Can you go a month without Google? The chances are very slim. The tech company is omnipresent with its products and services. This is remarkable because the company is celebrating its 25th anniversary ‘only’ on Monday.
Exactly 25 years ago, Google Inc. was officially registered as a company. The company was run from a garage at that time. Within a few years, the startup grew into a billion-dollar company with a massive influence on the world.
Google is everywhere, and not just under the Google name. For example, the company also owns the video service YouTube.
We are very dependent on Google. That’s why there is regular criticism of the company. But we must not forget that we also derive a lot of pleasure from it.
Google’s search engine became very popular in the early 2000s. The company brought about a technological breakthrough. He compares the situation then to the breakthrough of ChatGPT earlier this year. Do you remember AltaVista and Lycos? Early internet users can probably still remember search engines like AltaVista and Lycos, which were widely used in the early 2000s.
When using the first search engines, you had to hope for good search results. But people discovered that Google performed much better. Thanks to the pagerank algorithm, Google displayed much better search results than other search engines.
Most search engines at that time looked at the content of a website. When you entered a keyword or phrase, you would see the websites where your search query appeared. But these were not always the best results.
Google did things differently from the beginning. The company used the so-called pagerank system, which Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed at Stanford University. With the pagerank algorhytm, Google calculates how good or bad a particular page on the internet is. The search engine does this, for example, by counting the number of websites that link to that page. If a web page is frequently linked to, then it apparently contains good information.
Thanks to the pagerank system, Google displayed much better search results than other search engines. Additionally, Google had a much larger index of websites to search within. Due to the excellent search results, Google quickly became the most widely used search engine. The large number of users quickly generated tens of billions in annual advertising revenue for the company.
Google invested its money in new products and services
With that money, Google developed new products and services, such as the email service Gmail, the navigation service Google Maps, and the Android operating system for smartphones. But the company also acquired many other businesses, including the video service YouTube.
A large number of companies use the services of the search giant in their products. As a result, you now almost unconsciously use Google’s services throughout the day.
Newcomers pose a significant threat to large tech companies
Due to our dependence on Google the company will not quickly disappear. The developments in the technology sector are simply too rapid.
New players can emerge very quickly and disrupt a tech giant. Just look at the rise of TikTok and the impact it has had on Facebook and Instagram.
Some claim that Google has missed the boat in the field of artificial intelligence. AI chatbots like ChatGPT, for example, can radically change the way we search for information on the internet. This could pose a significant threat to Google.
But don’t forget that many AI experts behind ChatGPT technology come from Google. Google has a massive development team for artificial intelligence. One way or another, the company will remain a major player, even in the field of AI.
