Google: Past, Present and Future
Google is best known simply for their widely used search engine. However, this company has become an industry leader, a technological innovator and much, much more. Today, Google is a publicly held corporation whose stock trades for nearly $500 per share and has a market capitalization of nearly $150 billion (Mills, Nov. 2006). That, coupled with their increasing market share in numerous web-based market, means Google truly is the little search engine that could.
Located in Mountain View, CA, the Google corporation was begun as a simple research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin during their studies at Stanford in early 1996. While attending classes, Page theorized that a search engine that could analyze the relationships between websites, rather than searching meta data or keyword appearances, would be able to produce better results than those using existing technologies. He was certainly on to something. Today, with more than 9,000 employees and more than 200 million search requests per day, Google has become the world 's largest and most used search engine, far outpacing its contemporaries such as Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.
When Page and Brin began raising funds for their startup, the biggest challenge that they faced was convincing venture capitalists that their creation would be a viable commodity that could actually turn a profit. Their proposal was to offer text-based advertisement based on user search terms. This idea was in stark contrast to the trend of the day which included garish, animated banner ads which flashed and jumped around the screen. Eight years later, their approach has proven to be a success, taking in nearly $1 billion per year, or roughly 25% of the entire U.S. internet advertising revenue. (Mills, Mar. 2006). At the heart of their ad business is Google AdWords, a self-service advertising product that allows its clients to specify keywords that will trigger their ads, as well as the maximum amount they are willing to pay for
Located in Mountain View, CA, the Google corporation was begun as a simple research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin during their studies at Stanford in early 1996. While attending classes, Page theorized that a search engine that could analyze the relationships between websites, rather than searching meta data or keyword appearances, would be able to produce better results than those using existing technologies. He was certainly on to something. Today, with more than 9,000 employees and more than 200 million search requests per day, Google has become the world 's largest and most used search engine, far outpacing its contemporaries such as Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.
When Page and Brin began raising funds for their startup, the biggest challenge that they faced was convincing venture capitalists that their creation would be a viable commodity that could actually turn a profit. Their proposal was to offer text-based advertisement based on user search terms. This idea was in stark contrast to the trend of the day which included garish, animated banner ads which flashed and jumped around the screen. Eight years later, their approach has proven to be a success, taking in nearly $1 billion per year, or roughly 25% of the entire U.S. internet advertising revenue. (Mills, Mar. 2006). At the heart of their ad business is Google AdWords, a self-service advertising product that allows its clients to specify keywords that will trigger their ads, as well as the maximum amount they are willing to pay for
Bibliography: Elinor Mills. (November 17, 2006). "Is Google worth its weight in gold?" In CNET News.com. Retrieved November, 24, 2006, from http://news.com.com/Is+Google+worth+its+weight+in+gold/2100-1030_3-6136393.html. Elinor Mills. (June 29, 2006). "Google Checkout checks in" In CNET News.com. Retrieved November, 24, 2006, from http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6089351.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdnn McHugh, Josh. (March 2004). "It 's an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World" In Wired.com. Retrieved November, 24, 2006, from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/google.html?pg=8 http://adwords.google.com http://labs.google.com/ http://www.google.com/options/index.html http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=GOOG http://www.google.com/corporate/index.html http://investor.google.com/ http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/google