Google: History, Stats and Importance

It has revolutionized web searching to the point where its name has become synonymous with it. Even with a simple webpage design, it has managed to become one of the most popular domains on the internet. I bet even the browser you’re using is made by it. If that didn’t give it away I don’t know what will. For those who guessed it, yes, I’m talking about Google.

Google, as you all are familiar with, started off just as a search engine. Now it’s grown into a multi-billion dollar company that’s worth over $270 billion. It’s also much more than a search engine now. It owns YouTube, has its own mobile operating system, has the best navigation software and so much more. You get the picture. So how did a mere search engine become an internet giant? Let’s have a look.

History

• Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in January 1998.
• Both of them were PhD students at Stanford University, California.
• At that time search engines used an algorithm that ranked web pages based on how many times the search term appeared on them.
• Page and Brin came up with, what they believed, a better algorithm. They called it PageRank.
• It determined a web page’s relevance by the number and importance of other web pages linked to its domain.
• PageRank became the basis of their search engine, which was then called BackRub.
• The name was eventually changed to Google, as we know it today. Google happened to be a misspelling of the word “googol” which referred to 10 to its 100th power.
• Originally Google ran on Stanford’s server with the domain google.stanford.edu. It was later registered as a separate domain as it clogged up the university’s bandwidth.
• Google received its first funding of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim. This was done before the company was even registered.
• It started selling advertisements in 2000 but kept them text-based. This was done to maintain the clutter-free interface of the search engine.
• The company received its patent for the PageRank algorithm in 2001.
• In order to organize all its services, Google became a subsidiary of a larger corporation called Alphabet in August 2015. That is when Sundar Pichai replaced Larry Page as the CEO.

Larry Page

• Larry Page was born in March 1973 in Michigan.
• Belonging to a household with computer scientists, Page recalls his house being a mess with technology magazines.
• He also recalls being attracted to computers when he was just 6 years old.
• Page completed his Bachelors in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan. He completed his Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University.
• During his Bachelors, Page reverse engineered an inkjet printer by completely making it out of Legos.
• After enrolling into his PhD. program in Stanford, Page started showing interest in the certain properties of the World Wide Web especially backlinks.
• That’s when he met Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin. The two had similar interests and started working on a project named BackRub which later evolved to Google.
• After Google was founded, Page appointed himself as CEO while Brin became the President.
• In 2015, when Google became incorporated into Alphabet, Page became the CEO of Alphabet Inc while Sundar Pichai took his position as CEO of Google.
• As of December 2018, Page has a net worth of $51.3 billion. This makes him the 8th richest person on the planet.

Social Media

• It has over 26.9 million likes on its Facebook page.
• It has 20.8 million followers on Twitter and a following of 218. Notable followings include Forbes, NASA, Slashdot, Time, and Rob Pike.
• On its Instagram, it has 8.8 million followers but follows just 16 accounts. All of them happen to be the accounts of Google’s subsidiaries including YouTube, Android, Waymo, and Nest. It also follows current CEO Sundar Pichai.

Revenue Model

• Almost all of Google’s services which we use every day are free. But that doesn’t mean Google isn’t earning from them.
• Google’s main source of income is through Advertisements. In fact, it constitutes 85.5% of its overall revenue.
• Google’s ad business is divided into AdWords, AdMob and AdSense.
• AdWords works on tailored search results. You may have noticed when you search for something. The first few results are Ads related to your search.
• The AdWords algorithm is unique to Google and took 5 years to develop.
• AdSense and AdMob work on publishing ads on other websites and mobile apps respectively.
• You may have noticed banner ads on most blogs or even on some apps. Yes, they are incorporated by Google and they are earning through it.
• The rest of the sources of income are insignificant like paid services. An example is you paying for extra storage space on Google Drive.

Importance

• Google is the most popular search engine on the internet.
• It processes an average of over 40,000 searches every second. This translates to 3.5 billion searches per day.
• People say “Google it” when they want to refer someone to search for something. It has even crept into pop culture where this term is used in most Tv Shows and Movies.
• It has made looking for information easier and more convenient than ever.
• It has numerous online services and subsidaries that people use on a daily basis.
• Google also has some products of its own like Chromecast, Pixel, Cardboard and so much more.
• One of the largest mobile operating system, Android, is made and owned by Google.
• Google is incredibly innovative. It introduces new technologies like self-driving cars and street view. These were not only unrivalled but also unheard of before.

Careers

• As of Q4 2018, Google has 98,771 employees.
• Because of the vast nature of its services, there are many opportunities in various departments.
• There are 2 major categories of work followed by regular teams like any other large company.
• The first category is called Google Cloud. This refers to the jobs concerning Google’s cloud-based services. Its roles include Cloud Software Engineers, Security and Privacy, Cloud Consultants, Data Centres and so on.
• The second category is called Consumer Hardware. This is for jobs concerning the development of Google products. Its roles include Electrical, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. It also includes Supply Chain and Hardware Testing.
• The rest of the teams include your regular Engineering & Technology, Design, Marketing, Sales & Service and so on.

Recent News

• Google’s not-so-popular social networking platform, Google+ is finally shutting down. All profiles and pages will be permanently deleted on 2nd April 2019. You can read more about it here.
• Many Nest camera users blame Google for the recent hacks. Hackers were able to remotely control user’s systems and spy on them. Google, however, denies all such allegations and prompts users to change their passwords.
• Google is trying to disable all ad-blockers on its Chrome web browser. In a recent proposal, Google mentioned that blocking services interfere with certain web contents. The developers would have to re-write them, eventually making them less flexible.
• As of January 2019, Google has reportedly blacklisted “Ethereum” as a Google Ad keyword. A startup reported this after their advertisement wouldn’t show and gave an error. Google replied it may have been because the ad was targeted outside of the US or Japan.