Google is a multinational technology company that provides internet-related services and products, including search engines, online advertising technologies, cloud computing, software, and hardware. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 while they were both Ph.D. students at Stanford University.
In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin started working on a search engine called Backrub. Backrub used a unique algorithm that analyzed the relationships between websites to determine the relevance of search results. This algorithm was called PageRank and it became the foundation of Google's search engine.
In 1998, Page and Brin decided to incorporate their search engine company and named it Google, a play on the word "googol" which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. They chose this name to represent the vast amount of information that the search engine would be able to index and make available to users.
Google's first office was in a garage in Menlo Park, California. The company's early days were characterized by rapid growth and innovation. In 1999, Google secured $25 million in funding from venture capitalists and moved to its first headquarters in Mountain View, California.
In the early 2000s, Google launched several new products and services, including Google AdWords, Google News, and Google Images. The company also started expanding internationally, opening offices in Europe and Asia.
In 2004, Google went public in one of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings in history. The IPO raised $1.67 billion and made Larry Page and Sergey Brin billionaires.
Over the next decade, Google continued to innovate and expand, launching products such as Google Maps, Google Chrome, and Android, the world's most popular mobile operating system. The company also acquired several other companies, including YouTube and DoubleClick.
In 2015, Google announced a major restructuring of the company, creating a new holding company called Alphabet Inc. Google became a subsidiary of Alphabet and Sundar Pichai was named the CEO of Google.
Today, Google is one of the world's most valuable companies, with a market capitalization of over $1 trillion. The company employs over 135,000 people and operates in more than 100 countries. Google's search engine is the most widely used in the world, handling billions of search queries every day.
In conclusion, Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 as a search engine company. The company's early success was built on the unique algorithm, PageRank, which analyzed the relationships between websites. Google went public in 2004 and continued to expand rapidly, launching new products and services, and acquiring other companies. In 2015, the company restructured and became a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Today, Google is one of the world's most valuable companies and operates in over 100 countries.
