Google

• 1. The Garage And The Check

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  In August 1998, a check for $100,000 arrived at the front porch of David Cheriton's home in Palo Alto. Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, wrote that check after testing a demo of a website called BackRub. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were PhD students at Stanford University when they began this research project in January 1996. They needed to incorporate their company to use the funds from Bechtolsheim. The initial investment came from friends and family, totaling around $1 million. This money allowed them to open their original shop in Menlo Park, California. Craig Silverstein became the first employee hired by the founders. Susan Wojcicki provided her garage as an office space for the team before they moved out. The name Google was chosen because it is a misspelling of googol, representing one followed by one hundred zeros.

• 2. From Search To Alphabet

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  Google went public on the 19th of August 2004, offering 19,605,052 shares at $85 per share. Eric Schmidt joined as chairman and CEO in 2001 after being proposed by John Doerr. He bought $1 million of preferred stock to show his commitment. In 2015, Sundar Pichai replaced Larry Page as CEO of Google while Page became CEO of the new holding company Alphabet Inc. On the 3rd of December 2019, Pichai also took over as CEO of Alphabet. The restructuring made Google a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. This change separated internet properties like search and YouTube from other ventures such as Waymo and Calico. By 2011, Google handled approximately 3 billion searches per day. They built 11 data centers around the world with several thousand servers in each to handle this workload. In May 2011, monthly unique visitors surpassed one billion for the first time.

• 3. Hardware And Software Platforms

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  In January 2010, Google released Nexus One, the first Android phone under its own brand. This spawned phones and tablets under the Nexus branding until discontinuation in 2016. A new brand called Pixel replaced it. ChromeOS launched in 2011 with the introduction of the Chromebook. July 2013 saw the Chromecast dongle allow users to stream content from smartphones to televisions. June 2014 brought Google Cardboard, a simple cardboard viewer for virtual reality media. October 2016 introduced Daydream View, another lightweight VR viewer. Nest products include smart speakers that answer voice queries and control home appliances. Google Fiber was announced in February 2010 to build ultra-high-speed broadband networks. Project Fi combined Wi-Fi and cellular networks in April 2015. In March 2023, Bard became a generative artificial intelligence chatbot. Gemini followed as an updated version in March 2024. The company also developed Imagen text-to-image models and Veo text-to-video models. SynthID Detector uses watermarking to identify AI-generated content in September 2025.

• 4. Advertising And Market Dominance

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  Forty-six percent of profit came from clicks amounting to US$109,652 million in 2017. AdMob, AdSense, and DoubleClick AdExchange form three principal methods for revenue generation. In 2011, 96% of Google's revenue derived from advertising programs. The company generated $50 billion in annual revenue for the first time in 2012. By January 2014, market capitalization grew to $397 billion. Shares hit $350 for the first time on the 31st of October 2007 due to strong sales. Industry reports in 2006 claimed approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid. Google paid Apple between $8 billion and $12 billion to be the default search engine on iPhones in 2022. This marked one of the largest payments between two tech giants in recent years. Revenue figures show a steady climb from $0.2 million in 1999 to over $100 billion by 2017. The stock split into GOOG class C shares and GOOGL class A shares.

• 5. Antitrust And Legal Battles

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  On the 27th of June 2017, the European Union imposed a record fine for promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results. the 18th of July 2018 saw another €4.34 billion fine for breaching EU antitrust rules regarding Android device manufacturers. the 20th of March 2019 brought a €1.49 billion fine for preventing rivals from competing fairly in online advertising markets. August 2024 resulted in a ruling that Google held an illegal monopoly over Internet search under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. September 2024 found the Court of Justice of the European Union holding Google liable for discriminatory treatment of rival shopping searches. A €2.4 billion fine was imposed for this violation of the Digital Markets Act. October 2024 involved a symbolic fine of 2.5 decillion dollars by a Russian court for blocking pro-Kremlin propaganda. No payment was made on that occasion. In 2025, the European Commission fined Google €2.95 billion for abusing dominance in ad exchange practices.

• 6. Culture And Labor Dynamics

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  Google ranked first on Fortune magazine's list of best companies to work for in 2007, 2008 and 2012. The company designated a Chief Culture Officer to maintain core values. In 2013, a class action lawsuit alleged no cold call agreements restrained recruitment of high-tech employees. the 8th of January 2018 saw multiple employees allege discrimination based on conservative political views or race. February 2021 revealed Project Vivian ran an anti-union campaign between 2018 and 2020. Alpha Global union formed on the 25th of January 2020 representing workers in ten countries including the United States and Switzerland. Over 100,000 full-time employees worked for Google while about 121,000 temporary workers were also used. Employees split into six hierarchies ranging from entry-level data center workers at level one to managers at level six. Innovation Time Off encouraged engineers to spend 20% of work time on projects that interest them. the 8th of August 2017 marked the firing of employee James Damore after he distributed a memo arguing biological factors caused gender differences in technical positions.