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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the company. For the search engine provided by the company,
see Google Search. For the parent company with the stock tickers GOOG and GOOGL,
see Alphabet Inc. For other uses, see Google (disambiguation).

Google LLC

The Google logo used since 2015

 Google's headquarters, the Googleplex

Formerly Google Inc. (1998–2017)

Company type Subsidiary

Traded as NASDAQ: GOOGL, GOOG

 Internet
Industry
 Cloud computing
 Computer software
 Computer hardware
 Artificial intelligence
 Advertising

Founded September 4, 1998; 25 years ago[a] in Menlo

Park, California, United States

Founders  Larry Page

 Sergey Brin

Headquarters Googleplex,
Mountain View, California
,
U.S.

Area served Worldwide

Key people  Sundar Pichai (CEO)

 Ruth Porat (CFO)
 Thomas Kurian (CEO of Google Cloud)

Products  Search
 Workspace
  Android
 Waze
 Pixel
 Nest
 Full list

Number of 139,995 (2021)

employees

Parent Alphabet Inc.

Subsidiaries  Adscape
 Android
 DeepMind
 Endoxon
 FeedBurner
 Fitbit
 ImageAmerica
 Kaltix
 Nest Labs
 YouTube
 ZipDash
 X Development

ASN  15169

Website about.google

Footnotes / references
[5][6][7][8]

Then Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt (left) with co-

founders Sergey Brin (center) and Larry Page (right) in 2008
Google LLC (/ˈɡuːɡəl/ ⓘ, GOO-ghəl) is an American multinational
corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search
engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-
commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI).[9] It has been referred to
as "the most powerful company in the world"[10] and is one of the world's most valuable
brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in
the field of AI.[11][12][13] Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. is one of the five Big
Tech companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by American computer scientists Larry
Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University in California.
Together, they own about 14% of its publicly listed shares and control 56% of its
stockholder voting power through super-voting stock. The company went public via
an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google was reorganized as a wholly
owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet's largest subsidiary and is
a holding company for Alphabet's internet properties and interests. Sundar Pichai was
appointed CEO of Google on October 24, 2015, replacing Larry Page, who became the
CEO of Alphabet. On December 3, 2019, Pichai also became the CEO of Alphabet.[14]
The company has since rapidly grown to offer a multitude of products and
services beyond Google Search, many of which hold dominant market positions. These
products address a wide range of use cases, including email (Gmail), navigation
(Waze & Maps), cloud computing (Cloud), web navigation (Chrome), video
sharing (YouTube), productivity (Workspace), operating systems (Android), cloud
storage (Drive), language translation (Translate), photo storage
(Photos), videotelephony (Meet), smart home (Nest), smartphones (Pixel), wearable
technology (Pixel Watch & Fitbit), music streaming (YouTube Music), video on demand
(YouTube TV), AI (Google Assistant & Gemini), machine learning APIs (TensorFlow), AI
chips (TPU), and more. Discontinued Google
products include gaming (Stadia), Glass, Google+, Reader, Play
Music, Nexus, Hangouts, and Inbox by Gmail.[15][16]
Google's other ventures outside of internet services and consumer
electronics include quantum computing (Sycamore), self-driving cars (Waymo, formerly
the Google Self-Driving Car Project), smart cities (Sidewalk Labs), and transformer
models (Google DeepMind).[17]
Google and YouTube are the two most-visited websites worldwide followed
by Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter). Google is also the largest search
engine, mapping and navigation application, email provider, office suite, online video
platform, photo and cloud storage provider, mobile operating system, web browser,
machine learning framework, and AI virtual assistant provider in the world as measured
by market share.[18] On the list of most valuable brands, Google is ranked second
by Forbes[19] and fourth by Interbrand.[20] It has received significant criticism involving
issues such as privacy concerns, tax avoidance, censorship, search
neutrality, antitrust and abuse of its monopoly position.
History
Main articles: History of Google and List of mergers and acquisitions by Alphabet
See also: Alphabet Inc.
Early years
 Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2003
Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey
Brin while they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California.[21][22][23] The
project initially involved an unofficial "third founder", Scott Hassan, the original lead
programmer who wrote much of the code for the original Google Search engine, but he
left before Google was officially founded as a company;[24][25] Hassan went on to pursue a
career in robotics and founded the company Willow Garage in 2006.[26][27]
While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the
search terms appeared on the page, they theorized about a better system that analyzed
the relationships among websites.[28] They called this algorithm PageRank; it determined
a website's relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages that
linked back to the original site.[29][30] Page told his ideas to Hassan, who began writing the
code to implement Page's ideas.[24]
Page and Brin originally nicknamed the new search engine "BackRub", because the
system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site.[21][31][32] Hassan as well as
Alan Steremberg were cited by Page and Brin as being critical to the development of
Google. Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd later co-authored with Page and Brin the
first paper about the project, describing PageRank and the initial prototype of the
Google search engine, published in 1998. Héctor García-Molina and Jeffrey
Ullman were also cited as contributors to the project.[33] PageRank was influenced by a
similar page-ranking and site-scoring algorithm earlier used for RankDex, developed
by Robin Li in 1996, with Larry Page's PageRank patent including a citation to Li's
earlier RankDex patent; Li later went on to create the Chinese search engine Baidu.[34][35]
Eventually, they changed the name to Google; the name of the search engine was a
misspelling of the word googol,[21][36][37] a very large number written 10100 (1 followed by 100
zeros), picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities
of information.[38]

