Google turned 20 in 2018.
During these twenty years, Google changed the world: it has become the most-used search engine service on the planet, the verb to google was added to the Oxford English Dictionary and the business environment has begun the ongoing battle for ranking on page one.
The best place to hide a dead body is page two of Google.
Unknown
The giant company has gone far beyond its core service of returning results to individual queries, developing 23 additional services and products (some acquired):
- Work and productivity (Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides);
- Email (Gmail);
- Scheduling and time management (Google Calendar);
- Cloud storage (Google Drive);
- Social networking (Google+);
- Instant messaging and video chat (Google Allo, Duo, Hangouts);
- Language translation (Google Translate);
- Mapping and navigation (Google Maps, Waze, Google Earth, Street View);
- Video sharing (YouTube);
- Note-taking (Google Keep);
- Photo organizing and editing (Google Photos);
- Web browser (Google Chrome);
- Operating system (Chrome OS).
and so on.
We are not really interested in search. We are making an Artificial Intelligence.
Larry Page
Let’s recap some of the most important landmarks in Google history and also discover latest statistics and new features in an attempt to profile the future of Google:
1.In 1998, asked why start another search engine company (AltaVista was the most-used search engine at that time), Larry Page reportedly answered, “We are not really interested in search. We are making an Artificial Intelligence”.
2. Google was funded with money from Andy Bechtolsheim, (co-founder of Sun Microsystems), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), David Cheriton (Stanford University computer science professor,) and Ram Shriram (entrepreneur).
3. In 2002, Google launched its Library Project (Google Books) by scanning library books with the purpose of digitalization. In 2005 Google was taken to court by Authors Guild (representatives of authors, publishers and libraries) arguing copyright infringement by creating digital copies of copyrighted works. By 2008, the parties reached a settlement to make the full library available to the public, for pay, and to institutions. Google agreed to pay $125 million.
4. Google used various tax avoidance strategies, saving $3.1 billion in taxes between 2007 and 2010.
5. Google Brain – Google Brain is a deep learning artificial intelligence research team at Google. Formed in early 2010s, Google Brain combines open-ended machine learning research with system engineering and Google-scale computing resources.
6. Google DeepMind – DeepMind Technologies’ goal is to solve intelligence, which they are trying to achieve by combining the best techniques from machine learning and systems neuroscience to build powerful general-purpose learning algorithms.
Acquired by Google in 2014, the company has created a neural network that learns how to play video games in a fashion similar to that of humans. DeepMind’s AI technology is the engine behind the following programs: AlphaGo and AlphaZero (programs which have beaten both professional players and programs at various games) and Google Duplex, the Google Assistant.
7. In 2017, Google accounted for over 79% of all global desktop search traffic, followed by Bing at 7.27%, Baidu at 6.55% and Yahoo at 5.06%.
8. On June 27 2017, the company received a record fine of €2.42 billion from the European Union for “promoting its own shopping comparison service at the top of search results.”
9. Google’s global revenue in 2017 – $109.7 billion.
10. Advertising revenue of Google in 2017 – $95.4 billion.
11. Google.com is visited most by the users in the United States with a global share of 34.3% as of February 2017.
12. Among the leading search engines, the worldwide market share of Google in January 2017 was 89%.
13. Gmail: Google’s email service had 1 billion active users worldwide in February 2016.
14. Percentage of internet users that Google Display Ads reach: 90%.
15. Number of websites with Google AMP: 31 billion.
16. The number of daily searches on Google – 3.5 billion.
17. 50% of search queries are four words or longer.
18. The average first-page result on Google contains 1,890 words.
19. Google “near me” searches have increased 2x over the past year.
20. The query “___ to avoid” has risen by 150%, and the query “is ___ worth it” has risen by 80%.
21. Latest features and programs launched in 2018:
Google News Initiative (a new program designed to help combat fake news and support journalism),
Google Lens (moving the search from text to visual),
Google Activity Cards (showing you previous pages/sites visited and previous queries),
Google Collections (allows users to save and organize content on their phones).
The information in this article was curated from the following sources: techcrunch.com, statista.com, expandedramblings.com, smartinsights.com, searchenginewatch.com, wordstream.com, wikipedia.com.
