Google looks to future after 20-year search
GOOGLE celebrated its 20th birthday Monday, marking two decades in which it has grown from simply a better way to explore the internet to a search engine so woven into daily life its name has become a verb.
The company was set to mark its 20th anniversary with an event in San Francisco devoted to the future of online search, promising a few surprise announcements.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin were students at Stanford – known for its location near Silicon Valley – when they came up with a way to efficiently index and search the internet.
The duo went beyond simply counting the number of times keywords were used, developing software that took into account factors such as relationships between webpages to help determine where they should rank in search results.
Goog le was lau nched i n September 1998 in a garage rented in the Northern California city of Menlo Park. The name is a play on the mathematical term “googol”, which refers to the number one followed by 100 zeros.
Google reportedly ran for a while on computer servers at Stanford, where a version of the search had been tested.
And Silicon Valley legend has it that Brin and Page offered to sell the company early on for a million dollars or so, but no deal came together.
Google later moved its headquarters to Mountain View, where it remains.
In August 2004, Google went public on the stock market with shares priced at $85. Shares in the multibilliondollar company are now trading above $1,000.
Maps and more
Early code of conduct included a now-legendary “don’t be evil” clause. Its stated mission is to make the world’s information available to anyone.
The company hit a revenue mother lode with tools that target online ads based on what users reveal and let marketers pay only if people clicked on links in advertising.
It has now launched an array of offerings including Maps, Gmail, the Chrome internet browser, and an Android mobile device operating system that is free to smartphone or tablet makers.
Google also makes premium Pixel smartphones to showcase Android, which dominates the market with handsets made by an array of manufacturers.
Meanwhile, it bought t he 18-month-old YouTube video sharing platform in 2006 in a deal valued at $1.65 billion – which seemed astronomical at t he t ime but has proven sh re wd a s enter t a i n ment moved online.
The company also began pumping money into an X Lab devoted to technology “moon shots” such as internet-linked glasses, self-driving cars, and using high-altitude balloons to provide internet service in remote locations.
Some of those have evolved into companies, such as the Waymo self-driving car unit. But Google has also seen failures, such as much-maligned Google Glass eyewear.