Google's original homepage had a simple design

because the company founders had little experience in HTML, the markup
language used for designing web pages [39]
Google was initially funded by an August 1998 investment of $100,000 from Andy
Bechtolsheim,[21] co-founder of Sun Microsystems. This initial investment served as a
motivation to incorporate the company to be able to use the funds.[40][41] Page and Brin
initially approached David Cheriton for advice because he had a nearby office in
Stanford, and they knew he had startup experience, having recently sold the company
he co-founded, Granite Systems, to Cisco for $220 million. David arranged a meeting
with Page and Brin and his Granite co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim. The meeting was
set for 8 a.m. at the front porch of David's home in Palo Alto and it had to be brief
because Andy had another meeting at Cisco, where he now worked after the
acquisition, at 9 a.m. Andy briefly tested a demo of the website, liked what he saw, and
then went back to his car to grab the check. David Cheriton later also joined in with a
$250,000 investment.[42][43]
Google received money from two other angel investors in
1998: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, and entrepreneur Ram Shriram.[44] Page and
Brin had first approached Shriram, who was a venture capitalist, for funding and
counsel, and Shriram invested $250,000 in Google in February 1998. Shriram knew
Bezos because Amazon had acquired Junglee, at which Shriram was the president. It
was Shriram who told Bezos about Google. Bezos asked Shriram to meet Google's
founders and they met six months after Shriram had made his investment when Bezos
and his wife were on a vacation trip to the Bay Area. Google's initial funding round had
already formally closed but Bezos' status as CEO of Amazon was enough to persuade
Page and Brin to extend the round and accept his investment.[45][46]
Between these initial investors, friends, and family Google raised around $1,000,000,
which is what allowed them to open up their original shop in Menlo Park, California.
[47]
Craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee.[23]
[48][49]

After some additional, small investments through the end of 1998 to early 1999, [44] a new
$25 million round of funding was announced on June 7, 1999,[50] with major investors
including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital.[41] Both firms
were initially reticent about investing jointly in Google, as each wanted to retain a larger
percentage of control over the company to themselves. Larry and Sergey however
insisted in taking investments from both. Both venture companies finally agreed to
investing jointly $12.5 million each due to their belief in Google's great potential and
through the mediation of earlier angel investors Ron Conway and Ram Shriram who
had contacts in the venture companies.[51]
Growth
In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California,[52] which is home
to several prominent Silicon Valley technology start-ups.[53] The next year, Google began
selling advertisements associated with search keywords against Page and Brin's initial
opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine.[54][23] To maintain an uncluttered
page design, advertisements were solely text-based.[55] In June 2000, it was announced
that Google would become the default search engine provider for Yahoo!, one of the
most popular websites at the time, replacing Inktomi.[56][57]
 Google's first production server [58]

