In September this year, Google will celebrate the 15th year since the Google.com domain was registered. There’s no doubt that the company has experienced several growth spurts since then — once a research project at Stanford University, the company is now a multi-billion dollar behemoth that has dominated search. You need only listen to ‘young people these days’ to figure out that ‘just Google it’ is the answer to every question; and even older generations will tell you that being smart person was no small feat back in 27 BG (Before Google).
Google’s clout has gone beyond search and infiltrated several other markets such as email, maps, videos, web browsers, mobile and more recently social networking. The list below features for Google’s four products that are likely to be around for as long as the company’s name suggests.
Page Contents
Google Top Features’ Product On Which We Can Say ” Runs the World “
Google Search
Google is still best known as a search engine, and has an 85 percent share of all searches. Its three main competitors (Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL) have a combined share of 13.8 percent.
In light of these figures, it makes (Ad) sense that Google has close to 50 percent of the online advertising market. Advertising has always brought in most of the company’s revenue (96 percent of $37.9 billion in 2011) so one can safely assume that search will continue to be the company’s primary focus.
Google+
For the past few months there’s been a lot of talk surrounding the future of Google +, particularly with concern as to how it will affect search. About two weeks ago, the company’s launch of “Search Plus Your World” was met with a barrage of criticism. People complained that Google was compromising search relevancy and forcing people to join their social network by favouring it.
Although the dust hasn’t yet settled, Google recently asked its critics to give it time. Facebook and Twitter usage is still much larger, however, and considering that an SEO’s job description entails pandering to Google’s infamous Panda Algorithm; one can expect a lot of companies will be jumping on the Google+ bandwagon soon.
YouTube
In 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion. To date, the video sharing site has hit an average of four billion video views per day, and about 60 hours of video is uploaded to it every minute.
The site represents a huge opportunity for Google to rake in millions outside the revenue generated by traditional search advertising. The company recently disclosed that it makes US$5 billion per year running graphical display ads. This figure is likely to rise, especially as the company says it currently only monetizes $3 billion per week.
Google Chrome
At the start of 2011, Internet Explorer was the preferred browser on the internet, whilst Firefox and Chrome were ranked second and third respectively. In January, the usage gap between Firefox and Chrome was 15%; but by November, Chrome overtook Firefox and claimed second place.
Google Chrome has been lauded by many as being the fastest and most stable of web browsers, and for setting new standards for performance and ease of use. Considering that Internet Explorer usage has generally been on a downward trend, Google Chrome may close the gap and become the most popular browser.