Source: Google Image Search with License for Reuse Click Pic for Page
When I was young, I was introduced to the word “google.” It came from something I was reading. In it, a math person had come across a number in his work that was a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. He asked his little boy what it should be called and the boy said it was a “googol.”
That is such a far cry from what it is now. The word is now known by nearly every person in the world, certainly everyone who owns or has access to a computer. It is now both a search term (used on said site) or the company that began the search engine. “Google” now means a great deal more.
However, this morning I brought up my home page and clicked on the “Google” word to see what the company wanted to talk about today. It seemed it is their anniversary (or one of them as they used several different dates). Today marks 16 years for them. The wiki page it brought me to discussed, at great length, all the company has gone through and done in its relatively short time in existence. According to the document, the shares run a little over $576 as of this morning. In 2004, the stock (GOOG) ran about $54.10. That’s over 11 times your money in about 10 years! If that doesn’t seem to interest you, think of it this way: If you invested $5000 in the stock in 2004 and simply left it in, you would have about $55,000 now (minus some expenses). That always angers me because, I know that somehow I could have come up with $5,000 back then had I really put my mind to it.
Looking back at the article, I will highlight below. I would encourage you to read > THIS < when you have more time and are interested as it is pretty fascinating.
1996 – began as research project by Page and Brin at Stanford
9/4/1998 – Google as a privately-owned company (Page and Brin at Stanford)
8/19/2004 – Public stock offering
Unofficial Slogan – “Don’t Be Evil”
2004 – moved headquarters to Mountain View, CA – googleplex (from googolplex – 1 followed by a googol zeroes)
2007 – est. 1 million data centers around the world
2009 – 1 billion searches per day and 24 petabytes of user-generated info (1 petabyte =1,000 Terabytes or 1,000,000 Gigabytes)
2012 – Earned $50 Billion dollars in revenue
2012 – Google increasingly into world communications. Creating fiber-optic network in Kansas City
2013 – Listed by Alexa as most visited website in the world
January 2014 – market share capitalization reaches $397 Billion
2014 – Owns Motorola, YouTube, and Blogger; Runs Gmail, Google Drive, Google Plus, and Google Docs – Leads development in Android and Chrome
In all of this long article there are many acquisition stories as well as sell-outs and corporate conflict. In all, I think Google has still come out as a company keeping allegiance to it’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto. What do you think?
Namaste,
Scott
Kindredspirit23's Blog 