In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex
from Silicon Graphics, at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.
[59]
The complex became known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the
number one followed by a googol of zeroes. Three years later, Google bought the
property from SGI for $319 million.[60] By that time, the name "Google" had found its way
into everyday language, causing the verb "google" to be added to the Merriam-Webster
Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as: "to use the Google
search engine to obtain information on the Internet".[61][62] The first use of the verb on
television appeared in an October 2002 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[63]
Additionally, in 2001 Google's investors felt the need to have a strong internal
management, and they agreed to hire Eric Schmidt as the chairman and CEO of
Google.[47] Eric was proposed by John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins. He had been trying to
find a CEO that Sergey and Larry would accept for several months, but they rejected
several candidates because they wanted to retain control over the company. Michael
Moritz from Sequoia Capital at one point even menaced requesting Google to
immediately pay back Sequoia's $12.5m investment if they did not fulfill their promise to
hire a chief executive officer, which had been made verbally during investment
negotiations. Eric was not initially enthusiastic about joining Google either, as the
company's full potential had not yet been widely recognized at the time, and as he was
occupied with his responsibilities at Novell where he was CEO. As part of him joining,
Eric agreed to buy $1 million of Google preferred stocks as a way to show his
commitment and to provide funds Google needed.[64]
Initial public offering
On August 19, 2004, Google became a public company via an initial public offering. At
that time Page, Brin and Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until
the year 2024.[65] The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share.[66]
[67]
Shares were sold in an online auction format using a system built by Morgan
Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal.[68][69] The sale of $1.67 billion gave
Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.[70]
 Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011
On November 13, 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock,[71][72]
[73][74]
On July 20, 2007, Google bids $4.6 billion for the wireless-spectrum auction by the
FCC.[75] On March 11, 2008, Google acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, transferring to
Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising
agencies.[76][77] By 2011, Google was handling approximately 3 billion searches per day.
To handle this workload, Google built 11 data centers around the world with several
thousand servers in each. These data centers allowed Google to handle the ever-
changing workload more efficiently.[47]
In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed one billion for
the first time.[78][79] In May 2012, Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, in its
largest acquisition to date.[80][81][82] This purchase was made in part to help Google gain
Motorola's considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies, to
help protect Google in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies,
[83]
mainly Apple and Microsoft,[84] and to allow it to continue to freely offer Android.[85]
2012 onwards
In June 2013, Google acquired Waze for $966 million.[86] While Waze would remain an
independent entity, its social features, such as its crowdsourced location platform, were
reportedly valuable integrations between Waze and Google Maps, Google's own
mapping service.[87] Google announced the launch of a new company, called Calico, on
September 19, 2013, to be led by Apple Inc. chairman Arthur Levinson. In the official
public statement, Page explained that the "health and well-being" company would focus
on "the challenge of ageing and associated diseases".[88]
 Entrance of building where Google and its subsidiary Deep
Mind are located at 6 Pancras Square, London
On January 26, 2014, Google announced it had agreed to acquire DeepMind
Technologies, a privately held artificial intelligence company from London.[89] Technology
news website Recode reported that the company was purchased for $400 million, yet
the source of the information was not disclosed. A Google spokesperson declined to
comment on the price.[90][91] The purchase of DeepMind aids in Google's recent growth in
the artificial intelligence and robotics community.[92] In 2015,
DeepMind's AlphaGo became the first computer program to defeat a top human pro at
the game of Go.
According to Interbrand's annual Best Global Brands report, Google has been the
second most valuable brand in the world (behind Apple Inc.) in 2013,[93] 2014,[94] 2015,
[95]
and 2016, with a valuation of $133 billion.[96]
On August 10, 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as
a conglomerate named Alphabet Inc. Google became Alphabet's largest subsidiary and
the umbrella company for Alphabet's Internet interests. Upon completion of the
restructuring, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page, who
became CEO of Alphabet.[97][98][99]

