Let us see see some quick facts & figures:



Google was named after the number "Googol" which means one followed by a hundred zeros. It is the top search engine with over fifty percent market share. It is one of the top three most visited websites. Over four thousand million searches are conducted every month on it. It has localized websites for over 150 countries. There are over 117 language options to view your google page in. This search engine is supported by a backend of over 80,000 to 100,000 servers.

The Story Of Google, Inc:

The founders of google are Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It was started in 1996-97 in Stanford University when both of them were students there. They received startup venture capital of $100,000 in 1998 from Andy Bechtolsheim. In 1999, they received $25 Million in venture capital. This further bolstered their growth. The growth in terms of employees, search queries & revenues was always increasing. The primary focus has always been on search.

Some Major Milestones of Google:

Over 100 Million searches were being conducted daily by 2000. They started their advertising programs adwords and adsense in 2002-03. They went public in 2004 with an initial public offering in USA and raised $1.67 Billion. They formed major partnerships with NASA & AOL in 2005. The google stock was added to S&P 500 index in 2006. The company employment crossed 10,000 employees in 2007. The graph of google has only been going up. Let us know more about the amazing story of this company.

The current scene:

Google, Inc. is listed on NASDAQ with symbol GOOG. The current share price is $444 as on September 6, 2008. Also on this date the market cap is around $140 Billion. Eric Schmidt is the CEO & Chairman. Larry Page remains co-founder and president, products and Sergey Brin remains co-founder and president, technology. The stock has been a front runner among tech stocks. But they have never given a dividend to shareholders.

Major Acquisitions:

- Blogger from Pyra Labs in 2003.

- Picasa in 2004 for Photo management.

- Keyhole in 2004 – Google Earth.

- YouTube in 2006 – Online Videos.

- FeedBurner in 2006 – RSS feeds.

- DoubleClick in 2007 – Online Advertising.

Major Products & Services of google:

- Search – text, images, videos, news, books, blogs, patents, code, etc.

- Google Maps & Google Earth.

- Latest news & financial information.

- Google Docs.

- Google Labs.

- Calendar, Groups, Google Scholar, etc.

Other Major Websites run by google:

- YouTube.com – Online Video Sharing.

- Orkut.com – Social Networking.

- Picasa.com – Photo Sharing & Management.

- Gmail.com – Email.

- Blogger.com – Blogging.

Some Google Trivia:

It was the number one employer according to Fortune magazine in 2007. Google is now a verb in dictionaries. Google.org has committed 1% of its revenues to the betterment of society. They have also started scanning of library books to make data more accessible.

The future for google:

They are continuously innovating and launching new products. There has been a constant increase in earnings. The growth of Internet usage boosts revenues further. They are focusing on formation of new partnerships. They have already completed acquisitions of new companies (over 50).

In Conclusion:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. They have stuck to it till now and hope to do so in future.