Google is the world’s biggest straw man which keeps getting built up, torn down, and then built up again. Many of other search engines promised to be a better search engines than Google but they could never work the way like Google does today.

Google is the only single name in the Technology platform that is well balanced to rule. Google is undoubtedly ruling the internet economy. From starting in the history of Google it’s been all the way up for Google. It had its impact in the industry with more than 150 products and will continue to grow with its ever increasing portfolio of the products. This is likely to happen but for these 10 companies which have posed some serious competition to Google.

Considering the history of Google Following are the examples of alleged Google killers, and to consider whether any of them are, in fact, likely to crush Google to death.

Google Killers

AllTheWeb:

AlltheWeb was an Internet search engine that made its debut in mid-1999. It grew out of FTP Search Google has been a Linux community favorite for a long time. But does it finally face some competition from AllTheWeb.com. There used to be a debate about which search engine was best. And maybe there still is, but we haven’t been hearing much about it because Google is pretty much it. Even Yahoo uses Google. Google is the default command-line interface to the Web…and well worth paying for.”

Brainboost:

Brainboost is a metasearch engine outlined to give distinguished answers to questions asked in natural language. Presently it only supported English. The Brainboost engine uses machine learning and natural language processing AI techniques to answer the questions. It was bought by Answers.com in 2005, and is now a feature of that site.

Cuil:

Cuil is a search engine which was developed by a team of ex-Googlers and other top excellent people from institutions such as IBM and Altavista. This Google killer Cuil was launched on 28th July, 2008 and made declaration of being world’s largest search engine, indexing 10 times more pages as Microsoft and 3 times more than Google. This new search engine seemed poised to take on Google in a head-to-head competition.

Cuil’s approach was different to search and rank Websites. Google’s trick is to search sites for keywords and then rank the sites depends upon acceptance and popularity. The principle after this approach is pretty much simple: If majority of people link to a page, it must be pretty good. The difficulty was that Cuil didn’t quite live up to user expectations when it launched. In fact, the site closed for business on September 17th, 2010.

Freebase:

Freebase is a large database. The aim of the database is to centralize data as much as possible, and acknowledge participants to freely edit and access data. Developers can juice down the information from Freebase via a set of APIs and add it to their web applications. It also builds relationships among highly structured pieces of data, something that can’t easily be done with distributed data controlled by different entities.

Freebase is an example and even it’s unhealthy to talk about any startup killing Google or in competition with it. Freebase is doing just fine, and the sign that it’s really a big deal will be people thinking of it as an alarming substitute to Wikipedia, not that it runs Google out of business.

Live Search

Live Search was integrated into the Live Search and Ad Platform overseas by Satya Nadella, part of Microsoft’s Platform and Systems division. As part of this difference, Live Search was incorporated with Microsoft adCenter. Microsoft is trying to boost its advertising profits by showing irrelevant ads. That’ll hurt Microsoft long term because anyone on Live will know the ads really have nothing to do with the search being done. Google’s resolutions will supremacy to more regular advertising users. Microsoft delights searchers as something to take advantage of, while Google shows far more appropriate ads in front of a searcher.

Powerset:

This is a company based in San Francisco, California that is developing a natural language search engine for the internet. In July 2008, Powerset agreed to be acquired by Microsoft. If Powerset aids in the eradication of Google, it will presumably be as an enabling technology in a future version of Live Search, not as a stand-alone service.

Quaero:

European research program with an aim of developing multimedia with multilingual indexing and management tools for both professional and common man applications. This technology is grounded by the OSEO. Quaero is a French project with the assistance of different German partners. Quaero was made widely known by Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder during the French-German ministerial conference in 2005. This application has been the focus of the attention of many news articles. As a result, Quaero is often cited as a European competitor to Google, as well as other commercial search engines. Lots of folks, particularly after French President Jacques Chirac giddily talked about it as Europe’s answer to Google’s search dominance in January, 2006. Quaero site has very little to say what it’s up to, and doesn’t even indicate that it plans to build a search engine.

