Google was born September 1998 as a small privately held company co-founded by two Stanford University students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in Menlo Park, California… in a garage. It had around $1,000,000 investments.

In 2004 Google turned a Revenue of $961 Million, which produced a net of $106 million and, if you consider Ebay produced $447 million that year, isn’t much. Now, with a market value of market value in excess of $125 billion (Sept 2006 - BBC News), is generating over $10 billion in revenue.

How did Google get this good? Well, advertising alone turns over most of the profit, despite Google branding itself as more than a search company, but it couldn’t have done it without the audience.

Google got very lucky in it’s timing. It came about just as the Internet exploded into our homes.  You might argue that there were other companies like Yahoo, Microsoft and Netscape long before there was Google, and that’s a very good point.

Since Google was founded it has had a very positive public image. Playful; fun; friendly; caring; simple are all common words that people would associate with Google.  This is very important because, as I said, they need an audience to generate revenue.

In order for Google to maintain the level of trust and make people come to use Google first, it’s important to have a wide range of products that the ’searcher’ can use.  Google has chosen to do this by investing and acquiring small companies.  Why does this work? Well, small companies tend to focus on being better and more passionate than the big guys.

See Google acquisitions on Wikipedia.

Productivity within Google is good because they treat their staff well.  I’ve always felt that this is one of the most important principles in business.  Google allows it’s employees to spend 20% of their time on non work-related projects.  This is a unique and clever way of increasing productivity. People work harder because it’s going to be something they enjoy.  And, in fact, some of Google’s leading products like Gmail, Adsense and News have come from this 1 day a week ‘personal project’ time.

The Googleplex has a very good reputation for a relaxed and fun working environment and that is where, I think, Google has an advantage. A company that is seen to care is a company that people want to work (and work hard) for.  Google provide free food, gym, and childcare on site for it’s employees.

Google is a very well managed company that seems to have a firm grasp of what it takes to grow and I think they will for some time to come.