The Google Way
In the earlier Gyans on FedEx and JCB, I had said that it would be dream of any entrepreneur to see his company become so popular that it would be used as a routine word for some activity. Well, if it hadn’t been for this company, I wouldn’t have been able to post some of the Gyans (including this one) and all of the images. Yes, you got it… it’s “Google”! What started as a research project in January 1996, Google is a fairy tale – a typical Silicon Valley success story.
The decade of 90’s saw a major leap in computer world with the advent of Windows and Internet. The Silicon Valley – the cradle of the Computer revolution was crowded with new startups owned by young men, hardly in their 20’s. The computer and internet era showed a dream of quick money in huge sums for these mavericks.
The idea to connect the computers all across the globe through the internet opened avenues for hosting websites. These websites were the best way to advertise and reach to the customers in other parts of world. The number of websites soon started increasing in multiples and the need to search for a specific piece of information in this heap was felt. This need was partly fulfilled by search engines like Alta Vista.
At the start of 1996, two Ph. D. students at Stanford, Lawrence “Larry” Page and Sergey Brin, aged 22 and 21 respectively, set out to write their thesis on a Search Engine based on analysis of relations between websites. A year earlier or so, Sergey was assigned to show Larry around the university on a weekend tour. Reportedly, they did not hit off well to begin with, arguing about every topic they discussed. However, they soon found a common interest: retrieving relevant information from large data sets. And that was something that was going to help them with the thesis.
The existing search engines in those days were based on the number of times the keyword to be searched appears on the site. The site on which the particular keyword appears for the maximum number of times would be on top of the search results. But the hypothesis underlying Page and Brin’s thesis was: The website which has the maximum number of links pointing to it should be on top of the search results, clearly indicating that it is an important website. It was named BackRub as the algorithm checked for backlinks for the particular page.
The duo penned their concept in a research paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" and till date, it’s the tenth most accessed scientific paper at Stanford University!
On 15th September, 1997, www.google.com domain was registered and the company “Google” was formally launched a year later in Menlo Park, California. The story goes that the two founders wanted to name the company as “Googol”. (Googol = 10100) But the Venture Capitalist goofed up with the spelling and wrote off the cheque in the favour of “Google”! Well, Larry and Sergey later got ample opportunities to showcase their love for typical numbers in a different way.
In 1999, Google’s major rival Alta Vista relaunched itself as a portal. The users didn’t perceive this change positively. Google quickly cashed on this opportunity and grew at a much faster rate. In 2003, the company was shifted to a complex of buildings (named Googleplex) in Mountain View. (Incidentally, Googoplex is 10Googol)
One thing I, personally, like about Google is that it does exactly what it is supposed to do. If the user is searching for a particular keyword, then all he needs is a Text Box to enter the keyword and a “Search” Button! As long as the search functionality is working great, the user is least bothered about categories, links and other such things that only clutter the screen. And still today, the founders have made sure that the google.com home page screen is not at all cluttered with unnecessary things. And perhaps, this is the reason why Google succeeded in generating revenues when its other rivals perished in the dot com market.
In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with the search keyword to produce enhanced search results for the user. This strategy was important for increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of "hits" users make upon ads. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed.
On 4th September, 2001, U.S. Patent 6,285,999 describing Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.
2001 also saw Page stepping down from the top rank, making way for Eric Schmidt to be the CEO of Google. Schmidt started his career in Xerox PARC. Moving on to Sun Microsystems, he headed the development of Java project. Bringing an experienced CEO like Schmidt helped Google bring better management in the organization and the founders could concentrate on the expansion and introduction of new services.
In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of Blogger, a pioneering and leading weblog hosting Web site. The acquisition secured the company's competitive ability to use information extracted from blog postings to improve the speed and relevance of articles contained in a companion product to the search engine, Google News.
Till 2003, Google was a privately owned company and had posted a profit of $105.6 million on revenues of $961.8 million. Then, it was decided that the company should go public. Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston were chosen as the joint underwriters. Google also chose the unconventional way of allocating the initial offering through an auction ("Dutch auction", to be specific), so that anyone would be able to participate in the offering.
