Today it seems difficult to start a query on the Web without using the largest search engine: Google. The company, before becoming one of the largest American firms, was initially just a small one-person company. Our SEO agency lets you discover the complete history of its founders and the company.
Google: a web giant
Who doesn't know Google today! This particularly powerful search engine is also the most popular in the world. A search engine is a computer application used to search for information via the Internet. Internet users particularly appreciate Google's SERPs (Search engine result pages) for their neutrality. Indeed, the search engine is not influenced by any advertising factor. Google has the best Internet user satisfaction rate as well as the best economic growth rate. The search engine integrates several algorithms, which are very often subject to updates. These are used to filter search results to only display the most relevant sites.
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Mid-1990s: the beginnings of an ambitious project
It all started for Google in 1995. At that time, two young American students met at Stanford University. They are Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Carriers of an ambitious project, these two promising students launched BackRub in 1996. This first search engine, hosted by the university's servers, has a determined mission: that of analyzing links pointing to a website. In 1997, the two friends really took charge of their project with the aim of making it evolve. It was in 1997 that the project was renamed Google, in reference to “googol” meaning 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Due to lack of resources, Google started with several underpowered machines, linked together to create synergy.
In 1998, things accelerated thanks to an initial investment of $100,000, paid by the co-founder of Sun Micro Systèmes, Andy Bechtolsheim. The entrepreneurs first rented a garage as premises for the business. A year later, the co-founders were forced to move to Palo Alto due to the increase in staff numbers. The year 1999 marked a real turning point for Sergey Brin and Larry Page as they moved their brand new business to Mountain View. This first stage followed by fundraising for an amount of $25 million, which allowed the company to take off for good. The number of daily searches quickly rises to 3 million, which attracts advertisers interested in this high visibility.
Today, this company offers technology services for consumers. The firm's mission is to manage and distribute information on a large scale. Its notoriety on the Internet has made the company one of the largest American firms. On the Web, Google is one of the Big Four of the Internet, with Apple, Facebook and Amazon. Its market share has continued to increase since its beginnings.
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Innovation and diversification, keys to success for Google
With more than a billion perfectly referenced pages, Google is a search engine that has placed innovation and diversification at the heart of its requirements since its creation. Thus, in 2000 Google Adwords was born and with it a targeted advertising system targeted according to keywords.
Another strength of the American firm is to offer information in 10 new languages, which is a real novelty in the early 2000s. Spearheading a new digital era, that of the 21st century, Google is making its mark.
In 2001, Eric Schmidt was named the company's first CEO. In Europe and Asia, the company sets up its premises. That same year, Google Images appeared. It was in 2002 that Google became an international brand by signing a contract with the giant Boeing.
- It records 40,000 search queries per second. Over the course of a day, Google processes 3.5 billion searches worldwide.
- This search engine wrote a report in 2012. The report estimates that Google has discovered more than 30 billion unique URLs on the web, inspects 20 billion sites every day, and processes 100 billion searches every month.
- American company Alphabet.Inc was established in 2015 as a corporate conglomerate. It is the parent company of Google and its other companies. This reorganization was finalized on October 2, 2015.
- Google rose to first place in the ranking of the most visited multiplatform websites in the United States in November 2015. The platform recorded 247 million unique visitors in the United States alone. Additionally, the company has a 63.9% market share among major US search engines.
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Focus on the founders of Google
Larry Page
Lawrence (Larry) Page is an American-born computer scientist and entrepreneur. Co-founder of Google, the entrepreneur runs Alphabet.Inc. Born March 26, 1973, in East Lansing, Michigan, Page came from a family of computer scientists. His father actually had a doctorate in computer science. He also taught at Michigan State University. His mother also took computer programming courses. The entrepreneur fueled his passion for science and technology by regularly leafing through books and magazines. The CEO of Alphabet.Inc has a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University.
On a more personal note, Larry Page married Lucinda Southworth in 2007. The latter is a renowned scientific researcher. Page was influenced by his grandfather's history during the labor movements. The latter had indeed experienced dark times during his professional career. This is particularly why the entrepreneur wanted to make Google companies pleasant places for his employees. The CEO has admiration for the visionary inventor Nikola Tesla. The Page Foundation regularly offers donations to charitable organizations.
Sergey Brin
Sergey Brin is the co-founder of the Internet giant Google. He is also the technical director of the American company. In 2011, Forbes (American economic magazine) placed the director in 24th place in the ranking of the world's richest people. His wealth is actually estimated at $19.8 billion. Brin comes from a family of mathematicians, hence his passion for this subject. His father was in fact a mathematics professor. The Google co-founder received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and computer science from the University of Maryland in 1993. The director continued his studies at Stanford University. After a master's degree in computer science, Brin met Page. Together, the two entrepreneurs focus on a search engine project.
Living in Russia, Brin's parents moved to California. The Russian-born entrepreneur married Anne Wojcicki in 2007. The latter is at the head of a startup called 23andme.com. The startup's mission is to help Internet users decipher their genetic information. Sergey Brin is passionate about this project and offered a donation of $3.9 million. The Google director also funded research focused on Parkinson's disease in 2008.
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Google and its new features, the fruit of a meteoric rise
Google has never stopped developing new features. Thus, from 2003, these innovations followed the rise of the form with the creation of Google News and Adsense among others. The success was resounding, so much so that in 2004 Google made its IPO. Its capitalization is then established at an amount of 50 billion dollars. Google then shows an income of around 850 million dollars. This will be followed by the launch of Gmail which will drive Caramail out of the competition.
In 2005, geolocalized search arrived on the Google new field. The firm is implementing Google Map which will very quickly become essential. A real little GPS, it will allow millions of Internet users to find their way easily.
- Edit photos with Picasa.
- Find interesting information on the stock market, thanks to the Finance application.
- Learn about top searches with Google Trends.
- Use Books and Calendar to better organize yourself and consult books online.
- Watch an impressive number of videos with Youtube, Dailymotion's main competitor.
Starting in 2010, Google created Chrome. This browser quickly meets with great success since more than half of Internet users use it. Google Art Project was created in 2011 and offers Internet users the possibility of viewing thousands of works of art in high definition. Google's areas of expertise therefore expand over the years. Google, in addition to allowing searches, is also a real advertising showcase. In 2012, this action allowed him to collect more than 50 billion dollars.