Written by Sherlock Holmes

Google began in 1996 as a research project of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University . The students invented a system in which servers search the Internet and sort it according to the user’s search query. This system they called PageRank. They initially named their search engine BackRub. Google is by far the largest search engine on the Internet today. Within a short time, the company grew into one of the largest players in the ICT industry and acquired several other sites/companies, such as YouTube and DoubleClick. In the first quarter of 2018, the company had as many as 85,050 employees.

Google is undoubtedly one of the strongest brands in the world. The word is a variant of the word “googol,” which was coined by Milton Sirotta, the nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner. So Googol is a made-up synonym for a 1 with a hundred zeros. The term reflects the company’s mission to make all the world’s information accessible and useful. Actually, the company was supposed to be called “Googol,” but due to a mistake by one of the founders, it became Google.

Revenue is generated by Google primarily from the sale of ads through Google Ads. Google sells ads in two ways:

Google Search: advertising space next to and above search results on its own search engine pages. An advertiser can specify in the Google Ads program where the ads should appear: only on search results pages or also on publisher pages. Advertisers’ ads may appear after searches that match a word chosen by the advertiser. Advertisers pay per click (CPC, cost per click), although since June 2005 Google has also worked with payment per display (CPM, cost per mileage, cost per 1,000 impressions). Advertisers can bid against each other for popular search terms. So basically it is an auction -system.
Google AdSense: on pages of publishers that have made advertising space available. Publishers can apply to the AdSense program. They decide where on their site’s page the ads appear, how big the ads are and whether they are text or image ads.Google tries to use its search technology to match publishers’ pages with relevant ads. Thus, on a search or web page about washing machines, ads about washing machines should appear.

The company Google, meanwhile, already consists of much more than just a search engine and ads. The list of Google products and services is almost endless and still expanding. Below is a sampling of services and devices most commonly known. The full list can be found here.

Google services to make your search experience online easier: