So young, yet so mature. At 25, Google is often cited as the most powerful company in the world. From the meeting of two Stanford students, determined to create a search engine capable of distinguishing the most reputable websites, to the advent of artificial intelligence, the American company has experienced almost everything. On the occasion of its quarter century, a look back at the key dates that have contributed to making this company a veritable technological empire.
It all started in 1995, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin – then aged 21 and 22 respectively – met at Stanford University. They start working together on a search engine project called Backrub, which later becomes Google. Concretely, they imagined software that analyzed the relationships between websites in order to offer better results than those given by their competitors at the time, including the American AltaVista. On September 15, 1997, the Google.com domain name was registered, and on September 4, 1998, Google Inc. was officially founded in a garage in Menlo Park, California.
For the record, the name of the search engine comes from the term “Googol”, designating the “number 10 followed by 100 zeros”, according to Alain Rey, author of 200 funny words that have changed our lives for 50 years.
Less than two years later, Google is officially launched in France. If the search engine was already widely used in France, Google decided – given the success of the search engine – to launch across the Atlantic. The official launch of Google France was marked by the opening of the French office in Paris a few years later, in 2004, and the establishment of a dedicated team to manage operations, the sale of advertisements and the localization of Google services for French users. New in the web landscape, it will very quickly replace the Lycos, Yahoo and Voilà directories.
At the same time, in the early 2000s, Larry Page and Sergey Brin opened their first international offices. First in Tokyo, Japan, but also in London, UK, Toronto, Canada and Sydney, Australia. At this time, the search engine is available in ten new languages: German, Danish, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Swedish
From then on, Google experienced a meteoric rise, establishing itself as the most complete and efficient search site. This is thanks to the relevance of search results and its PageRank algorithm. Its international influence allowed the company to take the plunge, entering the stock market, with a highly publicized IPO, in August 2004.
Since then, Google’s share price has steadily climbed to reach highs in mid-November 2021, with the stock listed at $149.95. The health crisis, the economic slump and then the War in Ukraine got the better of this vertiginous ascent, which thus experienced a slight drop in speed from the end of 2021 and until the beginning of 2023. In recent months, the action has risen to reach 136.8 dollars on September 1, 2023. A good recovery that the company owes in particular to the hopes based on artificial intelligence.
Over the years, Google has continued to expand its range of products and services, with research, online advertising and even mapping. In 2005, new tools appeared: Google Maps and Google Earth. The first allows users to explore interactive maps, get directions, search for locations, view satellite images and also view real-time traffic information. The second offers them the possibility of exploring the Earth, also thanks to satellite images as well as geographical data. Two free applications, offered without any limit.
Announced in October 2006 and finalized in November 2006, the purchase of YouTube by Google – for 1.65 billion dollars – is one of the most symbolic. An acquisition described as a key moment in the history of the Internet, as it strengthened Google’s dominant position in the field of online video.
Having become the largest video-sharing platform in the world, with more than two billion users every month according to figures released in 2021, YouTube continues to be a major platform for sharing video content online. In 2022, advertising there even generated more than 10% of the total revenue of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, or more than 29 billion dollars.
Acquired by Google in August 2005, the start-up Android Inc. then worked on the development of an operating system for mobile devices. With this merger, Google wants to create an open mobile operating system, to allow developers to create applications and smartphone manufacturers to use a flexible and customizable operating system. A great success: with its own mobile operating system, Google becomes the search engine already pre-installed on almost all Android smartphones.
Thanks to this acquisition, Android has become the leader in the smartphone market worldwide. The operating system is used by many smartphone manufacturers and is installed on billions of devices across the globe, making it one of the most widespread and influential mobile ecosystems. Today, the dominance of Android technology is overwhelming in smartphones.
The launch of Street View in Europe is correlated with the Tour de France in July 2008. This collaboration between Google and the sporting event should thus allow users to virtually discover the stages of the famous cycling race. To achieve this, Google mobilized vehicles equipped with special cameras to capture 360-degree panoramic images along the Tour de France route. These images were taken on the roads taken by the cyclists and covered the different stages of the race.
The opportunity for Google to further establish its authority in the field of tech, capable of virtually discovering places around the world. Including at world-renowned events.
Moreover, since the acquisition of Youtube in 2006, Google has continued to expand its empire by buying in turn – for several million or even several billion dollars – other tech companies. Among the most symbolic takeovers, we can note that of Motorola Mobility in 2012 for 12.5 billion dollars (since sold to Lenovo), that of Nest Labs in 2014 for 3.2 billion dollars or that of Waze in 2013 for $1.3 billion.
Despite these successes, some projects fall through. This is particularly the case of Google Glass, whose launch in 2013 was marked by a number of difficulties, leading to what many consider a commercial failure. Their high cost, at 1500 dollars, coupled with a lack of aesthetics and privacy issues were particularly pointed out.
For other reasons, Google also had to put an end to certain projects or close other services that had not achieved their objectives, such as Google Reader, an RSS feed reader, or Google Answers, a question service. -answers. Google Stadia has also been abandoned, in the field of video games, as has the social network Google. The company has also encountered some difficulties in the field of smartphones – in particular with the Nexus and Pixel models – which remain behind their competitors Apple and Samsung.
In August 2015, the Indian Sundar Pichai – then aged 43 – was chosen to become the CEO of Google as part of a major restructuring and the creation of Alphabet. A change which aims in particular to clarify the management structure and to give Google more autonomy in its main activities.
Larry Page thus becomes CEO of Alphabet Inc., the parent company, while Sergey Brin holds the position of president. The two acolytes wishing to focus on larger and more ambitious projects within Alphabet while allowing Google to operate more autonomously under Sundar Pichai’s leadership. On December 4, 2019, the latter then took over as head of the entire group.
Lately, Google and Alphabet have been in the sights of the European Union. The digital giant has indeed faced several lawsuits, investigations and legal disputes over the years, involving issues of competition, privacy, copyright, publicity, and other areas. First in Europe, where the European Commission conducted several antitrust investigations against Google regarding its practices in online search, online advertising and mobile operating systems. With, as a result, fines sometimes reaching several billion dollars.
On this subject, Google has also announced changes to comply with new European rules, in order to guarantee more transparency to users on advertising targeting and content moderation. This new EU legislation without equivalent in the world – called the DSA (Digital Services Act) – has been imposed since the end of August in the European area on the 19 largest social networks, marketplaces and search engines, including Google and its YouTube video platform, but also Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, X (ex-Twitter) or TikTok, under penalty of heavy fines.
