Case: Google

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Early web search engines

Internet search engines existed before the debut of the public

Web in December 1990:

• The “Who is” user search dates back to 1982

• The Knowbot Information Service multi-network user

search was first implemented in 1989

• The first well documented search engine that searched

content files, namely FTP files was Archie, which debuted
on 10 September 1990

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Copyright Bernard BUISSON 2016
Early web search engines

Prior to September 1993 the World Wide Web was entirely

indexed by hand:

• There was a list of webservers edited by Tim Berners-Lee

and hosted on the CERN webserver.

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Early web search engines

The list in 1992 (fraction):

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Early web search engines

First content search engines :

• The first tool used for searching content (as opposed to

users) on the Internet was Archie, by Alan Emtage, Bill
Heelan and J. Peter Deutsch, computer science students at
McGill University in Montreal

• The rise of Gopher (created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the

University of Minnesota) led to two new search programs,
Veronica and Jughead

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Early web search engines

Early timeline:

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Early web search engines
Alta Vista homepage

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Early web search engines

How they worked:

• Technology: indexes. Ok at the beginning, but easy to trick.

In 1998, a few companies (including the adult-
entertainment industry) knew how to capture traffic for
high-traffic words. In 1998, the majority of results matching
a search for “cars” on Lycos were porn sites

• Business model: Advertising banners. Bad for the user

experience and weak for revenues

• “Portals” (typically Yahoo) wanted users to stay on their

site, so their interest was not to provide very efficient
search results

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When do the two Google founders meet ?

• Sergey Brin and Larry Page meet in the summer of 1995, when they are both
students at the Graduate School of Computer Science at Stanford University,
to get a PhD

• Brin is a second-year student, and Page has just accepted Stanford offer for
admission

• Brin is a one-day guide of San Francisco for first year students

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 Google: the early years

• Google in Susan Wojcicki’s garage (Menlo Park, California), end of 1998, early 1999

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The Page Rank technology

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When do they incorporate a company ?

• Google is incorporated on September 7th 1998, a few days after Page and Brin
met with Andy Bechtolsheim, on the porch of David Cheriton’s home in Palo
Alto (end of August 1998)

• Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems , and its former Chief
Hardware Designer, gave immediately a cheque of $100,000 to Page and Brin,
forcing them to incorporate a company

• David Cheriton, an entrepreneur who acted as faculty advisor for Stanford

students, also invested $100,000 in Google, in September 1998 (but once the
company had been created)

• Brin and Page celebrate at the Burger King

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 Google’s first two investors

• Both invested $100,000 in Google in September 1998

Andy Bechtolsheim David Cheriton

Net worth (January 2015): $ 6.2bn Net worth (March 2017): $ 4.7bn
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 Google: the early years

• Google Beta home page (1998)

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 Google: the early years

• Funds raised by Google, 1998 to 2004

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The industry finds a new business model

• Bill Gross creates GoTo in 1997,

which will become Overture

• Google copied GoTo technology

and launched Adwords in October
2000

• Overture is bought by Yahoo in

July 2003 for $ 1.63bn

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 Google timeline
• Google timeline, 1998 to 2013

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 Google timeline

• Google revenue, 2002- Today

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 Google timeline

• Google share price (since Oct. 2nd 2015: Alphabet Inc. class A shares), 2004- Today

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 Google journey

• Effectuation in the case of Google

Technological Incorporation of Business Mod.

breakthrough Google inc. Breakthrough
(Page Rank) (AdWords)

Search with
business
Search model
without
business
IT project model
without
company
To = 1996 1998 2000 Time

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 Google market share of Search

• First result if you search on Google

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Google market share of Search

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 Google revenue breakdown
• 2001-2009

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 Google profits
• 2010-2014

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The ten biggest market capitalizations
in the world
• As of April 7th, 2017

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And Page and Brin are still two of the
richest people in the world
Forbes ranking, 2017
• Larry Page: $ 48.6 bn
• Sergey Brin: $ 47.3 bn

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