Current CEO, Sundar Pichai, with Prime Minister of

India, Narendra Modi
On August 8, 2017, Google fired employee James Damore after he distributed a memo
throughout the company that argued bias and "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber"
clouded their thinking about diversity and inclusion, and that it is also biological factors,
not discrimination alone, that cause the average woman to be less interested than men
in technical positions.[100] Google CEO Sundar Pichai accused Damore of violating
company policy by "advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace", and he
was fired on the same day.[101][102][103]
Between 2018 and 2019, tensions between the company's leadership and its workers
escalated as staff protested company decisions on internal sexual
harassment, Dragonfly, a censored Chinese search engine, and Project Maven, a
military drone artificial intelligence, which had been seen as areas of revenue growth for
the company.[104][105] On October 25, 2018, The New York Times published the exposé,
"How Google Protected Andy Rubin, the 'Father of Android'". The company
subsequently announced that "48 employees have been fired over the last two years"
for sexual misconduct.[106] On November 1, 2018, more than 20,000 Google employees
and contractors staged a global walk-out to protest the company's handling of sexual
harassment complaints.[107][108] CEO Sundar Pichai was reported to be in support of the
protests.[109] Later in 2019, some workers accused the company of retaliating against
internal activists.[105]
On March 19, 2019, Google announced that it would enter the video game market,
launching a cloud gaming platform called Google Stadia.[110]
On June 3, 2019, the United States Department of Justice reported that it would
investigate Google for antitrust violations.[111] This led to the filing of an antitrust lawsuit in
October 2020, on the grounds the company had abused a monopoly position in
the search and search advertising markets.[112]
In December 2019, former PayPal chief operating officer Bill Ready became Google's
new commerce chief. Ready's role will not be directly involved with Google Pay.[113]
In April 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Google announced several cost-cutting
measures. Such measures included slowing down hiring for the remainder of 2020,
except for a small number of strategic areas, recalibrating the focus and pace of
investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential
marketing and travel.[114] Most employees were also working from home due to
the COVID-19 pandemic and the success of it even led to Google announcing that they
would be permanently converting some of their jobs to work from home [115]
The 2020 Google services outages disrupted Google services: one in August that
affected Google Drive among others, another in November affecting YouTube, and a
third in December affecting the entire suite of Google applications. All three outages
were resolved within hours.[116][117][118]
In 2021, the Alphabet Workers Union was founded, composed mostly of Google
employees.[119]
In January 2021, the Australian Government proposed legislation that would require
Google and Facebook to pay media companies for the right to use their content. In
response, Google threatened to close off access to its search engine in Australia.[120]
In March 2021, Google reportedly paid $20 million for Ubisoft ports on Google Stadia.
[121]
Google spent "tens of millions of dollars" on getting major publishers such
as Ubisoft and Take-Two to bring some of their biggest games to Stadia.[122]
In April 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google ran a years-long program
called "Project Bernanke" that used data from past advertising bids to gain an
advantage over competing for ad services. This was revealed in documents concerning
the antitrust lawsuit filed by ten US states against Google in December. [123]
In September 2021, the Australian government announced plans to curb Google's
capability to sell targeted ads, claiming that the company has a monopoly on the market
harming publishers, advertisers, and consumers.[124]
In 2022, Google began accepting requests for the removal of phone numbers, physical
addresses and email addresses from its search results. It had previously accepted
requests for removing confidential data only, such as Social Security numbers, bank
account and credit card numbers, personal signatures, and medical records. Even with
the new policy, Google may remove information from only certain but not all search
queries. It would not remove content that is "broadly useful", such as news articles, or
already part of the public record.[125]
In May 2022, Google announced that the company had acquired California based,
MicroLED display technology development and manufacturing Start-up Raxium. Raxium
is set to join Google's Devices and Services team to aid in the development of micro-
optics, monolithic integration, and system integration.[126][127]
In early 2023, following the success of ChatGPT and concerns that Google was falling
behind in the AI race, Google's senior management issued a "code red" and a "directive
that all of its most important products—those with more than a billion users—must
incorporate generative AI within months".[128]
In early May 2023, Google announced its plans to build two additional data centers in
Ohio. These centers, which will be built in Columbus and Lancaster, will power up the
company's tools, including AI technology. The said data hub will add to the already
operational center near Columbus, bringing Google's total investment in Ohio to over $2
billion.[129]
Products and services
Main article: List of Google products
Search engine
Main articles: Google Search and Google Images
Google indexes billions of web pages to allow users to search for the information they
desire through the use of keywords and operators.[130] According to comScore market
research from November 2009, Google Search is the dominant search engine in the
United States market, with a market share of 65.6%.[131] In May 2017, Google enabled a
new "Personal" tab in Google Search, letting users search for content in their Google
accounts' various services, including email messages from Gmail and photos
from Google Photos.[132][133]
Google launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which
summarizes news articles from various websites.[134] Google also hosts Google Books, a
service which searches the text found in books in its database and shows limited
previews or and the full book where allowed.[135]
Google expanded its search services to include shopping (launched originally as
Froogle in 2002),[136] finance (launched 2006),[137] and flights (launched 2011).[138]
Advertising

