Google

From smart phones to maps to e$-$mail to search, today Google is everywhere. This ubiquity makes it easy

to forget that the company was founded in $1998$ by two Stanford University PhD students, Larry Page

and Sergey Brin. They named the company Google as a play on "googol," the term for the number $1$

followed by a hundred zeroes. The name expressed the duo's ambition to help users sift through the

nearly limitless amounts of information on the internet. Page and Brin further elucidated their goals in

Google's corporate mission statement: $"$To organize the world's information and make it universally

accessible and useful." To this end, they started by focusing their energy on the nascent field of internet

search. The result of their effort was the PageRank algorithm, which counted the number and quality of

links to a given website to rate its relevance and importance. This algorithm proved to be far superior to

those used at the time by competing search engines such as Yahoo, and Google quickly became the

dominant company in Web search. Google's revenues revolved around advertising early on$.$

It realized that the information from searches on its website could be used to deliver highly targeted

advertisements to consumers and took advantage of this opportunity in $2000$ by launching AdWords.

This service allowed companies to pay Google to have their text advertisements show up alongside

search results to queries containing specific words. Hundreds of thousands of companies grew to rely on

AdWords by buying these "search ads." Google also moved into displaying advertisements beside Web

content. In $2003$ the company launched AdSense, which scanned the text on a website and

automatically displayed targeted advertisements relevant to its contents. Website publishers could earn

money every time their visitors clicked on these ads. Prior to this innovation, most websites were unable

to automatically display highly specific ads to match their content. Google also provided free tools to

better serve advertisers and content providers. In $2005,$ the company launched a suite of tools called

Google Analytics that allowed content providers to see custom reports on the way people behaved on

their websites. Among other details, these reports showed how many people visited the website, how

they found it$,$ how long they spent there, and what ads they responded to while browsing content.

Google also integrated tools into its AdWords platform to help advertisers better understand the

effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. With these tools, advertisers on Google's platform could constantly monitor and optimize their advertisements. Google called this approach "marketing asset

management," implying that advertisements should be managed like assets in a portfolio depending on

market conditions. Companies could use the real$-$time data that Google collected to adjust their

campaigns to market conditions, instead of following marketing plans developed months in advance.

Google came to dominate search and online advertising thanks to its ability to collect and process

enormous amounts of data from the internet and make them useful. It used this capability to provide

consumers and businesses alike with the information they needed. Despite its early successes,

Google never stopped innovating. It continued to expend significant energy to develop and refine

algorithms that could be used to squeeze more information out of the internet and keep Google ahead

of the competition. In addition to refining existing products, Google developed a series of free online

services for consumers. By applying its computer science and design skills to new problems, Google

helped users get things done more efficiently and effectively. In many cases, rather than coming up with

novel products, Google applied its expertise to existing categories to create a superior product offering. By entering a slew of new categories, Google gave advertisers access to consumers in an increasing

number of contexts. Furthermore, the company gained access to increasing amounts of information on

consumers that it could further monetize in the future.

Through continuous internal development and a series of acquisitions, Google rapidly expanded its

product offerings. In $2004,$ Google launched Gmail, an advertising$-$supported e$-$mail service that by $2016$

numbered over a billion active users every month. In $2005,$ the company launched Google

Maps to compete with existing online mapping services. The company repeatedly impressed consumers

as it upgraded its map service with features such as Street View, which gave users $360-$degree views of

map locations. In $2006,$ Google branched into streaming video when it acquired YouTube and grew it

into a service that generated billions of dollars in advertising revenues. That same year the company

also launched Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides$-$free online alternatives to elements of the Microsoft

Office suite. Google continues to expand its online