From search to so much more. This is how Google evolved to a leading tech monster 

In 1998, two young software engineers -  Larry Page and Sergey Brin - wanted to create a smart search engine that provided more precise answers to people’s search queries. 

At the time, the research project was BackRub and gave origin to PageRank, the algorithm behind Google, named after a misspelled version of the number Googol (number 1 followed by 100 zeros) selected for large quantities of information the search engine was intended to provide.

Google’s search engine was considered a game changer at the time. While other search engines provided “White pages” like listings, Google’s search engine went one step deeper by ranking searches by relevance. Thus, the term “Googling” because of a popular phrase.

Building an Advertising Empire with Adwords

Like many startups, Google started with less than desired income, it took them 3 years to show profit.

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This was possible thanks to the introduction of Adwords, a self-service advertisement program that allowed users to promote their websites through Google’s search results.

Until this day, Adwords advertising platform has come to be the biggest money maker for Google. In fact, Adword brought in a total of $225 billion in 2022. This makes Google one of the largest advertising platforms in the world.

Just like PageRank has become more sophisticated over the years, Adwords has also developed into a more complex platform, with options to keep track of campaigns and learn from their results with additional tools like AdSense, that allows websites to gain money through Google’s advertisements.

Winning By Thinking Outside the Box

Google is investing in innovation to gain a wider moat on its businesses. That includes  encouraging employees to think outside the box and come up with new ideas. 

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The company is known to give many perks to their employees, that go from simple things like flexible working hours to campus-like installations that include meals, doctor visits, gyms among other amenities.

Being the “side projects” a benefit that encourages their employees to work 20% of their time in other ventures different to their main job at the company.

The company also invests heavily in research and development, which allows it to stay ahead of the competition.

In fact, some of the most successful products to come from Google are in-house products such as Google Docs and GMail.

Gmail, which at the beginning was an invitation only email service, became the first platform to offer a large amount of storage space for free. This allowed Gmail to become one of the largest email services online.

Mission-driven growth

Although the company started as a search engine, their mission statement: “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”, is way more ambitious.

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Through this mission, the company has introduced themselves to a variety of lines of business that includes streaming services, electronic devices, self-driven cars, Artificial Intelligence (AI), quantum computing, to name a few.

While their vision statement is “to provide access to the world's information in one click”, this single click concept has been implemented by the company with their strategic acquisitions that have carried Google into leading positions in the innovation businesses.

Smart acquisitions to lead the way

Google has made some huge investments over the years, and they have turned many of them into profit.

In 2006, the headlines were big about the company acquiring video streaming company YouTube for $1.65 B, considered one of the biggest players today, what back then seemed like a big bet by 2023 YouTube generated about $30 billion per year in ad revenue. 

Google paid $50M in 2005 for Android, after other acquisitions related to their mobile operating system to release it in 2008, considered the most popular of its kind.

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Alpha-bet for a derailed pathway

While the company has been true to his mission, Google started to stretch out the definition to comply with their new lines of business.

To correct this, they decided to reorganize their work with a parent company: Alphabet, named after a game of words Alpha-Bet, as the first or original bet.

This new structure divided the company into 3 divisions:

• Google Search & Other Businesses
  Includes their search engine as well as AdWords, Maps, YouTube, Android, GMail, Chrome, Nest (Internet of things).
• Google Cloud
  Another line of business that Google has shown to lead in is cloud computing, being a constant among the top 3 companies in market share.
• Other Bets
  Included some business lines like Calico (Health & Biotech), Fiber (High speed internet network service provider) and Wymo (Self-driving car).

Losing bets

Today, While Google has made some excellent moves over the years, there have been some failures. 

Perhaps the most infamous debacle was the creation of the Google+ social network that was launched in 2011. The potential Facebook killer failed to catch on and was eventually shut down in 2019. 

Another misstep was the creation of Google Glass augmented reality glasses. The product was launched in 2013 and then discontinued in 2015. 

Finally, Google acquired Motorola Mobility in 2012. However, Google was unable to integrate it into the company and sold the company in 2014. 

Using AI To Lead the World of Innovation in the 2020s

Google continues to lead with more innovation projects. That includes a number of projects in the realm of AI. 

In 2013 Google announced the Quantum AI Lab (QuAIL), which develops Artificial Intelligence solutions by implementing quantum computing technologies. In 2014 they acquired AI company DeepMind for $400 M.

Google launched a responsive chat AI software Bard in 2023, a first glance of the AI developments, although for some critics it seemed more of a response to Open AI’s Chat GPT, there are more developments in the way. 

Looking to Google’s Driving Future 

Google is always looking to add to its growing empire. From its humble beginnings as a smart search engine to a leading ad empire, tech company and AI platform, we can expect to see a number of top innovations from Google in the future.