The Story of Google

Google was invented by computer scientists Larry Page and Sergin Brin in the year 1998. Google is a subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet Inc. The site was named after a googol—the name for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros—found in the book Mathematics and the Imagination by Edward Kasner and James Newman. The name emphasized on the quantum of search results that can be searched through google.

Larry Page and Sergin Brin met at Stanford University while graduation. They started collaborating on writing a program for a search engine dubbed Backrub, it was named after its ability to do backlink analysis.

The search engine used a technology they developed named PageRank. Page Rank determined the relevance of a website by taking into account the number of pages along with its importance that linked back to the original website. The search engine result during that time was ranked on the basis of how often a search term appeared on a webpage.

Google started as an online search firm and has developed as a search engine that provides more than 50 Internet services and products, from e-mail and online document creation to software for mobile phones and tablet computers. In 2012 Google acquired Motorola Mobility and was put in a position to sell in the form of mobile phones.

Google’s broad product portfolio and size make it one of the top four influential companies in the high-tech marketplace, along with Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. Despite this myriad of products, its original search tool remains the core of its success. In 2016 Alphabet earned nearly all of its revenue from Google advertising based on users’ search requests.

Google built 11 data centers around the world to accommodate the mass of data , each centre contains several hundred thousand servers, basically, multiprocessor personal computers and hard drives mounted in specially constructed racks.

Google’s vital operations are built around three proprietary pieces of computer code: Google File System (GFS), Bigtable, and MapReduce. GFS handles the storage of data in “chunks” across several machines; Bigtable is the company’s database program; and MapReduce is used by Google to generate higher-level data.

The extraordinary growth of Google led to internal management problems. Almost from the beginning, investors felt that Brin and Page needed an experienced manager at the helm, and in 2001 they agreed to hire Eric Schmidt as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. Schmidt, who previously had held the same positions at the software company Novell Inc., had a doctorate in computer science and melded well with the technocratic impulses of the founders.

During Schmidt’s reign as CEO, Page served as president of products, and Brin was president of technology. The trio ran the company as a “triumvirate” until Page took on the CEO role in 2011, Schmidt became executive chairman, and Brin adopted the title of director of special projects.

The company’s initial public offering (IPO) in 2004 raised $1.66 billion for the company and made Brin and Page instant billionaires. In fact, the IPO created 7 billionaires and 900 millionaires from the early stockholders. The stock offering also made news because of the unusual way it was handled. Shares were sold in a public auction intended to put the average investor on an equal footing with financial industry professionals. Google was added to Standard and Poor’s 500 (S&P 500) stock index in 2006. In 2012 Google’s market capitalization made it one of the largest American companies not in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Google reorganized itself in August 2015 to become a subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet Inc. Internet search, advertising, apps, and maps, as well as the mobile operating system Android and the video-sharing site YouTube, remained under Google. Separate Google ventures—such as longevity research company Calico, home-products company Nest, and research lab Google X—became separate firms under Alphabet. Page became CEO of Alphabet, Brin its president, and Schmidt its executive chairman. Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of products, became Google’s new CEO.

Alphabet again reorganized in 2017 to create an intermediate holding company, XXVI Holdings, and to convert Google into a limited liability company (LLC). In 2018 Schmidt stepped down as executive chairman. More changes followed in 2019 as both Brin and Page left their posts as president and CEO, respectively. However, they both remained on Alphabet’s board of directors. Pichai became CEO of the holding company while retaining that position at Google.