Teoma:

Teoma was an Internet search engine founded in 2000 by Professor Apostolos Gerasoulis and his fellow workers at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Teoma was exclusive because of its link popularity algorithm. Unlike Google’s Page Rank, Teoma’s technology analyzed links in context to rank a web page’s importance within its particular subject. Majority parts of Teoma’s relevancy algorithm were plant upon the methodology IBM developed for its CLEVER project.

Wikia Search:

Wikia Search was Jimbo Wales’ approach to defeat Google. The content of this search engine was created by its userbase, so it must show what users are actually looking for, right? – wrong; as with Wikipedia, Wikia Search was easy to destroy and spam due to its confidence on users concluding what belongs in the search results. Wikia Search was a big bomb in the search engine box office. Only Wikia employees and fans used it, and Jimbo Wales was forced to close the entire project down.

Wisenut:

WiseNut was a crawler-based search engine owned by Looksmart. It debuted as a beta in July 2001 and was officially launched six days before 9/11, when Google was very, very popular but not quite the Web behemoth it would later become. It claims to have the fastest and most cost-effective search technology. It says it can index 50 million pages a day using only 100 off- the-shelf servers. When a new search engine comes up, it’s important to know which document types it can index. Our search engine ranking study showed that WiseNut is able to index the most documents that Google is capable of indexing, too.

Wolfram|Alpha:

Wolfram Alpha is an answer-engine developed by Wolfram Research. It is an online service that answers real questions straight by computing the answer from structured data, instead of providing a document lists or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might. It was announced in March 2009 by British scientist Stephen Wolfram, and was released to the public on May 15, 2009. Wolfram Alpha is designed to answer complex search queries by returning a single result. Unlike Google, which searches the entire web for the keywords contained within a search query and then returns thousands of relevant web pages, Wolfram Alpha aims to understand the question and return the correct answer by mining its vast database of information and statistics.

Google Acquisitions

dMarc Broadcasting:

Google took over this radio advertising company way back in 2006. The deal was worth $102 million. To promote dMarc to larger audience base, Google merged it with AdWords platform making history.

You Tube:

Google acquired YouTube for a staggering price of $1.65 billion in October 2006; one of the highest acquisitions in corporate history then. YouTube, the consumer video/media company for people to watch and share standard videos persists to function as a Google subsidiary and currently it has become the exclusive hub for video lovers.

Double Click:

After acquiring Doubleclick, Google thwarts Microsoft in online search as it obtains a promising entry into the business of display advertising. Google purchased DoubleClick for $3.1 billion in April 2007. Doubleclick fundamentally administers ad service and support to AdSense.

Postini:

Postini was acquired by Google in July 2007 and it cost $625 million. Postini is a web security and web archiving service provider that also provides e-mail service.

Admeld:

This acquisition deal costed $400 million to Google. Admeld was later merged with Invite Media platform and Double Click platform. Admeld is better known in the publishing sector as an advertising optimization platform.

Slide.com:

It is a web2.0 company that was formed to develop software for photo sharing on social networking sites such as Flickr and Facebook. It is known as a third-party developer of applications for Facebook. Google took over this company in the month of August 2010 by shelling out $182 million.

AdMob:

Google purchased mobile ad company AdMob for $750 million on November 2009. AdMob has been particularly popular on the iPhone but with this acquisition Google’s mobile advertising solutions got a amazing boost.

ITA Software:

ITA Software is travel industry software was bought by Google for $700 million in July 2010. Google’s travel and flight search got the raise it was looking for only after acquiring ITA Software.

On2 Technologies:

This $133 million worth deal took place way back in 2009 when Google wanted to promote its WebM video format to premium quality. On2 Technologies based in the US is a video codec technology designing company.

Motorola mobility:

Google history created again when news of Google venturing into the contemplative phones business sent thunders in the technology world. It acquired Motorola mobility at a large price of $12.5 billion on August 15, 2011. With this milestone Google can additionally raise the android market which is making a buzz across world. However it maintains that Android will still be an open sourced platform.

Conclusion:

Google history says Google is passionate for expansion, so Google is increasingly breaking grounds and launching latest products. There has been a continuous boost in Google’s earnings. The growth of number of internet users have boosted revenues further. Google is focusing on forming new partnerships. They have already completed acquisitions of new companies. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. They have stuck to it from the early history of Google and hope to do so in future.

Growth of Google

Since the Growth of Google from initial stages, “Google” is the only word that comes first when search engines are discussed and examined. Google is world’s biggest and most used search engine from the early history of Google. It has become a synonym for internet. All websites try hard to be seen on the top of the page of Google Search results. What is a reason that Growth Google is so big and generous? And what is so special in it? Google is the brain child of Larry Page and Sergey Brin which completely changed the world of web. Google is also accepted as a dictionary word. From the review of growth of Google it is also the most visited and number 1 website as per the Alexa ratings. From starting till now, growth of Google has been on boosted by acquiring around 100 business ventures and has become a huge business empire of its own kingdom.

Major Milestones in the growth of Google

More than 4000 million searches are being conducted every month on it. It has localized websites for more than 150 countries. There are above 117 language options to view your Google page. Google search engine is reinforced by a backend of over 80,000 to 100,000 servers. AdWords and AdSense, the two advertising programs came into existence in 2000 and 2003 respectively. In 2004 they went to public with an IPO(initial public offering) in USA and raised $1.67 Billion. In 2005, they constructed major partnerships with NASA & AOL. The Google stock was added to S&P 500 index in 2006. In 2007 the company employment has extended over to 10,000 employees. The graph of growth of Google has only been going up.

The current scene:

Google, Inc. is listed on NASDAQ with symbol GOOG. The current share price is $627.42 as on December 10, 2011. Eric Schmidt is the CEO & Chairman. Larry Page remains co-founder and president, products and Sergey Brin remains co-founder and president, technology. The stock has been a front runner among tech stocks. But they have never given a dividend to shareholders. Growth of Google has been remarkable since its establishment.

Google Adwords

Founders of Google search engine Launched Google AdWords program in October 2000. This program allowed any advertiser to purchase individualized and affordable keyword advertising that would appear directly on the google search results page. The Google AdWords program was an addition of Google’s premium sponsorship program announced in August 2000. This extended service was available on Google’s homepage since then, where users will find all the essential design tools to get an online advertising campaign initiated.

As a beta debut in earlier October, Google AdWords had seen extensive adoption by nearly 350 businesses and advertising agencies all across world. Google AdWords offered advertisers the same exceptionally targeted ad serving technology as the premium sponsorship program which is clearly understandable self-service system, allowing advertisers to sign up and monitor a campaign directly from the Google website.

“Google has cautiously developed and scaled the AdWords program to confront the requirements of any business by offering a one-stop resource that is economic and easily used,” said Larry Page, “Google AdWords offers the most technologically advanced features available, enabling any advertiser to quickly design a flexible program that best fits its online marketing goals and budget.”

Google AdWords program is outlined to provide an easily advertising method for every business, including brick-and-mortar retail outlets such as electronic or home furnishing stores and small family-run businesses such as restaurants or floral shops. Google has differentiated its AdWords program with various characteristics, including the ability to fine-tune ads in real-time, post new ads instantly, monitor ad statistics, and track inventory and cost-per-day impression estimates so advertisers can pace their actual spending limits.

Google AdWords program offers the following features:

• New ads appear instantly: Ads are online immediately after an order is placed.
• Ad preview tools: Shows how an advertisement will look before it’s posted on Google’s search results page.
• Unlimited ad creation: Advertisers can create and run as many different versions of an ad to see which ones get the best response from users.
• Advanced keyword targeting options: Several targeting options are available to enable the fine-tuning of a campaign, including keywords, negative keywords, phrase matches, and exact matches.
• Web-based reporting tools: Instant access to online reporting tools that deliver click-through rates and number of impressions delivered.
• Ad performance feedback: Advertisers see real-time feedback in the form of a visitor interest bar–to gauge the overall effectiveness and popularity of an advertisement through this Google service.

