Google

In 1999, Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, introduced Kleiner Perkins to two young Stanford graduates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In their time at Stanford’s Engineering School, Sergey and Larry developed a compelling new search algorithm called PageRank. They launched it from their dorm room. Demand for its superior search results soon brought Stanford’s network to its knees. So they were banished, tossed out and off the network. They needed capital and scale:and fast.

Larry and Sergey brought a 17-page presentation to us : just two pages had numbers. (They added three cartoons just to flesh out the deck.) Though they’d made a small deal with The Washington Post, Google had yet to unlock the value of keyword-targeted ads. As the eighteenth search engine, they were late to the party. There was no business model, no team, but an audacious ambition and compelling founders. When John Doerr asked how big Google would be, they responded, "$10 billion." John thought they meant market cap, but they confidently asserted $10 billion in annual revenue! We invested with the biggest check in our history.

The founders faced several challenges that we helped address. Larry and Sergey weren’t big on traditional management and not sure about recruiting a CEO. So John introduced Larry and Sergey to some of the most respected tech founders for advice:Scott Cook, Bill Gates, Andy Grove and Steve Jobs. Larry and Sergey drove an executive search process that led to Eric Schmidt, an experienced tech executive John knew from Sun Microsystems.

# Google: Organizing the World's Information and Making It Accessible Through Search

High-Level Overview

Google operates with a singular, enduring mission: "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."[1] Founded as a search engine company, Google has evolved into a diversified technology conglomerate that fundamentally reshaped how billions of people access information online. The company's core product—Google Search—remains the dominant gateway to the internet, processing trillions of queries annually and generating the vast majority of Alphabet Inc.'s revenue through its advertising platform, AdWords.

What distinguishes Google is not merely its search dominance but its commitment to democratizing access to information across language barriers, economic status, and geography. Through products like Google Translate, which launched in 2006 to break language barriers, and its broader ecosystem of free tools, Google has positioned itself as an infrastructure layer for human knowledge discovery.[3] The company's impact extends beyond search into cloud computing, artificial intelligence, hardware, and philanthropic initiatives through Google.org, reflecting an evolution in how it interprets its foundational mission in an increasingly complex technological landscape.

Origin Story

Google's genesis traces to January 1996 when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both PhD students at Stanford University, began work on a research project that would become the world's most influential search engine.[4] The pair initially called their creation "BackRub," named after its algorithm's ability to rank pages based on the number of "back-links" pointing to them—a revolutionary approach that recognized the importance of third-party endorsements in determining relevance.[3]

The project operated on Stanford's servers for over a year before consuming excessive bandwidth and necessitating relocation. Google.com was officially registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was formally founded on September 4, 1998.[4] In March 1999, Page and Brin relocated their operations to Palo Alto, California, positioning themselves at the heart of Silicon Valley's innovation ecosystem. A pivotal moment arrived in June 2000 when Google became the default search engine for Yahoo!, one of the internet's most visited destinations at the time, providing the company with massive scale and legitimacy.[4]

The founders' early resistance to advertising-based revenue models eventually gave way to pragmatism. In 2000, Google launched AdWords, a pay-per-click advertising service built using technology from Applied Semantics. This decision proved transformative—AdWords became the financial engine that would fund Google's expansion and innovation for decades to come.[3]

Core Differentiators

Search Algorithm Superiority

Google's PageRank algorithm fundamentally outperformed competing search engines by leveraging the structure of the web itself. Rather than relying solely on keyword matching, Google recognized that hyperlinks represented human judgment about relevance, creating a more intelligent ranking system that competitors could not easily replicate.[4]

Text-Based, Uncluttered Design

While competitors cluttered their homepages with advertisements and navigation elements, Google maintained a minimalist interface with text-only ads positioned discretely. This design philosophy reduced cognitive load for users and improved the search experience, contributing to rapid adoption.[4]

Advertising Model Innovation

AdWords revolutionized digital advertising by connecting advertisers with high-intent users actively searching for relevant products and services. The pay-per-click model aligned incentives perfectly—advertisers only paid when users clicked their ads, creating a virtuous cycle of advertiser ROI and Google revenue growth.[3]

Rapid Expansion Beyond Search

Google demonstrated the ability to apply its core competency—organizing information—across multiple domains. Google Calendar, Google Finance, Google Trends, and Google Translate each extended the company's mission into new verticals, while the 2006 acquisition of YouTube for $1.65 billion positioned Google as a dominant platform for video information discovery.[3]

Cultural Foundation and Values

The company's unofficial motto, "Don't be evil," established a cultural touchstone that differentiated Google from purely profit-driven competitors.[3][4] This commitment to values provided what one executive described as a "touchstone for keeping the culture strong" as the company scaled from startup to multinational corporation.[2]

Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Google arrived at precisely the moment when the internet was transitioning from a niche technology to a mass-market utility. The company's search engine solved a critical problem: as the web exploded exponentially, finding relevant information became increasingly difficult. Google's superior algorithm and user experience positioned it as the essential infrastructure layer for the emerging digital economy.

The company's dominance in search created a network effect of extraordinary power. More users meant more queries, which meant more data to train better algorithms, which attracted more users. This virtuous cycle proved nearly impossible for competitors to break, establishing Google as the gatekeeper to online information.[4]

Google's influence extended far beyond search. By 2006, the verb "google" had entered both the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, signifying that the company had become synonymous with information discovery itself.[4] This linguistic shift reflected Google's profound impact on how humans interact with knowledge.

The company's expansion into adjacent technologies—cloud computing, artificial intelligence, hardware devices like Chromebooks and Pixel phones—reflected a strategic vision articulated by co-founder Larry Page. In a 2014 interview, Page acknowledged that Google needed to evolve beyond search to address broader quality-of-life challenges through ventures in robotics, biotech, and other transformative industries.[2] This thinking culminated in the 2015 creation of Alphabet Inc., a holding company that allowed Google to maintain its original mission while permitting subsidiaries to pursue their own strategic objectives and cultural identities.[2]

Google's commitment to accessibility and democratization—through free products, language translation, and efforts to bridge the digital divide—positioned the company as a force for expanding opportunity globally. The company's influence on the startup ecosystem proved substantial, as entrepreneurs built businesses atop Google's platforms (search, advertising, cloud infrastructure, APIs) and as Google's success demonstrated the viability of technology-driven business models at massive scale.

Quick Take & Future Outlook

Google stands at an inflection point. The company's core mission remains as relevant as ever—the world generates more information daily than existed in its entirety when Google was founded. Yet the landscape has shifted dramatically. Artificial intelligence, particularly large language models, represents both an opportunity and an existential challenge to Google's search dominance. The company's ability to integrate AI capabilities into search while maintaining user trust and advertiser value will determine its trajectory for the next decade.

The regulatory environment presents another critical variable. Antitrust scrutiny in the United States, Europe, and globally threatens Google's market position and may force structural changes to how the company operates. Simultaneously, emerging markets represent enormous growth opportunities, particularly as smartphone penetration increases and billions of new users come online seeking information access.

Google's evolution from a search company to an AI-first organization reflects a deeper truth: the company's enduring competitive advantage lies not in any single product but in its ability to organize and make sense of information at scale. Whether that information flows through search queries, video recommendations, cloud data, or AI assistants, Google's fundamental mission persists. The question is not whether Google will remain relevant, but whether it can maintain its dominance as the primary interface between humans and information in an era of artificial intelligence, where the nature of "organizing information" itself is being fundamentally reimagined.[1][2][5]