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A brief history of Google to 2019.


Without getting fancy, here are some key dates:

1996: Larry Page and Sergey Brin experiment with a new type of search engine.  In those ancient days search engines simply ranked results by how often a searched-for term appears on a web page.  But Page and Brin are after something a bit more sophisticated, a range of metrics that cumulatively determine how important the searched items are on a particular page. They literally used a friend's garage as an office while working on this idea. A cliche is born, the garage-born web business. 

1998: The new business is formally created when Page and Brin persuade a co-founder of Sun Microsystems to pony up $100,000 so they can incorporate, set up shop in Menlo Park and hire their first employee. 

2002: Yahoo offers to buy out Google for $3 billion.  Google holds to a valuation of $5 billion, and the talks end without result. Also this year, in a display of the mainstreaming of the verb form of their name, an episode of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer has dialog in which a character uses "google" as a generic verb for an internet search.

2004:  Google holds an initial public offering (IPO), becoming a public company on the Nasdaq exchange, with a market valuation of $23 billion. 

2005:  Google purchases Android Inc., a mobile phone company run by Andy Rubin. 

May 2012: Google buys Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, in part to access MM's large patent portfolio regarding mobile phones and wireless tech.

2013: Sundar Pichai takes over at Android -- Rubin is moved to robotics and eventually out of the company altogether. Pichai is the fellow pictured on the right of the photo above, speaking with the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. 

August 2015: The developing company reorganizes and a parent company gets the new name Alphabet.  "Google" is now strictly speaking the name of Alphabet's chief subsidiary, an umbrella for Alphabet's internet interests.

June 2019, the US Justice Department opens an investigation of Alphabet on antitrust grounds. 

December 2019, Pichai becomes the CEO of Alphabet. Page and Brin retire from management posts, although they remain on the board of directors. 

 







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