Here is the translation of the history section into English:
1. Early Years: From a Garage Project (1996-1998)
- 1996: Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin collaborated on a search engine project called “BackRub” at Stanford University. Its core technology, the PageRank algorithm, assessed the importance of websites based on backlink analysis.
- 1997: The project was renamed “Google,” a play on the mathematical term “googol” (the number1followed by100zeros), representing their mission to organize the world’s immense amount of information.
- 1998: After receiving a 100,000USD investment from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, the company was officially incorporated on September4in a garage in Menlo Park, California.
- Business Development: There was almost no business model during this period. The two founders focused on perfecting the PageRank algorithm. They initially attempted to sell the technology to Yahoo or Excite for approximately 1millionUSD, but were rejected.
- Revenue Level: Near zero. The company relied primarily on Stanford University research grants and the 100,000USD investment check from Andy Bechtolsheim in 1998 to maintain operations.
2. Rapid Expansion and Commercialization (2000-2004)
- 2000: Launched AdWords (now Google Ads), establishing a powerful monetization model through keyword-based advertising.
- 2001: Eric Schmidt joined as CEO to bring professional management to the young company.
- 2004: Google went public on NASDAQ (IPO) and launched Gmail with1GB of storage on April1.
- Business Development: Google found its “money printing machine” that sustains its empire—AdWords (2000). This precisely combined search intent with advertising and was followed by the launch of AdSense to extend the advertising network across the entire web.
- Revenue Level:
- 2001: Approximately 86millionUSD.
- 2003: Approximately 960millionUSD.
- 2004 (IPO year): Approximately 3.19billionUSD. Revenue achieved explosive growth within just a few years.
3. Building the Ecosystem (2005-2014)
- 2005: Acquired the Android operating system and launched Google Maps.
- 2006: Acquired YouTube for 1.65billionUSD, solidifying its leadership in the video domain.
- 2008: Launched the Chrome browser, which fundamentally changed the landscape of the web browser market.
- 2011: Larry Page returned as CEO, and the company began investing in forward-looking projects (such as Waymo for self-driving cars).
- Business Development: Established a multi-dimensional ecosystem through large-scale acquisitions (such as Android, YouTube, and DoubleClick). The business model expanded from single search advertising to video advertising, app store revenue sharing (Google Play), and early cloud services.
- Revenue Level:
- 2007: Surpassed the 10billionUSD mark (approximately 16.6billionUSD).
- 2012: Surpassed the 50billionUSD mark.
- 2014: Approximately 66billionUSD. Revenue grew about20times within this decade.
4. Restructuring and the AI Era (2015-Present)
- 2015: Google underwent a massive corporate restructuring to form the parent company Alphabet. Google became its largest subsidiary, and Sundar Pichai took over as Google CEO.
- 2016: Announced an “AI-first” strategy.
- 2023-2025: With the rise of generative AI, Google introduced the Gemini model and fully integrated AI into Search, Workspace, and Cloud services.
- Business Development: Formed the parent company Alphabet, spinning off projects outside of search advertising (such as Waymo and Verily) as “Other Bets.” In recent years, Google Cloud has become the second growth curve, and AI (Gemini) has begun to fully drive search and enterprise services.
- Revenue Level:
- 2017: Revenue surpassed 100billionUSD for the first time (approximately 110.8billionUSD).
- 2021: Benefiting from accelerated digital transformation, revenue jumped to approximately 257.6billionUSD.
- 2024: Annual revenue reached 350billionUSD.
- 2025 (Latest): In the third quarter of 2025, Alphabet set a historical record with quarterly revenue surpassing 100billionUSD (102.35billionUSD) for the first time. The current annual run rate has exceeded 400billionUSD.
Sources: