Google

Overview

Google, the internet search giant founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, has spent more than a quarter-century organizing the vast amounts of information and content found online.

Its story began in a Stanford University dorm room, where the two founders developed an algorithm for sorting and searching information on the web called PageRank. It operated on the theory that the number and quality of links pointing to a webpage would signal that page's importance and relevance to a user. The search engine's quality of results and clean, simple interface proved so successful that the word "Google" entered the common vernacular as a verb.

Google Search, which saw 16.4 billion searches daily in 2025, laid the groundwork for Google's ad business, where personalized ads are included with search results. Revenue from these ads has helped fund several acquisitions, including YouTube and the Android mobile operating system, as well as the development of products such as Gmail, Google Maps, and the Chrome web browser. They have also transformed Google's parent company, Alphabet, into a $4T company as of 2026.

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