seen the company make its services faster and more efficient and deliver better products in a shorter time frame. The amounts they put into research have allowed them to keep growing and achieve the success they have today.

Launching of Google Maps

By 2005m google had been known for their answer to some of life’s biggest challenges that seem simple but haven’t been solved for long. When they introduced Google Maps into the technology space, it was received with great enthusiasm by people who wanted to know how it worked. For Google, they wanted to redefine maps from a classical item to one that looks elegant and stylish. As their developers and executives put it, " Maps shouldn't only be helpful, they can be fun too." The software is designed to only render on the website, and it gave its users visual assistance that allowed them to move from place to place. These images would sync and be updated constantly as they relied on their satellites in space. When it was introduced, Google maps also gave its users locations to their favorite places such as the grocery and other businesses in the area you are moving through. The service was further advanced to include Google My Business. This was a tool that allows businesses to post their locations, services, costs, and other essentials onto the software. It has helped businesses market their products, and some have grown immensely. This service has also generated a lot of advertising revenue for the company.

Over the years, Google has continued to refine its software and make it more accurate and reliable. One of the ways they did this is by including a GPS navigation system in 2009. Before this, when you wanted to move through a certain location, you had to have a map or rely on the static google maps. With this advancement, however, all you had to do now was enter the location of your destination onto your smartphone, and Google maps will guide you through the simplest and most convenient route. This navigation has further been improved to include voice direction, making it user-friendly for the blind and amputees. Since it is all in your smartphone, you don't have to worry about cluttering that was previously caused by a map. Another additional feature of this software is its ability to tell the amount of traffic on certain routes. The map will direct you on routes that don't have snarl-ups, ensuring you get to your destination faster. It uses satellites to determine the number of android phones on a specific road and evaluate its concentration in relation to the size of the road. This allows you to have more control over your traveling schedule. This is a feature that most map providers have been unable to replicate.

Google’s journey in China

One of the most convenient factors about google is its user-friendliness. Its engineers have been working to include as many languages as possible into the system. A user can easily change the language depending on what they are most comfortable with, and this has made it very reliable. A key market demographic for google has been China. The first included Chinese searches into their platform, and since then, their presence in China has been on a steady rise. One of the problems that this addition encountered was blockades and firewalls. Since the service was based in California and was being transferred through the internet to China, some in the government saw it as a potential national security risk. It became harder to access the Chinese platform, and thus the numbers of users began to fall. In a bid to counter this, Google decided to open a subsidiary in China. This ensures the people can use the platform easily and have a great experience. It thus allowed google to compete evenly with china's biggest search engine, Baidu. Google has, however, been able to take up a chunk of their market value, and the subsidiary in China has been reported as a success. Since the country has millions of people, it has presented a new and wider market to venture into for advertising.

The acquisition of YouTube

Contrary to popular belief, YouTube was not created by Google. They acquired it in one of the most ferocious bidding wars in technology. Some of the companies who also wanted to acquire YouTube include Yahoo, Microsoft, and Viacom. These are all big tech companies, and they definitely had the financial muscle to enter into this bidding war. Google, however, emerged as the winner after paying a whopping $1.65 billion t its owners. This was considered to be a mutually beneficial arrangement for both parties. Google had acquired a great asset that promised to generate a lot of revenue in the coming years. YouTube, on the other hand, now had the resources of a well-established market giant. During its acquisition, YouTube was less than a year old and hadn't yet developed the infrastructure to handle all the volume of data they were about to process every day. YouTube now had access to great and experienced engineers and also got faster servers to host their services. These two have since tried to remain independent by separating their offices. YouTube didn't move into the GooglePlex but rather remained in the region it was founded, San Bruno.

This was arguably one of Google’s best acquisitions as it has been shaping modern life for billions of viewers from all over the world. Google now controls a substantial amount of online video traffic, and it has also created numerous opportunities, especially for creatives. Before YouTube, people didn't have a way to make their content be accessed by people from all over the world. They relied on play studios, which had very minimal space, and only a few people could use them. Google has thus brought a new industry to life, and it has been affecting millions of lives everywhere. Google too has reaped on the benefits of having a huge and impressive video traffic control capability. They have created a platform where marketers can purchase time before, in between, or at the end of videos. They have further localized these to ensure people only see ads that are tailored for their regions. It has helped numerous businesses to grow by advertising their services to these video watchers. Creatives who come up with these videos are rewarded in money and kind once they fulfill YouTube's requirements. It has become the cornerstone of some people’s entire craft.

Rising to the top of advertising

Since it was created, Google has mostly drawn its revenue from advertising. In order to capture a substantial part of the market, they created AdWords. This software allowed businesses to make bids on the top results from searches. Since studies have always shown that search engine users rarely o to the second page, it was vital that businesses get the top spots. This drove their revenues to the roof and allowed for easier monitoring of marketing strategies and their effect on sales made by businesses. Google further launched AdSense, a software that allowed website owners to sell real estate on their websites to advertisers. In a bid to rise to the top of advertising, Google would later acquire DoubleClick for an impressive $3.1 billion. This software offered more convenience, and since it specialized in display advertisements, users had a closer and more intimate look into what they were about to purchase. This has been a very reliable feature over the years, and its effects on the way advertising was done are noticeable. This made Google the biggest search engine advertising platform and has since been getting billions of daily viewers. This was quite revolutionary.