Now some numbers:
The long awaited IPO for Google took place on August 19, 2004. 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 (mathematical reference as √2 = 1.4142135...) were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. The sale raised $1.67 billion, of which approximately $1.2 billion went to Google. The vast majority of Google's 271 million shares remained under Google's control. The IPO gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owns 2.7 million shares of Google. The company was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG. On August 18, 2005 (one year after the initial IPO), Google announced that it would sell 14,159,265 (another mathematical reference of pi = 3.14159) more shares of its stock to raise money. The move would double Google's cash stockpile to $7 billion.
Today, Larry Page and Brin themselves are worth $11 Billion each and joined ranks with the youngest self made billionaire like Bill Gates and Pierre Omidyar of eBay. The company has close to 5000 employees and revenues clocking more than $3 Billion.
In 2005, New York Times ran an article, “Relax Bill Gates, it’s Google’s turn as the villain” And many others see Google as the next monopoly after Microsoft in making. To know why, just have a look at the services Google now offers:
1) Google Print: This is considered as a big threat by the Author’s Guild in USA and has sued them for copyright. Google started off with digitizing every single page that is printed so far. Obviously, it will be far easier and cheaper to get any book in the electronic format that, otherwise, would have cost you a good chunk of money from your pocket.
2) Google News: This is considered as a threat by the media as Google provides one stop quick news portal pointing links to the latest happening. AFP has sued Google over this. I remember a link which describes the vision of Google to become the global media company in coming years. Epic (?) is going to capture the whole of world media. The clipping shows New York Times going out of the business because of Google and the concept of Newspaper is shown obsolete by 2010!
3) Froogle: Allows the user to shop online searching websites within a user specified budget.
4) Google Talk: Online chatting messenger using which you can talk over the internet absolutely free!
5) Google Earth: This is creating a lot of brawl these days. Using Google Earth, you can have a look at snaps of almost every point on the earth. This includes not only famous places but also cities of strategic importance.
6) Google Desktop: I love this. This is by far the best search facility to search for even a small keyword that appears in the files stored on your computer’s hard disk, e.g. if you are searching for “is”, the search result will show all the files, documents containing the word “is”! Even when you are searching online, it displays the contents that are already stored on your computer.
7) Orkut: This is making quite a wave amongst the youngsters. Basically, it’s a network of friends and you can search for and add long lost friends. You can publish your personal profile, what you like, your hobbies, snaps and so many other things!
8) Blog: Google acquired Blog to its serviceline (as mentioned earlier) It is derived from Web Log and helps put up your own articles on net.
9) G Mail: The first mailing service to provide 1 GB memory size!
I might have missed out on many things Google offers. But one thing that appears starkly here is that they are not much trying to directly attack Microsoft because Microsoft itself is notorious for eating up its competitors. Google has not, so far, directly entered the market where Microsoft is already the leader*. In fact, all their products so far are made to coexist with Microsoft (e.g. Google Desktop runs only on Windows), nor are they getting into debates of who’s better: Microsoft or Linux. This philosophy is well reflected in what Eric Schmidt said recently “We don't do the same thing as everyone else does. And so if you try to predict our product strategy by simply saying well so and so has this and Google will do the same thing, it's almost always the wrong answer. We look at markets as they exist and we assume they are pretty well served by their existing players. We try to see new problems and new markets using the technology that others use and we build." And this is the essence of their success: Just swim with the shark without messing up.
Well, there is still much more to write about Google and I hope, the book “The Google Story” would hold a lot of not – so – known facts and Google’s plan for the future. I’m waiting for it.
Whatever the Future may have in store for Google, the fact remains that it is, by far, theirs is one of the most successful stories of companies run by the Techno savvy strategists.
Regards,
Abhishek
*: Google comes up with modified logos to suit the occasion like Halloween, Da Vinci’s Birthday etc. They are called Google Doodles.
