Google LLC. was launched in the year 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; it Originally started as a web-based search engine company, but today, it provides a variety of utilities, and it has been an essential part of our day-to-day activity.
This all started back in 1996 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed the BlackRub search algorithm along with Scott Hassan and Alan Sternberg. Since the company’s official launch, Google soon proved to be very successful, and in 2003, the company settled in Mountview.
The company got its name from the word googol, which represents one followed by 100 zeros since the search engine was intended to provide a large amount of information.
Google Brand History
Google started its journey with the search engine to provide relevant information to the user. Later with the rapid success of this product, the company moved into bringing out other products, among which some proved to be successful and are still being used, while a few ended up as a failure and are not used anymore.
Google was first used on Stanford’s website as a search engine. The company was registered on September 4th, 1998. By the end of 1998, the company was already performing better than its competitors back then, like Hotspot or Excited.
In early 1999, the duo decided to sell the company to Excite for $750,000, but the offer was rejected. The company then moved to Mountview and has remained operating from the location ever since, and the complex has been known as Googleplex.
Google has already gained huge popularity and is becoming more popular, attracting more investors. With the large group of loyal followers of google, the company then started including advertisements associated with the keywords being searched. This developed as a profitable business model for Google, turning in huge capital.
Google Brand Value
By June 2005, Google was valued at nearly $52 billion, one of the biggest media companies by the stock market. With its increasing business development, it started competing with mainstream companies, and Microsoft became its biggest rival. The two offered overlapping services like Gmail vs. Hotmail, and in current times, it’s Google Docs vs. Office Live. This rivalry boiled over when Kai-Fu Lee, a former vice-president of Microsoft, moved to Google.
In 2011, Google launched its fourth forayed social networking site Google+, and in 2015, Google reorganized its interest as a holding company Alphabet Inc.
With the creation of the Alphabet, Google has codified and clarified this dual-brand strategy that allows them to have the best of both, i.e., they are tightly focused on the Google brand. Also, they went with the broad portfolio approach with the brand Alphabet. This allows Google to focus more on corporate brand promises and mission, which benefitted as driving profitability and being rewarded by business partners.
On September 1, 2017, Google Inc. announced its plans to restructure as a limited liability company, Google LLC, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of XXVI Holdings Inc., which is formed as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. to hold the equity of its other subsidiaries, including Google LLC and other bets.
With the current brand value of $167.7 million, Google stands as the second-highest after Apple, holding its market capitalization of $869 billion. The company has registered on Forbes List for World’s Most Valuable Brands, Global 2000, Best Employers for Women, America’s Best Employers, and World’s Most Innovative Companies list.
Google Brand Strategies
Service Diversification
Online search has always been the main business model for Google. It diversified in providing different services to suit internet-related needs.
From productivity tools like Google Drive and Gmail to search appliances, say google chrome and Google Assistant, and other online services like Google Maps, Google Translate, and Google News.
This diversification helped Google create a new market for the company and retain existing customers. It later enabled the user to access all the utilities with a single account making it a one-stop solution for web-based services.
Expansion Through Product Acquisition
Google expanded its business by acquiring companies like Youtube in 2006 with a deal of $1.65 billion and SkyBox imaging for $500 million, which helped improve Google Maps. It also extended its online advertising business by acquiring DoubleClick in 2007 at USD 3.1 billion.
They acquired Android, which resulted in notable business strategies. Android allowed the company to extend internet-based services and products to mobile users. These acquisitions allowed Google to create a diverse market of technology-dependent consumers.
Online Advertisement
This is the core business model for Google. With the help of providing correct advertisements for the customers searching for the right keyword, Google has earned billions of dollars from its advertisers.
Google partnered with Ad publishers through Adsense, allowing them to display ads from the AdWords and DoubleClick networks.
Youtube is another ad revenue-generating platform for Google and its partners; it allows content-creators to display online advertisements through the Google AdSense program. Ads from the Google network have also appeared in various categories of apps, including productivity tools and mobile games.
Industry Independence
Google has successfully promoted the importance of the Internet, digital communication, and digital marketing at the forefront of diverse business organizations. They introduced programs like Adsense and Adwords to attract businesses for marketing.
On the other hand, Google kept expanding its business, starting from search engines to slowly capturing companies like Android and Youtube, which opened new markets for the company. This spawned newer software companies dedicated to developing mobile content or apps.
Today Google is holding data related to how the community searches, which interests other brands to improve their sales.
Most of the people who are connected to the internet are in some way or the other contributions to this data, and with the help of emerging technologies like AI and machine learning and with its billion-dollar advertising business acting as a fuel for the company, Google is investing into research to bring out products like Google Home and Google Assistant.
Future Strategies
Being a search engine giant and its well-working marketing business plans, the next big thing for Google is to turn itself into an AI company; it collects huge amounts of data every day, and it is working to provide unique solutions to our problems.
With its existing products starting from android phones, Gmail is a communication utility to serve cloud services of Gcloud to provide ease of access. It generates huge amounts of data which, with the help of AI, are bringing better solutions, be it identifying traffic and traveling time in google maps or developing products like Google Home, which supports technology like speech recognition.
Conclusion
The Internet giant has made remarkable business decisions and is continuing to grow by investing a huge amount in its research and development.
From its first product as a search engine to the present, the company has supported its core business model of being a billion-dollar advertising company. It has built products to include more and more end-users. They have also improved the user experience, making customers more and more dependent on its technology. They slowly created their ecosystem under the internet.
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