The launching of the Chrome browser

In 2008, google hired some of Mozilla Firefox’s lead engineers to help them in developing their own browser, later known as Google chrome. In its initial stages of development, many people didn't have a clue about how it worked and is a benefit to internet users. It was thus up to google to explain how the tool was going to change people's internet practices into easier and more convenient ones. In its beta version of the browser, they included informative materials that helped people learn how it worked, the various benefits it offered, and how it was going to change one's life for the better. They knew people would learn better if they had visual aid on how the browser works, and they thus created a comic book that explained their product to the world more eloquently. As soon as the browser was introduced into windows, most computer users took to it immediately, and soon, all other operating systems wanted a browser that was compatible with them.

Within four years of its establishment, chrome has risen to become the most popular web browser. It had even beaten Mozilla Firefox and internet explorer, tools that had hit the market many years before it was developed. According to many enthusiasts, the key reason the browser has become popular is its speed. Google has vast resources, including numerous high-speed servers located all around the world. This has thus ensured it can generate faster and better results for its users, and this has endeared it to many. The browser s also very user-friendly. It has since included voice search options, a feature that allows blind or physically impaired people to do searches easily and conveniently. This has boosted its users further. Over 60% of all internet searches are done on chrome, and this has managed to keep the company relevant, and its financial benefits too are part of the reason it is set to become a trillion-dollar company.

Complications in China

The path to success for Google has not been straightforward. The company has faced numerous diplomatic challenges, especially with China. In 2010, Google became aware of an attack on its Chinese subsidiary. Operatives believed to be from the Communist party of china were conducting phishing attacks on its infrastructure in a bid to get email addresses and other personal data concerning its citizens, most especially human rights activists. China has for quite a long time been accused of human rights violations by many people in the world, especially celebrities. The country's leading party is accused of violating the rights of the minority Muslim population. Some leading corporations have, however, remained mum on the matter owing to their business interests in chins. Google was, however, not going to take this lying down. They undertook drastic measures to secure their china subsidiary and its infrastructure after the censorship by the government. They restricted searches from the country through a search engine stationed in Honk Kong that was not censored. On learning this, the government banned Google and all its services from the country. This hostility would further escalate in recent years after the united states, the country in which Google has its headquarters, banned Huawei, a Chinese-based tech company, from rumors of spying. The country banned all its services, including its operating system. In a retaliatory move, Beijing also banned Google’s operating system, Android, from all phones in the country. This would further escalate the undergoing trade war between China and the united states.

A lawsuit is filed by Oracle.

Oracle is known as one of the best software manufacturers in the united states and all over the world. They have created financial management systems for governments all over the world, and banks too have benefitted from their services. They are very diverse and employ only the best, and this has helped them stay ahead. In 2010, the company filed a lawsuit against Google that has been going on for over eight years. The bone of contention is the Android system, and many experts are concerned about what it would mean for the world if Google loses. The issue arose and revolved around a Java API, and Oracle is accusing Google of violating its IP by copying its entire system and naming it Android. If Oracle manages to win its suit, it will mean that engineers can no longer remake APIs from other manufacturers. The main effects that would arise from this is a drop in innovation and software and hardware development. This will have adverse effects on the reliability users get from their devices and platforms. There have been numerous appeals, and the court battle is only slated to keep going for a while. This has been one of Google’s lowest moments.

The invention of self-driving cars

In 2010, self-driving cars had taken the tech world by storm. Every car manufacturer wanted to make their users have a more comfortable and reliable experience in their cars by having an artificial intelligence system drive their car while they do other activities. One of these tech companies was Tesla. They wanted to make electric cars that offered more than what conventional cars offered, and after years of development and research, they seem to have emerged successful. As this craze was taking over the world, Google too decided to diversify its holdings and enter into this market segment. They fitted hybrid cars with sensors that were loaded with AI data and was meant to sync with other Google platforms and move without human supervision. Google's team is still working on this project, and knowing their efficiency, they are bound to get great results.

Google’s regulation in the US and the EU

Over the years, the power of Google in shaping people’s lives and actions has become noticeable. It is safe to say that no business is going to create the infrastructure and achieve the worldwide reach that Google has achieved. With such power, it is no doubt that Google has faced numerous lawsuits regarding its handling of its customer's information. In the EU, they were accused of sharing user data with businesses for marketing benefits. They were also accused of participating in anti-competitive practices. Their accusers have cited the blocking of innovative ideas that would become a potential competition in their businesses. They are known to acquire small tech ideas for irresistible sums and crushing them in their infancy. Owing to this, the EU fined the corporation $5 billion.

It was also determined that google would put a priority on its shopping services by downloading the ads into a user’s phone through their Chrome browser. This fine brought to the surface Google’s unethical practices, and in the united states, it has had similar allegations. Some in the conservative party have accused google of deliberately censoring their views and removing them from their various platforms. This has since put the company in the categories of Amazon and Facebook, who face similar allegations too. It is said that the search engine giant played a role in determining the country's election results by casting different politicians from the republican party in a bad light. This has resulted in google getting unnecessary bad press, and even though they are fighting hard to remove this tag, most people are no longer in the dark.

One of the most radical proposals from some members of congress has been to break down google into subsidiaries for proper regulation. This is still a matter that is yet to be decided as some people believe the government shouldn’t interfere with the market, while others are of the opinion that its monopolistic status does more harm than good.

Conclusion

The journey of Google has been quite a remarkable one. The company has managed to surpass all the expectations people had about it, and it continues to grow from strength to strength every single day. It is an impressive accomplishment to Larry Page and Sergey Brin to lead a company to such heights.