Happy Birthday Google!

It's hard to believe that Google is turning 10 today.
Google was started on Sept. 7, 1998.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc. with four computers and $100,000 from an investor ( one of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s co-founders, Andy Bechtolsheim). Even after Google became an official company in 1998, the business continued to operate out of the founders' Stanford dorm rooms. Within a few weeks after incorporating, Google moved into the garage of a Menlo Park, Calif., home owned by Susan Wojcicki, who became a Google executive and is now Brin's sister-in-law (Google bought the house in 2006).

Today Google has nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market value. 650 million people who use Google's search engine and other Internet services like YouTube, Maps and Gmail. Google has grown so fast that the world can hardly keep up. =Google is said to have raked in $48 billion from Internet ads since 2001and has paid $15 billion in commissions to the Web sites that run its ads during the same period.YouTube is expected to generate about $200 million in revenue this year. This year, Google will surpass the $20 billion threshold for the first time.
The company occupies a 1.5 million-square-foot headquarters called the "Googleplex" — as well as two dozen other U.S. offices and hubs in more than 30 other countries. And its search engine — believed to index at least 40 billion Web pages — now runs on hundreds of thousands of computers kept in massive data centers around the world.


As for it's future, Google has just released a Web browser to make its search engine and other online services even more accessible and appealing. Extending Google's use to cell phones and other mobile devices is on the top of management's agenda for the next decade.
The goal for Google according to Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, is to generate $100 billion in annual revenue. Reaching this goal would make it nearly as big as the two largest information-technology companies — Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp. — each are now.



Also on the Google to-do list;

• Making digital copies of all the world's books;
• establishing electronic file cabinets for people's health records;
• leading the alternative energy charge away from fossil fuels;
• selling computer programs to businesses over the Internet;
• tweaking its search engine so it can better understand requests stated in plain language, just like a human would.

As for the founders of Google, Page and Brin, both 35 now and are said to be worth nearly $19 billion apiece.





A glimpse at what Google looked like in 1998:

http://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/google.stanford.edu
Their Philosophy;

Never settle for the best

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.


* The interface is clear and simple.
* Pages load instantly.
* Placement in search results is never sold to anyone.
* Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.

By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another.

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.

3. Fast is better than slow.

4. Democracy on the web works.


5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

7. There's always more information out there.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

10. Great just isn't good enough.

* Full-disclosure update: When we first wrote these "10 things" four years ago, we included the phrase "Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat." Over time we've expanded our view of the range of services we can offer –- web search, for instance, isn't the only way for people to access or use information -– and products that then seemed unlikely are now key aspects of our portfolio. This doesn't mean we've changed our core mission; just that the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more those blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry objects).

Read this in it's entirety