Who Owns Google?- With its history

In this article, we will see the answer to the question ‘Who Owns Google?’ and with its history.

Google is a multinational technology corporation based at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, California. The company serves worldwide and is among the “Big Five” American information technology companies, which also include, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon. Google is actively involved in various categories of technological industry such as the internet, cloud computing, computer hardware, artificial intelligence, and advertising.  Google has an average annual revenue of more than $66 billion and employs more than 100,000 employees as of 2021. Google is owned by the holding company, Alphabet Inc.

History

Google started as a university research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in 1996. It was established as a company in September 1998.

Google went public in 2004, listing as a publicly-traded company. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, together are the co-owners of a majority of the company’s shares, and also own 56% of the voting rights. 

In 2015, google went under reorganization, to become a solely owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Today Google is the largest subsidiary owned by Alphabet Inc., while also serving as a holding company for internet properties and other assets owned by Alphabet. 

The company has since grown and developed exponentially. Google has acquired and partnered with several other tech companies that served a whole different purpose than the Google search engine. 

Google.com, today is the world’s most visited website and also the most popularly used search engine. It is ranked second on the Forbes list of most valuable brands. 

Ownership

Alphabet Inc. based in Mountain View, California, is the owner company of Google. Alphabet Inc. was created in 2015 when Google went through reconstruction and became the parent company for Google as well as other companies that formerly served as the subsidiaries for google. The company is co-founded and owned by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. 

Google is the world’s fourth-largest technological company and also has a place in Forbes’ list of the world’s most valuable companies. 

Alphabet Inc. has an average annual revenue of more than $100 billion as of 2020 and employs more than 100,000 employees. 

Alphabet Inc. is a public limited company, with its stocks shared publicly on the stock exchange. It is traded on the NASDAQ Class A as GOOGL, and on NASDAQ Class C as GOOG. 

Alphabet Inc. was founded in October 2015, after the then Google CEO Larry Page, announced in August 2015 about the company’s intentions of creating a public holding company. The company was created to narrow Google’s scope by transferring subsidiaries previously owned by Google to Alphabet. 

Alphabet Inc. owns Google and several other companies including Calico, Nest, Fiber, Verily, etc.

Subsidiaries of Alphabet Inc.

Alphabet is a multinational technological holdings company owned by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The company owns several technological companies and businesses making it one of the biggest technological companies in the world. 

Alphabet Inc. owns the following subsidiaries.

Google: American multinational technology company, Google is one of the biggest names in the tech industry in today’s world. The company has its involvement in various businesses like advertising, cloud computing, and is also the world’s biggest and most popular search engine. The company is operated under the leadership of Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, and Ruth Porat the CFO. 

1. Calico: Calico is a biotech research and development company. Calico has its headquarters based in San Francisco, California. The company is also known as Calico Life Sciences and was founded by Bill Maris in 2013. The company is funded by Alphabet Inc., and Google and is involved in research in the field of antiaging and combating diseases. Calico is an acronym for California Life Company. 

2. CapitalG: CapitalG is a privately operated equity company owned by Alphabet Inc. The company started operating in 2013 and was formerly known as Google Capital. The company focuses on investing in developing technological companies. CapitalG provides growing companies, and tech startups with profit potentials, with Google’s resources in people, knowledge, culture, and guidance to support these companies to prosper.

3. Verily: Verily Life Sciences or Verily is a research company dedicated to the study of Life Sciences. The company operates in the health care industry as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Verily was founded in 2015 and currently operates under CEO Andrew Conrad. 

4. DeepMind: DeepMind Technologies is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. based in 6 Pancras Square, London. The company was founded in September 2010 and is involved in operations and research in the field of artificial intelligence. DeepMind has established research centers in Canada, France, and the US. It was acquired by Google in 2014 and was later transferred to Alphabet Inc., the parent company to Google.

