Google started off as just a simple search engine, but over the past 18 years they
grew to become the second most valuable brand in the world right behind Apple, with its
market value worth at $527 billion. The company was first created to help people sort
through the sea of information that was being put online rapidly. Larry Page and Sergey
Brin did this by creating an algorithm that gave the users results based on the keywords
they searched for. Since Google’s original search engine launched in 1997 they have
added a numerous amount of things including images, autocompleting your search, and
voice search. Since then Google has grown to dominate online search engines worldwide.
At first the company was not making tremendous amount of money off of just being a
search engine, so the creators decided to add Google AdWords. AdWords is Google’s
online advertising platform that allows businesses to pay to place their ads on
Google.com. AdWords gives business visibility by placing the business’ ads on the top of
the search page when someone is making a search that is relevant to that business. This is
where Google started making most of its revenue. In 2015, Google AdWords made $75
billion in revenue, which was just over 77% of Google’s total revenue that year. Since
starting the company, Google has released a number of other very successful products
and services outside of their famous search engine that definitely made the company
grow into what it is today.
In 2004 Google released Gmail, now known as the most popular web-based email
provider with well over 400 million active users. Paul Buchheit, the creator and lead
developer of Gmail, received a lot of negative comments before the release of Gmail.
Many people inside of Google were quick to predict the doom of Gmail and told Paul that
the product was too weird and nobody would want to change email services. He was told
that Gmail would never get a million users, but look where they have ended up now.
When Gmail was released, users began to fall in love with it, compared to old email
services they previously used including Yahoo or Hotmail. Gmail was cleaner, faster,
more useful, and less commercial than its competitors. Of course over the past years,
Yahoo and Hotmail have caught up and improved but Gmail is a better designed webmail
overall and the number one choice for individuals, businesses and organizations
In February 2005, Google Maps was launched. Google Maps offers street maps, a
route planner, and a business locator for many countries around the world. It is the
number one map and navigation application used today because of its accuracy and
simple interface. In December 2012, Google Maps was released onto Apple’s store and
within 48 hours it received 10 million downloads and became the most popular download
