Google, the top 10 milestones 10 years after its IPO

A decade after Google took itself public, the Mountain View, Calif.-based company best known for its search engine has expanded well beyond its roots. The company’s IPO on the NASDAQ, with an initial strike price of $85 per share for approximately 19.6 million shares, raised about US$1.67 billion and gave it deep enough pockets to attract enough talent to fuel its subsequent growth. Google’s IPO also set the stage for an eventual wave of offerings in the web space, including Facebook and Twitter, and legitimized the lofty valuations for these next-generation players.

Here’s a look at some of the key milestones that have marked the company’s journey over the past ten years:

Stock price doubles: October 2004

Share values spike to $100 on their first day of trading and double their initial worth within barely two months. By January 2006 – 17 months post-IPO – they’re touching $560 amid a virtually unbroken runup driven by growing confidence in Google’s ad-based revenue growth. Adjusted for a split earlier this year, shares are now worth just under 14 times what they went for at IPO, and Google’s $400 billion market cap places it third globally behind Apple and Exxon Mobil.

Google Maps launches: February 2005

Initially released as a sparsely featured alternative to the then-dominant Mapquest, Google Maps is quickly upgraded in a continuous cycle that sets the tone for the broader web services market. Within two months, Google adds satellite imagery and driving directions, as well as a mobile version in a still-nascent smartphone market. The product expands to the U.K, as well, and now covers over 190 countries. Google Earth, a downloadable app that adds flyover capability, goes live in June. More critically, the company releases its Google Maps API at that time, which makes it easy for programmers to bake mapping-based services into websites and apps – and further expand the Google Maps ecosystem. Google Street View goes live in May 2007, and the tech-laden vehicles required to collect imagery reinforce the company’s ambitions beyond basic web services.

Android purchased: August 2005

Though the deal to acquire this 22-month-old mobile operating system company barely registers on anyone’s radar, history subsequently ranks this as one of the most significant inflection points in Google’s post-IPO history. Andy Rubin, founder of Danger Inc., makers of the Hiptop mobile device, joins Google and spearheads development of the operating system into the global-dominant ecosystem that it is today. The Android acquisition, one of over 250 since the IPO, reinforces Google’s strategy of tightly integrating top talent from purchased companies into its own senior leadership structure. Rubin currently leads Google’s robotics initiatives. Android now powers 4 out of 5 smartphones sold and gives Google critical control over the mobile services – and ad revenue-generating – experience.

Google Checkout goes live: June 2006

The online payment processing service allows users to securely pay for online purchases and merchants to affordably offer payment services to their customers. Similar to the eBay-owned PayPal, which quickly bans Google Checkout for all eBay purchases, the service helps build mass market support for online payments and establishes an evolutionary path toward mobile payments. When Google kills the service in November 2013 in favour of Google Wallet, it also reinforces its strategy of aggressively pruning existing services when they no longer define the state-of-the-art in their respective spaces.

YouTube acquired: October 2006

Google makes its biggest buyout to-date, paying $1.65 billion for the YouTube streaming video service barely 18 months after it uploaded its first video in April 2005. The deal, eventually eclipsed by the $12.5 billion Motorola and $3.2 billion Nest acquisitions, gives Google, which had already launched its tepidly received Google Video service, a ready-made position in the burgeoning online video market. The buyout also gives YouTube access to the money and technology necessary to keep pace with accelerating growth – and none too soon, as hosting all those videos is an expensive, complex business.

Google Chrome released: September 2008

While a free browser may not seem like a big deal, Google Chrome represents another piece in the company’s strategy of controlling the key end-user access points to its web services ecosystem. The browser solidifies its developer roots with support for in-house and third party-developed extensions. Mobile versions are incorporated into Android and across other desktop and mobile platforms, including Windows and Mac OS X, and the code ultimately becomes the core of its Chrome OS-based ChromeBooks.

Motorola Mobility purchased: August 2011

The company’s largest-ever acquisition, a $12.5 billion bet that the future of mobility hinges on controlling the hardware as well as the software and services, turns into a bloodbath as the handheld unit of the once-storied American mobile vendor bleeds cash from the moment the deal closes in May 2012. The company sells Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for $2.9 billion in January of this year after slashing 20,000 jobs – or over 80 per cent of its workforce – fails to stanch over $2 billion in operational losses. The Lenovo selloff lets Google keep 15,000 of Motorola Mobility’s 17,000 patents, but the $9.6 billion loss reinforces the unfortunate truth that no one is immune to the brutal dynamics of an increasingly chaotic mobile market.

Google Fiber installations begin: November 2012

Kansas City residents and businesses become the first customers eligible for Google’s high-speed fiber-based broadband service. The offering – 1 terabit-per-second speeds, 1 terabyte online storage, and online access to televised HD content for $70/month – is specifically designed to disrupt existing telecom models. Further evidence of Google’s global-ISP aspirations can be found in Project Loon – which uses high-altitude balloons to provide wireless service to remote areas – and its April 2014 purchase of drone maker Titan Aerospace. Google Fiber, which has since been expanded to Austin, TX and Provo, UT, continues to grow: In February 2014, Google announced plans to expand to an additional 34 U.S. cities.

Antitrust investigation ends: January 2013

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission formally ends its investigation into whether Google deliberately used its Motorola-acquired patents to prevent competitors from developing markets for their own products. The company is forced to make a number of minor concessions as part of the settlement, but the FTC’s move is nonetheless seen as a significant victory for Google. The European Union reaches a similar antitrust settlement with Google in February, but new allegations the company uses its control over the Android ecosystem to block the competition are driving speculation the EU could launch a new probe.

Stock is split: April 2014

Shortly after the stock broke through the $1,000 ceiling and the company reported record Q4 revenues of $16.86 billion, Google splits its Class A shares in a move later echoed by Apple. At the same time, the company issues 330 million non-voting Class C shares, largely for employee compensation and to fund future acquisitions. The financial gymnastics solidify the voting control of co-founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page on the company.

Ten years on, it’s clear Larry Page’s strategy of revolution instead of evolution continues to fuel Google’s bet-big culture. As the company’s investments spread out beyond web services and into a wide range of initiatives that include robotics, infrastructure and health care, the next 10 years are already shaping up to be every bit as eventful as the last.

Carmi Levy is a London, Ont.-based independent technology analyst and journalist. The opinions expressed are his own. carmilevy@yahoo.ca