5. X Development: X development is a research and development service founded by Google in 2010. X development is a semi-secret organization, which now is a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. X development is also based in California and works on projects such as Google’s self-driving car, etc. The company was renamed X after it became an independent Alphabet company in 2015. 

6. Sidewalk Labs: Sidewalk Labs is Alphabet Inc.’s urban innovation organization. The company was established in 2015 and is based in New York City. Sidewalk Labs has been involved in projects such as development advisory service, etc.

7. Waymo: Waymo is a California-based self-directed driving technology company. The company is owned by Alphabet Inc. and is the only commercially used self-driving service that functions without the presence of a safety backup driver. The company also develops technologies for use in other vehicles. 

8. Wing: Wing is a drone-based delivery service subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. The company was developed in 2012 as a project under X developments. The wing is based in Mountain View, California, and operates in countries such as United States, Australia, Finland, etc. The wing became the first American drone delivery company to obtain Air operator’s certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration. The certificate allows the wing to function the same way as an airline in the USA.

More about Google

Growth and Acquisitions

Google, over the years, has witnessed incredible exponential growth in business as well as technology. 

• In March 1999, only after nine months of operating as an independent company, Google moved offices from Palo Alto, California, to Silicon Valley.
• In June 2000, google replaced Inktomi to become the default search engine for Yahoo!, which was then the most popular website in the world.
• In 2003, Google shifted offices again. The company moved from silicon valley to Mountain View, California, where it is also based currently.
• Google had become the everyday household word by 2004. It was already the most popular search engine in the world. 
• In 2004, google became a publicly traded company, with its stocks traded publicly for purchase on the stock market. 
• Google procured YouTube, a video viewing and uploading website in November 2006.
• By May 2011, Google had more than one billion monthly visitors worldwide. The company processes over 3 billion searches per day. Google established 11 data centers around the world, operating several thousand servers in each, to manage the searches from around the world. 
• In 2012 Google purchased Motorola Mobility. The company was purchased for $12.5 billion making it the most expensive of all acquisitions by Google. This acquisition was made to compete against other technology companies like Apple, and Microsoft.
• Google bought Waze in 2013 and launched its biotech development company Calico, the same year. 
• In 2104, Google acquired DeepMind technologies, the British AI company for $400 million. 
• Google went through a reorganization in 2015, leading to the establishment of the holdings company Alphabet Inc., which now serves as the parent company to Google as well as all its previously owned subsidiaries.
• In 2019, Google made announcements stating their future endeavors in cloud gaming through a platform called Google Stadia.

Products and services

Google provides the users with several services online and some offline as well.

1. Search Engine: Google is the world’s most used search engine. Google processes billions of searches each day. These searches are processed through the keywords used. The searches provide users with infinite information through results on the searched subject. In 2002, Google introduced a new service with the name Google News that summarized various news articles from across the internet and made them available to the users. Search Engine services by Google also include the service with the name Google Books, which provides the user with a preface or abstracts on the information contained in the books that are searched.

2. Advertising: Google serves as a global platform for advertising. Most of the company’s revenues are generated via advertising. Google provides advertising services for almost every product there is. From apps to YouTube videos, and several other products are advertised on Google. 

3. Consumer services: Google offers services such as Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Docs, Google Assistant, Google Sheets, Google Slides, etc., to the users. These services include video conferencing and social interaction apps like Google Duo, and Google Meet, and Online classroom aid by Google classroom.

Conclusion

Alphabet Inc. is an American holdings company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The company was established in 2015 after Google went through a reorganization. The company serves as the parent company to Google and all other subsidiaries and businesses.

FAQs

1. Who is the owner of Google?

Google is owned by the holdings company Alphabet Inc.

2. What is the annual revenue earned by Alphabet Inc.?

Alphabet Inc. earns annual revenue of more than $100 billion.

3. Who owns Alphabet Inc.?

Alphabet Inc. is owned by the co-founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are also the founders of Alphabet Inc., and the majority shareholders in the company.