Google is an Internet based company that was incorporated in 1998 with a mission to systematize universal information and make it readily accessible to the public. This company has grown from a garage-based startup to a global business with a presence in every country that has an Internet connection. It is arguably one of the most successful companies of the last decade with the primary function to browse the Internet.
Google has over 100 subsidiaries, according to the SEC, some of which are listed below: Android, Inc., Google International LLC, Google Payment Corp., JG Productions Inc., Picasa LLC, PiFidelity LLC, The Salinger Group LLC, Upstartle, LLC, YouTube, LLC, Endoxon Ltd., Google Canada Corporation, Google Ireland Holdings,Skydocks GmbH, Double Click,Feedburner, on so forth.
Google is strategically focused on cloud based apps and it has extensive data centers in several continents to enable it operate at scale. It always uses a ‘cloud-first’ strategy to compete against other software companies. A good example is google documents, which is Google’s version of the popular and very successful Microsoft Word application, located in cloud base.
Historical perspective on the organization
The history of Google dates back to 1995 when the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both Post-Graduate students at Stanford University met. In 1996 they had a school project called ‘Stanford Digital Library Project’ which had the objective of building a universal digital library. In other to achieve this, they built an internet application called ‘backrub’ which would index pages and websites on the internet, and classify them according to certain criteria. The enormity of this project that was hosted on the university’s server got over whelmed after a year of hosting it.