Google at ad-tech London, 2010

Google generates most of its revenues from advertising. This includes sales of apps,
purchases made in-app, digital content products on Google and YouTube, Android and
licensing and service fees, including fees received for Google Cloud offerings. Forty-six
percent of this profit was from clicks (cost per clicks), amounting to US$109,652 million
in 2017. This includes three principal methods, namely AdMob, AdSense (such as
AdSense for Content, AdSense for Search, etc.) and DoubleClick AdExchange.[139] In
addition to its own algorithms for understanding search requests, Google uses
technology from its acquisition of DoubleClick, to project user interest and target
advertising to the search context and the user history.[140][141] In 2007, Google launched
"AdSense for Mobile", taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market.[142]
Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their
website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page.[143] Google
advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google
Ads allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network,
through a cost-per-click scheme.[144] The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website
owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time
ads are clicked.[145] One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud,
which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being
interested in the product, causing the advertiser to pay money to Google unduly.
Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were
fraudulent or invalid.[146] Google Search Console (rebranded from Google Webmaster
Tools in May 2015) allows webmasters to check the sitemap, crawl rate, and for security
issues of their websites, as well as optimize their website's visibility.
Consumer services
Web-based services
Google offers Gmail for email,[147] Google Calendar for time-management and
scheduling,[148] Google Maps for mapping, navigation and satellite imagery,[149] Google
Drive for cloud storage of files,[150] Google Docs, Sheets and Slides for productivity,
[150]
Google Photos for photo storage and sharing,[151] Google Keep for note-taking,
[152]
Google Translate for language translation,[153] YouTube for video viewing and sharing,
[154]
Google My Business for managing public business information,[155] and Duo for social
interaction.[156] In March 2019, Google unveiled a cloud gaming service named Stadia.
[110]
A job search product has also existed since before 2017,[157][158][159] Google for Jobs is an
enhanced search feature that aggregates listings from job boards and career sites.
[160]
Some Google services are not web-based. Google Earth, launched in 2005, allows
users to see high-definition satellite pictures from all over the world for free through a
client software downloaded to their computers.[161]
Software
Google develops the Android mobile operating system,[162] as well as its smartwatch,
[163]
television,[164] car,[165] and Internet of things-enabled smart devices variations.[166] It also
develops the Google Chrome web browser,[167] and ChromeOS, an operating system
based on Chrome.[168]
Hardware

