History of Google
Can you imagine a world without search engines? Before the invention of Archie, a simple yet effective web-based search engine, by Alan Emtage in 1990, finding anything online was less than pleasant. This was a turning point for internet users as it was closely followed by the launch of many other bigger and better search engines, including Excite, Yahoo, Infoseek, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, and of course the now ever-popular Google. Although search engines populate highly personalized, contextual search results in a fraction of a second, there is more than what meets the eye. This, more so in the case of Google, the world leader in online search, with its mammoth 88.47% market share, not to mention its numerous other products and services. If you have forever wondered about the history of Google, including how it took over the world of internet search, this post is for you. We take you through a timeline of Google’s most landmark moments, right from its humble beginnings to its ambitious plans for the future.
Google also made many noteworthy changes to its search algorithm in the 2010s, thereby affecting the history of SEO. Technical SEO experts were compelled to take stock of the Panda (2011), Penguin (2012), Hummingbird (2013), and other major changes. While the Panda update was meant to stop low-quality, spammy sites from ranking highly, the Penguin update penalized those that bought links from link-building networks. The Hummingbird update was another major step towards easy, conversational search that is both meaningful and contextual. The 2017 Big Daddy update helped throw light on the relationship between backlinks and sites, canonicalization of URLs, redirects, etc. In 2018, the Mobile Speed algorithm update was rolled out, confirming that mobile page speed is indeed a ranking factor.
Some Popular Products in The History of Google
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Gmail
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Google Books
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YouTube
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Google Earth
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Google Android Operating System
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Google Chrome
Conclusion
Google today has offices in 50 countries and employs around 60,000 people. Its many products are used by billions across the globe and have become an integral part of our lives. It is one of the biggest success stories of our times and does not show any signs of slowing down or foregoing its top spot. From being at least five times faster than other contemporary search engines and having a much deeper site index to prioritising the relevancy/context of search results and snippets that are query-specific, Google has reinvented itself from time to time. While its future looks brighter than ever, users and webmasters around the world wait with bated breath to see what they come up with next.