Google turns 23; Knowledge is power, and in today’s digital age, a company called Google shapes the world’s knowledge more than any other company. With the exception of China, where Google is filtered, more than 87 percent of desktops and 94 percent of mobile phones use Google search engines, according to surveys.
For most sites, a large amount of traffic comes from search results, and research has shown that the top five or six results in Google search account for more than 60% of clicks. In other words, Google alone can significantly increase a site’s traffic.
As a result, advertising on Google has been very lucrative, and in 2020 the company earned about $ 150 billion through advertising, which accounts for 80% of the company’s total revenue. Google is currently valued at about $ 1 trillion, and its absolute dominance of the web has put the company under pressure from legal entities in some countries.
The Internet giant launched on September 4, 1998 as a regular and unassuming site. A few days ago, Google celebrated its 23rd birthday, and in this article, we will discuss how to turn this site into an all-encompassing internet giant.
1996; Formation of initial ideas
The origins of this Internet giant, known today as Google, go back to Larry Page’s doctoral dissertation. In writing this dissertation, he wanted to examine the mathematical connection to the Internet, especially in the function of link structures. He designed a system that would be more rewarding if certain sites were cited more than other sites.
Some time later, another Stanford student, Sergey Brin, joined the project and developed two PageRank algorithms that ranked sites not only by the number of links listed, but also by the quality of the links. The two chose the name BackRub for a search engine that at the time only worked on Stanford servers.
It should be noted that BackRub was not the first search engine, and at that time Yahoo, which was also founded by Stanford graduates, was used as the most important search engine. But Page and Brin’s idea of using an advanced algorithm to search the entire Internet and rank sites based on the quality and quantity of links was much more efficient than Yahoo, which used its employees to index sites. Of course, at that time no one knew that Google’s method was much better.
1998; Google Birth
Page and Brin dropped the name BackRub, and in 1997 Google was renamed. Google is derived from the word Google, which means “a number one and one hundred zeros in front of it”. The two registered the Google.com domain on September 17, 1997, but the company officially launched on September 4 of the following year. Therefore, many media outlets consider September 4 as the official birthday of Google.
2000; Yahoo started using Google search engine
Although Yahoo continued to dominate the search engine market by 2000, the company’s top executives realized that their approach did not meet the rapid pace of Internet development. On June 26, Yahoo announced that it would no longer use the Google search engine. But Yahoo did not concede defeat, saying it would work with Google to rebuild its search engine.
2002; Google turned down a $ 3 billion offer from Yahoo
In the summer of 2002, Yahoo paid $ 3 billion to acquire Google, which was met with a negative response from Google executives. Yahoo was still a larger company at the time, with annual revenues of $ 837 million, but Google was earning only $ 240 million a year.
April 1, 2004; Google introduced Gmail
When Google launched its email service to compete with Microsoft Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, many thought it was a joke because of its launch date. Gmail was introduced on April 1, a day when companies often come up with creative lies. The service made a lot of noise by offering a capacity of 1 GB. At that time, free e-mail services offered only a few megabytes of capacity.
In fact, in response to this Google service, Yahoo increased the capacity of its free email service to just 100 MB, which showed that a company like Google could not attract users.
April 29, 2004; Google entered the stock market
April 2004 is a very important month for Google. The company entered the stock market this month on April 29 with a value of $ 27 billion after the introduction of Gmail.
February 8, 2005; Google Map has arrived
If you are not a big fan of Apple software and do not live in China, Google Map is probably one of the essential tools in your daily life. The service was only for desktop computers in 2005, but after the epidemic of smartphones, the popularity of Google Maps multiplied. According to reports, Steve Jobs personally contacted Google executives to work with Apple to prepare the Google Maps app for the first iPhone.
July 2005; Google took over Android
In mid-2005, Google was working hard in various fields. During this time, Google surpassed Yahoo to become the most important search engine in the United States, and like other tech giants, began the process of acquiring future startups and leveraging their technologies.
In July of this year, Google acquired a software startup called Android. The deal was never disclosed, but a senior Google executive called it “the best deal of all time.” Android is currently the most popular mobile operating system in the world and plays a major role in the 90% market share of Google search engine.
2006; Buy Google YouTube
The acquisition of YouTube is one of the most important Google acquisitions in the history of the company. According to the latest reports, in the second quarter of 2021 alone, YouTube brought $ 7 billion in revenue to Google through advertising.
2007; Google acquired DoubleClick
Google was an advertising giant at the time, but after buying DoubleClick for $ 3.1 billion, it switched to browser-based trackers.
2008; The first Android phone was released
The HTC Dream was introduced in September 2008 and launched in October 2008. The phone was not as attractive as the first iPhone, but it remained as the first Android phone in history.
2015; Establishment of Alphabet Holding
In the mid-2010s, Google was a company active in a variety of fields, so the company’s founders decided to restructure it. The two took over the management of Alphabet Holding, and Google was transferred to a subset of the holding, with Google managing Sandar Pichai.
2016; Start making smartphones
Although Pixel phones have never been very popular and have not been widely marketed, they are still an important part of the company and are very important to the company. Although Google also played an important role in the design and manufacture of Nexus phones, Google entered the smartphone industry with a wide range of pixels.
2018; Google has taken over a large part of HTC
In 2018, the process of transferring a large part of HTC to Google was finalized, and in return for this contract, Google was able to hire a large number of HTC engineers and became more and more independent in making pixel phones. It should be noted that for the first few generations of Pixel phones, HTC played an important role.
2020; Increasing pressure on Google due to monopoly
Many users around the world (except people living in China) face many problems without using Google’s various services. Should a company have such vast power? Regulators in some countries oppose this power, and there have been various complaints against Google. These institutions say that Google uses anti-competitive measures to prevent the development of competing search engines.
The point is, proving Google’s immoral behavior is almost impossible because Google’s domination of the space is due to the unique nature of search engines. Search engines rely on algorithms and algorithms need data. The more people use Google search engine, the more data the company collects and as a result its algorithms become smarter and the company’s services can better meet the needs of users.
In other words, Google’s dominance of search engine space can be described as a snowball effect; People want to use it because it is better than competing search engines, and the more people use it, the better Google’s performance in this area will be.
2021; Design of the first mobile chipset
Some time ago, Google officially announced the construction of its first proprietary chip, which will be used for the Pixel 6 series phones. By doing this, Google will have more control over the performance of its phones in terms of hardware. It should be noted that Google is now joining Apple, Samsung and Huawei in terms of proprietary chip design technology.
Google’s next steps
While Google has been pressured by regulators in various countries to allow competitors to grow, will that happen? For example, which platform could replace YouTube in the near future? Even Apple, which has a huge budget, is still struggling to develop a rival to Google Maps.
It is safe to say that Google will not face any serious problems in the near future. Of course, this does not mean that Google always makes the best decisions. The company has made many mistakes in its 23 years of operation, but we can not hide the amazing process of turning Google from a simple search engine to an all-around Internet giant.
