3. Introduction
Founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Rank ordered random search results by relevancy
Used links to determine the importance of individual webpages
Google: Simple, innovative user interface
Schmidt’s mission: ―To organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful‖
Led to leverage the core search and advertising capabilities into
blogging, online payments and social networks
2012: Sales – $38 billion, employees – 30,000
4. Timeline
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University in
1995. By 1996, they had built a search engine (initially called
BackRub) that used links to determine the importance of individual
webpages.
In 2000, Google introduced AdWords, a self-service program for
creating online ad campaigns. Today our advertising
solutions, which include display, mobile and video ads as well as the
simple text ads we introduced more than a decade ago, help
thousands of businesses grow and be successful.
On April Fools' Day in 2004, Google launched Gmail. Our approach
to email included features like speedy search, huge amounts of
storage and threaded messages.
5.
Google’s Initial Public Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A
common stock took place on Wall Street on August 18, 2004.
Google acquired digital mapping company Keyhole in 2004, and
launched Google Maps and Google Earth in 2005. Today Maps also
features live traffic, transit directions and street-level imagery, and
Earth lets you explore the ocean and the moon.
In 2006, Google acquired online video sharing site YouTube. Today
60 hours of video are uploaded to the site every minute. Cat
videos, citizen journalism, political candidacy and double rainbows
have never been the same.
Amidst rumors of a ―Gphone,‖ Google announced Android—an
open platform for mobile devices—and the Open Handset
Alliance, in 2007.
In June 2011, Google introduced the Google+ project, aimed at
bringing the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web, and
making all of Google better by including people, their relationships
and their interests.
7. Recommendation
Although Google allows its employees to utilize 20 percent of their
time for independent innovative projects, there should be a
periodical formal review of the progress of these projects.
In addition to focusing solely on developing new innovative
projects, there should be focus on the maintenance of existing
products.
This will provide guidance to the developers and eliminate ideas
that are not feasible.
Once successful, Google should also use this organic structure in
other departments (e.g. marketing).