Google Languages in 2000

Google Inc., one of the expeditious growing search engines on internet, introduced 10 new language versions of the award-winning Google search engine on 9^th May 2000. The extended service allowed users to administer searches in 10 different languages like French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish. By year-end of 2000, the Google planned to introduce additional languages, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

This extended international Google service was ready on Google’s home page where a link could be used to easily customize languages as preferred. By this service users could restrict language, and view versions of Google homepage, search tips, and help pages in their preferred languages. Language preferences could also be saved for return visits to the Google website.

Google’s new international search technology during 2000!!

Google’s new international search technology had already been greeted with well excited response from the Google user community. Although in beta, web surfers from all across world responded favorably to the wide variety of new, localized characteristics.

“Google’s search engine has always had strong global fascination,” said Larry Page, Google CEO and co-founder. “We attribute this success to the site’s simplicity of design, ease of use, and highly appropriate results. By localizing our search services to new international communities, Google will open up a host of new revenues, sales, and partnership channels.”

As according to Jupiter Communications, a top leading provider of research on Internet trends, 80% of all websites on the Internet that time were in English version. The research firm estimated that 55% of all websites will be published in different languages other than English by 2003.

Google was designed by Larry and Sergey to scale with the accelerated growth and progress of the Internet all across the world. Google launched beta version in the month of September 1998, while it went live as a commercial website a year after. The search engine had developed rapidly growing base of loyal users worldwide. During that time, international users made about 35 percent of the Google users’ community. Company’s success continued to grow with large monthly increase in worldwide website traffic, industry awards, and happy users.

Google’s search engine offered its users simple, speedy, and highly appropriate search results for every internet-connected computer, including wireless devices such as Internet-enabled mobile phones. In start, Google was based on various innovative and creative technologies that ensured most relevant results would always come on top of the page. This scalable resolution of search allowed Google to get high roll in the internet world.

Michael Moritz (L) and John Doerr

Google also made a proclamation that Michael Moritz, general partner of Sequoia Capital, and John Doerr, general partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Buyers, had joined Google’s board of directors. That time Michael Moritz was director of numerous companies, including Yahoo, eToys, Quote.com, eGroups, PlanetRx, Flextronics, and WebVan. John Doerr was a co-founder of @Home and director of several high growth internet companies, including Amazon.com, Drugstore.com, Handspring, Healtheon/WebMD, Homeshop.com, Intuit, and Sun Microsystems.

Larry Page, CEO and co-founder of Google said “We are delighted to have venture capitalists of this caliber help us build the company”. “We plan to aggressively grow the company and technology so we can continue to provide the best search experience on the web. Sergey Brin, Google president and co-founder of Google said “A perfect search engine will process and understand all the information in the world,”. “That is where Google is headed.”

Google employed various key technologies to bring search results of original correctness and quality. Those technologies expanded Stanford University research into large-scale data mining of the Web.

That time Google’s technology features included PageRank, a patent-pending, and the objective of this technology features the significance of WebPages. PageRank is calculated by resolving an equation of 500 million variables and two billion terms. Google’s innovative and ingenious user interface includes charismatic summaries, a cached web, and the time-saving “I’m feeling lucky” button.

Michael Moritz said that “Google should become the gold standard for search on the Internet,”. “Larry and Sergey’s company has the power to turn Internet users everywhere into devoted and life-long Googlers.”

John Doerr said that “Search is intensely challenging, and improvements in the technology are significant,”. He also said that “100 Million web searches take place every day. Quickly finding the right information is critical for web users in many professions. Google revolutionizes search technology and delivers information in a way that focuses on the user.”

Craig Silverstein

Craig Silverstein was the first employee hired by Google’s co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page and actualized many of the authentic IT elements to buttress Google’s expansion and growth. At that time Craig Silverstein was on leave from Stanford. That time he was pursuing his PhD from the same university in computer science, with a focus on information recuperation and data mining. Craig contributed his expertise in compression algorithms to Google while it was still a research project at Stanford University. His additional academic pursuits include super-efficient versions of basic data structures such as hash tables as well as effective accumulation of large data sets using Scatter/Gather and latent semantic indexing as it chronicle to assembling, which he discovered at Xerox PARC.

