Google has monopolized the online search industry so well that it is a household name; we all say “Google it” instead of “search it.” Who owns the juggernaut search engine?
Google is owned by Alphabet Inc which is owned by the founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Brin and Page created Alphabet in 2015 as a holding company for Google as well as its subsidiaries. These companies include X Development, Calico, Nest, Verily, Fiber, Makani, CapitalG, and GV. Sundar Pichai was promoted to CEO of Google so Larry Page could run Alphabet.
Scroll down to read more about the founding of Google, the creation of Alphabet Inc., and some of the controversy surrounding the company.
A Brief History of Google
In 1995, Larry Page and Sergey Brin were both students at Stanford University and ended up meeting through their enrollment in the Computer Science graduate program. It was in 1996 that the two developed and founded Google.
They used Stanford’s network to bring their search engine to life and the world wasn’t exactly the same after that.
Interestingly enough, the two founders were very much against being a search engine that was powered by paid advertising. The two actually wrote a paper on how Google would not use paid advertising for search result ranking.
It was in this paper titled The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine that they first introduced the idea of crawling and ranking webpages based on relevance to the search. Not based on being paid to rank a result.
Of course, Google did eventually grow to use advertised search results, those results have always been identified as ads.
While Google is valued at over $600 million today, in 1998 Page and Brin tried to sell the search engine to a web portal called Excite. They were trying to sell it for only $1 million but were not successful.
Since this deal never went through, Page and Brin then focused on taking the company public. They did this on August 19, 2004, and the Initial Public Offering was $85 at the open, and by closing it was up to $100.34 apiece.
From then to now, Page and Brin acquired other companies and created many more products to be within the Google umbrella. They acquired Android in 2005, YouTube in 2006, launched Google Chrome in 2008, Google Glass came out in 2012, and a lot more.
However, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are known for trying to stay out of the public eye. They are notoriously private so their move in 2015 didn’t come as a huge shock to those who knew them.
You can watch the below Game Changers documentary for more details on the founding and creation of Google by Page and Brin.
Creation of Alphabet Inc.
In a blog post that was published on August 10, 2015, Google announced that they would be restructuring the company. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had founded a holding company named Alphabet Inc. that Google would be a subsidiary.
Page and Brin would shift to roles as the CEO and President of Alphabet Inc. while their Director of Product, Sundar Pichai would become the CEO of Google.
Sundar Pichai was the person who suggested that Google create its own browser back in 2008.
This shift in roles moved Brin and Page from having day-to-day roles within Google to more advisory roles. It was in 2019 that Brin and Page decided to step away from the company completely.
In December of 2019, Page and Brin announced that they would be stepping away completely from day-to-day operations roles with Alphabet Inc. They would be moving Sundar Pichai to the role of CEO of both Google and Alphabet.
Their staff was not surprised many suggested it was their dislike of being in the public eye. Others stated it could be from the years of scandal.
Scandal Surrounding Google & Alphabet
From being sued for ignoring copyright laws to extra-marital affairs, Google and Alphabet have been the subjects of countless lawsuits and scandal.
The biggest scandal that Google has been the subject of would have to be the Antitrust charges. These were first leveled against the company in the EU and eventually led to other countries like the US and Australia doing the same.
In 2018, Google was at the center of the tech labor movement due to dozens of stories concerning sexual harassment, anti-LGBTQ+ views, and anti-immigrant views within its walls.
Sergey Brin also had an affair with one of his employees in 2014. You can find a full timeline of Google scandals here.
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