**: The buzz is that Google is coming up with Google OS. Also, the tide has, in a way, reversed as Microsoft is started competing with Google with its MSN Search and other offerings. There is another search engine coming up named “PreviewSeek” A good one!
The decade of 90’s saw a major leap in computer world with the advent of Windows and Internet. The Silicon Valley – the cradle of the Computer revolution was crowded with new startups owned by young men, hardly in their 20’s. The computer and internet era showed a dream of quick money in huge sums for these mavericks.
The idea to connect the computers all across the globe through the internet opened avenues for hosting websites. These websites were the best way to advertise and reach to the customers in other parts of world. The number of websites soon started increasing in multiples and the need to search for a specific piece of information in this heap was felt. This need was partly fulfilled by search engines like Alta Vista.
At the start of 1996, two Ph. D. students at Stanford, Lawrence “Larry” Page and Sergey Brin, aged 22 and 21 respectively, set out to write their thesis on a Search Engine based on analysis of relations between websites. A year earlier or so, Sergey was assigned to show Larry around the university on a weekend tour. Reportedly, they did not hit off well to begin with, arguing about every topic they discussed. However, they soon found a common interest: retrieving relevant information from large data sets. And that was something that was going to help them with the thesis.
The existing search engines in those days were based on the number of times the keyword to be searched appears on the site. The site on which the particular keyword appears for the maximum number of times would be on top of the search results. But the hypothesis underlying Page and Brin’s thesis was: The website which has the maximum number of links pointing to it should be on top of the search results, clearly indicating that it is an important website. It was named BackRub as the algorithm checked for backlinks for the particular page.
The duo penned their concept in a research paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" and till date, it’s the tenth most accessed scientific paper at Stanford University!
On 15th September, 1997, www.google.com domain was registered and the company “Google” was formally launched a year later in Menlo Park, California. The story goes that the two founders wanted to name the company as “Googol”. (Googol = 10100) But the Venture Capitalist goofed up with the spelling and wrote off the cheque in the favour of “Google”! Well, Larry and Sergey later got ample opportunities to showcase their love for typical numbers in a different way.
In 1999, Google’s major rival Alta Vista relaunched itself as a portal. The users didn’t perceive this change positively. Google quickly cashed on this opportunity and grew at a much faster rate. In 2003, the company was shifted to a complex of buildings (named Googleplex) in Mountain View. (Incidentally, Googoplex is 10Googol)
One thing I, personally, like about Google is that it does exactly what it is supposed to do. If the user is searching for a particular keyword, then all he needs is a Text Box to enter the keyword and a “Search” Button! As long as the search functionality is working great, the user is least bothered about categories, links and other such things that only clutter the screen. And still today, the founders have made sure that the google.com home page screen is not at all cluttered with unnecessary things. And perhaps, this is the reason why Google succeeded in generating revenues when its other rivals perished in the dot com market.
In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with the search keyword to produce enhanced search results for the user. This strategy was important for increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of "hits" users make upon ads. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed.
On 4th September, 2001, U.S. Patent 6,285,999 describing Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.
2001 also saw Page stepping down from the top rank, making way for Eric Schmidt to be the CEO of Google. Schmidt started his career in Xerox PARC. Moving on to Sun Microsystems, he headed the development of Java project. Bringing an experienced CEO like Schmidt helped Google bring better management in the organization and the founders could concentrate on the expansion and introduction of new services.
In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of Blogger, a pioneering and leading weblog hosting Web site. The acquisition secured the company's competitive ability to use information extracted from blog postings to improve the speed and relevance of articles contained in a companion product to the search engine, Google News.
Till 2003, Google was a privately owned company and had posted a profit of $105.6 million on revenues of $961.8 million. Then, it was decided that the company should go public. Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston were chosen as the joint underwriters. Google also chose the unconventional way of allocating the initial offering through an auction ("Dutch auction", to be specific), so that anyone would be able to participate in the offering.