Craig Silverstein did his graduation in honors with a Bachelor of computer science degree from Harvard College. From there he also received Phi Beta Kappa distinction, the Microsoft Technical Scholarship, and two times received the Derek Bok Award for his teaching superiority.

About Craig Silverstein as Google’s director of technology

Craig Silverstein is Google’s director of technology. Sometimes Silverstein designated to as a co-founder of the Google as he was the very first employee of the company. As Employee No. 1, there’s no one more excellent & well equipped to talk about Google’s technology, characteristic, and long run directions. In a telephonic interview, Craig was very open about Google’s working and where it’s going.

Just after few days, Jeffrey Dean, dignified engineer in the Google Systems Research Lab, gave a keystone speech at Online Information 2002 in London. He shared his views about Google and on the future of searching. Together, Silverstein and Dean offer an excellent overview of about Google–its present and its future.

Like Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Craig Silverstein was Stanford University graduate. He claimed that he would complete his computer science degree, just only because he promised his mother to do so. As he was having his interest in search and IT concurrently with his education, Craig Silverstein thought it was natural to go from grad school to Google. “I’ve been there since the beginning,” he said. “It was a very small tiny company that’s grown to a much larger one, doing lots of things in information. It’s not just search.”

Acknowledging that about Google‘s mission to organize world’s information to make it universally accessible and useful, both Craig Silverstein and Jeffrey Dean showed evidences of passionate optimism when they describe the company, its achievements, and its future. “It’s an overall good to society,” says Silverstein. “That’s very gratifying to me.”

Google’s mission statement is, “to organize the world information and make it universally accessible and useful”. History of Google is genuinely analogous to the story of other big shots like Microsoft and Apple. A couple of simple guys, started working on a project that would one day open a whole new world for the rest of us.

How Google got its name?

Back in history of Google, it was said that in accordance to few people both co-founders contradicted on just about everything during their first meeting. In 1996, then firm friends and both of them computer science grad students began developing a search engine called BackRub. This search engine had been operational on their University’s servers just for a year as it started taking up to much bandwidth at Stanford. So they decided to switch servers and renamed the search engine in 1997, calling it Googol. The name arrived from a mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. The usage of the term imitates its objective to systematize an enormous amount of information on the web.

Google in 1999

In August of 2008, Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, wrote a cheque of $100,000 in the name of ‘Google’, to a company that didn’t even exist that time. It was at this brief of time they understood what they had and incorporated the name Google Inc. Their accomplishments were considerable, but not great enough to convince investors. As it was hard to get investors, history of Google began struggling for financial support. Bechtolsheim was among few who saw real potential of what these boys had developed.

History of Google Inc!! Initial steps till now…

In September Larry and Sergey moved to Menlo Park, California and had setup their workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage. After that they went on to file for incorporation in California on 4^thSeptember, 1998.  They opened a bank account in the name of Google Inc after just finishing this essential work. After the establishment, Google started making history when they started hiring employees for their new business. By December of the same year Google hired their first employee, Craig Silverstein. Eventually, Google emerged as one of the Top 100 websites in 1998. During the initial phase they were successful to get awesome reviews.

Mentalplex

By February 1999, number of employees at Google rose to 8 which made Google to look out for a real office. During end of year Google had 40 employees. In 2000 they baffled everyone by playing their 1st April Fool’s Day joke, Mentalplex. The hoax had searchers believing Google could read their mind. This eventually became a Google tradition. Latest attributes were added, such as 10 languages, Google Ad Words and Google toolbar.

By the end of year 2001 they had accelerated and launched Image Search and indexed 3 billion web documents. It was a great achievement in the entire history of Google. By 2002 they added 72 language choices, and also launched their 1st hardware, a yellow box for businesses called Google Search Appliance. Next in the history of Google, they additionally launched Google News and Froogle, a shopping search. Froogle is now Google Product Search and is being frequently used by almost everyone.

Google had also launched Gmail, Google Buzz, Google Trends and more. They have acquired Blogger and YouTube. Google Inc has its offices across world. In history of Google, till the end of 2009 it had employed over 19,800. Their offices have 5 star chefs and special areas for their employees to take naps. They have been going strong ever since, making them the largest and best search engine website today, with multiple enrichments. Google is creating history by launching unique features day by day.

