March 2025

Brin and Page, who met as graduate students at Stanford University, were intrigued with the idea of extracting meaning from the mass of data accumulating on the Internet. They began working from Page’s dormitory room at Stanford to devise a new type of search technology, which they dubbed BackRub. The key was to leverage users’ own ranking abilities by tracking each website’s “backing links”—that is, the number of other pages linked to them. Google’s strong financial results reflected the rapid growth of Internet advertising in general and Google’s popularity in particular. Analysts attributed part of that success to a shift in advertising spending toward the Internet and away from traditional media, including newspapers, magazines, and television. Ranking and backlinks: A new kind of search engine In 2023, Alphabet took in $175 billion in revenue (57% of all Google revenue) from advertising based on users’ search requests. Google is an American search engine company, founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. More than 70% of worldwide online search requests are handled by Google, placing it at the heart of most renesource capital Internet users’ experience. Most search engines simply returned a list of websites ranked by how often a search phrase appeared on them. A website with thousands of links would logically be more valuable than one with just a few links, and the search engine thus would place the heavily linked site higher on a list of possibilities. They began working from Page’s dormitory room at Stanford to devise a new type of search technology, which they dubbed BackRub. Google’s broad product portfolio and size make it one of the top four influential companies in the high-tech marketplace, along with Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. Schmidt, who had previously held the same positions at the software company Novell Inc., had a doctorate in computer science and melded well with the technocratic impulses of the founders. A website with thousands of links would logically be more valuable than one with just a few links, and the search engine thus would place the heavily linked site higher on a list of possibilities. Google Despite its myriad of products, the original search tool remains the core of Google’s success. Since its founding, Google has spent large sums to secure what it has calculated to be significant Internet marketing advantages. The trio ran the company as a “triumvirate” until Page took on the CEO role in 2011, Schmidt became executive chairman, and Brin adopted the title of director of special projects. Analysts attributed part of that success to a shift in advertising spending toward the Internet and away from traditional media, including newspapers, magazines, and television. Google began as an online search firm, but it now offers more than 50 Internet services and products, from e-mail and online document creation to software for mobile phones and tablet computers. In addition, its 2012 acquisition of Motorola Mobility put the company in the position to sell hardware in the form of mobile phones. Google’s broad product portfolio and size make it one of the top four influential companies in the high-tech marketplace, along with Apple, IBM, and Microsoft. Despite its myriad of products, the original search tool remains the core of Google’s success. Strategic acquisitions and monetizing Google’s search engine Since its founding, Google has spent large sums to secure what it has calculated to be significant Internet marketing advantages. For example, in 2003, Google spent $102 million to acquire Applied Semantics, the makers of AdSense, a service that signed up owners of websites to run various types of ads on their web pages. In 2007 Google made its largest acquisition to date, buying online advertising firm DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Two years later the company responded to the explosive growth of the mobile applications market with a $750 million deal to acquire the mobile advertising network AdMob. Ranking and backlinks: A new kind of search engine For example, American newspaper advertising fell from a peak of $64 billion in 2000 to $20.7 billion in 2011, while global online advertising grew from approximately $6 billion in 2000 to more than $72 billion in 2011. Almost from the beginning, investors felt that Brin and Page needed an experienced manager at the helm, and in 2001 they agreed to hire Eric Schmidt as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. Schmidt, who had previously held the same positions at the software company Novell Inc., had a doctorate in computer science and melded well with the technocratic impulses of the founders. During Schmidt’s reign as CEO, Page served as president of products, and Brin was president of technology. The trio ran the company as a “triumvirate” until Page took on the CEO role in 2011, Schmidt became executive chairman, and Brin adopted the title of director of special projects.