Now some numbers:
The long awaited IPO for Google took place on August 19, 2004. 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 (mathematical reference as √2 = 1.4142135...) were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. The sale raised $1.67 billion, of which approximately $1.2 billion went to Google. The vast majority of Google's 271 million shares remained under Google's control. The IPO gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owns 2.7 million shares of Google. The company was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG. On August 18, 2005 (one year after the initial IPO), Google announced that it would sell 14,159,265 (another mathematical reference of pi = 3.14159) more shares of its stock to raise money. The move would double Google's cash stockpile to $7 billion.
Today, Larry Page and Brin themselves are worth $11 Billion each and joined ranks with the youngest self made billionaire like Bill Gates and Pierre Omidyar of eBay. The company has close to 5000 employees and revenues clocking more than $3 Billion.
In 2005, New York Times ran an article, “Relax Bill Gates, it’s Google’s turn as the villain” And many others see Google as the next monopoly after Microsoft in making. To know why, just have a look at the services Google now offers:
1) Google Print: This is considered as a big threat by the Author’s Guild in USA and has sued them for copyright. Google started off with digitizing every single page that is printed so far. Obviously, it will be far easier and cheaper to get any book in the electronic format that, otherwise, would have cost you a good chunk of money from your pocket.
2) Google News: This is considered as a threat by the media as Google provides one stop quick news portal pointing links to the latest happening. AFP has sued Google over this. I remember a link which describes the vision of Google to become the global media company in coming years. Epic (?) is going to capture the whole of world media. The clipping shows New York Times going out of the business because of Google and the concept of Newspaper is shown obsolete by 2010!
3) Froogle: Allows the user to shop online searching websites within a user specified budget.
4) Google Talk: Online chatting messenger using which you can talk over the internet absolutely free!
5) Google Earth: This is creating a lot of brawl these days. Using Google Earth, you can have a look at snaps of almost every point on the earth. This includes not only famous places but also cities of strategic importance.
6) Google Desktop: I love this. This is by far the best search facility to search for even a small keyword that appears in the files stored on your computer’s hard disk, e.g. if you are searching for “is”, the search result will show all the files, documents containing the word “is”! Even when you are searching online, it displays the contents that are already stored on your computer.
7) Orkut: This is making quite a wave amongst the youngsters. Basically, it’s a network of friends and you can search for and add long lost friends. You can publish your personal profile, what you like, your hobbies, snaps and so many other things!
8) Blog: Google acquired Blog to its serviceline (as mentioned earlier) It is derived from Web Log and helps put up your own articles on net.
9) G Mail: The first mailing service to provide 1 GB memory size!
I might have missed out on many things Google offers. But one thing that appears starkly here is that they are not much trying to directly attack Microsoft because Microsoft itself is notorious for eating up its competitors. Google has not, so far, directly entered the market where Microsoft is already the leader*. In fact, all their products so far are made to coexist with Microsoft (e.g. Google Desktop runs only on Windows), nor are they getting into debates of who’s better: Microsoft or Linux. This philosophy is well reflected in what Eric Schmidt said recently “We don't do the same thing as everyone else does. And so if you try to predict our product strategy by simply saying well so and so has this and Google will do the same thing, it's almost always the wrong answer. We look at markets as they exist and we assume they are pretty well served by their existing players. We try to see new problems and new markets using the technology that others use and we build." And this is the essence of their success: Just swim with the shark without messing up.
Well, there is still much more to write about Google and I hope, the book “The Google Story” would hold a lot of not – so – known facts and Google’s plan for the future. I’m waiting for it.
Whatever the Future may have in store for Google, the fact remains that it is, by far, theirs is one of the most successful stories of companies run by the Techno savvy strategists.
Regards,
Abhishek
*: Google comes up with modified logos to suit the occasion like Halloween, Da Vinci’s Birthday etc. They are called Google Doodles.
**: The buzz is that Google is coming up with Google OS. Also, the tide has, in a way, reversed as Microsoft is started competing with Google with its MSN Search and other offerings. There is another search engine coming up named “PreviewSeek” A good one!
posted by Gyan for the Day! | 6:22 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home