NAME: Sergey Brin
OCCUPATION: Entrepreneur, Engineer
BIRTH DATE: August 21, 1973
EDUCATION: University of Maryland at College Park, Stanford University
PLACE OF BIRTH: Moscow, Russia
ZODIAC SIGN: Leo

Sergy Brin

Sergey Mihailovich Brin was born in Moscow, Russia in 1973 to Michael and Eugenia Brin. When Sergey was 6 years old, the Brin family moved from Russia to the United States in 1979 in order to escape Jewish persecution. There in US his father Michael Brin joined University of Maryland as a mathematics professor and his mother Eugenia Brin joined NASA.

Sergey’s Education-

Sergey attended grade school at Paint branch Montessori School in Maryland, US. After his high school he enrolled in the University of Maryland, College Park in 1990 to study Computer Science and Mathematics, where he received his Bachelors of Science in May 1993 with high honors.
After graduating from Maryland, Sergey received a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation, which allowed him to study for his masters’ degree in Computer Science at Stanford University. Sergey received his masters’ degree in August 1995 ahead of schedule in the process of his Ph.D. studies.
Though still enrolled in the Stanford doctoral program, Sergey suspended his Ph.D. studies indefinitely while he is working at Google. Sergey also received an honorary MBA from the Instituto de Empresa, Madrid, Spain.

Sergey’s Personal Life-

As of 2005, Sergey has been estimated to be worth US $11 billion and is sixteenth in Forbes Top 400 list and also ranked the 2nd richest American under the age of 40.
Sergey Brin got married to Anne Wojcicki in May 2007. His wife is a scientist in biotechnology and famous for her genetic company 23andMe. They have one son, Benji, born in December 2008.

Despite of Brin’s success, he remained fairly unknown to public. He does not spend a lavish life; drive an inexpensive car- Toyota Prius and rents a two-bedroom flat.

Sergey is also a keen gymnast and takes trapeze lessons. He often dines in San Francisco’s Russian restaurant along with his friends and family. He also supports organizations like the Hebrew immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) and many more.

NAME: Larry Page
OCCUPATION: Entrepreneur, Engineer
BIRTH DATE: March 26, 1973
EDUCATION: University of Michigan, Stanford University
PLACE OF BIRTH: East Lansing, Michigan
ZODIAC SIGN: Aries

Larry Page

Larry grew up in East Lansing, Michigan area. His father was a professor of computer science at Michigan State University and also he was the pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence. He gifted his son Larry a computer when he was just six years old.

Larry Page went to Okemos Montessori in Michigan from 1975 to 1979. He later graduated from East Lansing High School in 1991. He earned undergraduate degree in computer engineering from university of Michigan. Later he pursued his master and PhD degree at Stanford University. Before joining Stanford, Larry worked with two companies- Advanced Management Systems in Washington, D.C. and CogniTek in Evanston, Illinois.

Larry Page Personal life-

Larry Page married Lucinda Southworth in 2007. Lucinda Southworth is a research scientist and sister of actress and model Carrie Southworth.

Page is a fan of alternate energy and is known as an active investor in alternate energy companies like Telsa Motors. He also promotes adoption of plug-in hybrid electric cars and other alternate energy investments. Page along with Brin has also produced 2007 Hollywood film Broken Arrows.

How did they meet-

Larry and Sergey met while studying for PhD at Stanford University and both went on to work with on a project to organize the Internet and improve the way people search for information. They first nicknamed the project “BackRub” as it relied heavily on the number and relevancy of links pointing to a website (later called Page Rank).

Birth of Google-

The domain name Google was registered in the year of 1997. The name Google derived from the word “googol” which means one followed by 100 zeros. Larry and Page relocated their servers from Page’s dorm room to a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California. In 1998, Brin and Page finally quit their studies at Stanford and started Google as a privately held company. Larry served as the CEO and Sergey was the President. Google gained its popularity very soon thus forcing the company to expand its computing power, improve its technology and also to move to a bigger premise. It had set up its head quarter named Googleplex at Mountain View, California.

Birth of Google