Google Pixel smartphones on display in a store

In January 2010, Google released Nexus One, the first Android phone under its own
brand.[169] It spawned a number of phones and tablets under the "Nexus" branding[170] until
its eventual discontinuation in 2016, replaced by a new brand called Pixel.[171]
In 2011, the Chromebook was introduced, which runs on ChromeOS.[172]
In July 2013, Google introduced the Chromecast dongle, which allows users to stream
content from their smartphones to televisions.[173][174]
In June 2014, Google announced Google Cardboard, a simple cardboard viewer that
lets the user place their smartphone in a special front compartment to view virtual
reality (VR) media.[175]
Other hardware products include:

 Nest, a series of voice assistant smart speakers that can answer voice
queries, play music, find information from apps (calendar, weather etc.), and
control third-party smart home appliances (users can tell it to turn on the
lights, for example). The Google Nest line includes the original Google
Home[176] (later succeeded by the Nest Audio), the Google Home Mini (later
succeeded by the Nest Mini), the Google Home Max, the Google Home
Hub (later rebranded as the Nest Hub), and the Nest Hub Max.
  Nest Wifi (originally Google Wifi), a connected set of Wi-Fi routers to simplify
and extend coverage of home Wi-Fi.[177]
Enterprise services
Main articles: Google Workspace and Google Cloud Platform
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite until October 2020[178]) is a monthly subscription
offering for organizations and businesses to get access to a collection of Google's
services, including Gmail, Google Drive and Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google
Slides, with additional administrative tools, unique domain names, and 24/7 support. [179]
On September 24, 2012,[180] Google launched Google for Entrepreneurs, a largely not-
for-profit business incubator providing startups with co-working spaces known as
Campuses, with assistance to startup founders that may include workshops,
conferences, and mentorships.[181] Presently, there are seven Campus
locations: Berlin, London, Madrid, Seoul, São Paulo, Tel Aviv, and Warsaw.
On March 15, 2016, Google announced the introduction of Google Analytics 360 Suite,
"a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products, designed specifically for the
needs of enterprise-class marketers" which can be integrated with BigQuery on the
Google Cloud Platform. Among other things, the suite is designed to help "enterprise
class marketers" "see the complete customer journey", generate "useful insights", and
"deliver engaging experiences to the right people".[182] Jack Marshall of The Wall Street
Journal wrote that the suite competes with existing marketing cloud offerings by
companies including Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce, and IBM.[183]
Internet services
In February 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project, with experimental plans
to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one
or more American cities.[184][185] Following Google's corporate restructure to make Alphabet
Inc. its parent company, Google Fiber was moved to Alphabet's Access division.[186][187]
In April 2015, Google announced Project Fi, a mobile virtual network operator, that
combines Wi-Fi and cellular networks from different telecommunication providers in an
effort to enable seamless connectivity and fast Internet signal.[188][189]
Financial services
In August 2023, Google became the first major tech company to join the OpenWallet
Foundation, launched earlier in the year, whose goal was creating open-source
software for interoperable digital wallets.[190]
Corporate affairs
Stock price performance and quarterly earnings
Google's initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004. At IPO, the
company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share.[66][67] The sale of $1.67
billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.[70] The stock
performed well after the IPO, with shares hitting $350 for the first time on October 31,
2007,[191] primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market.
[192]
The surge in stock price was fueled mainly by individual investors, as opposed to
large institutional investors and mutual funds.[192] GOOG shares split into GOOG class C
shares and GOOGL class A shares.[193] The company is listed on the NASDAQ stock
exchange under the ticker symbols GOOGL and GOOG, and on the Frankfurt Stock
Exchange under the ticker symbol GGQ1. These ticker symbols now refer to Alphabet
Inc., Google's holding company, since the fourth quarter of 2015.[194]
In the third quarter of 2005, Google reported a 700% increase in profit, largely due to
large companies shifting their advertising strategies from newspapers, magazines, and
television to the Internet.[195][196][197]
For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising
revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues.[198] In 2011, 96% of
Google's revenue was derived from its advertising programs.[199]
Google generated $50 billion in annual revenue for the first time in 2012, generatin