Google
Google LLC is an American multinational technology corporation and a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.[^c1] Founded on September 4, 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University,[^c2] the company grew from a research project called BackRub into one of the world's most valuable companies, with a market capitalization of $4.71 trillion as of May 2026.[^c3][^c34]
The company's core innovation was a search algorithm that ranked web pages by tracking each website's backing links rather than counting keyword appearances.[^c4] The name "Google" was derived from a misspelling of "googol," the number one followed by 100 zeros.[^c5] Initial funding came from Andy Bechtolsheim, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems,[^c6] followed by venture capital from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital.[^c7] Google went public on August 19, 2004, at $85 per share, raising $1.67 billion.[^c8] In 2015, the company reorganized as a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.,[^c9] with Sundar Pichai as Google CEO. Pichai later became Alphabet CEO in 2019.[^c10] As of late 2025, Google Search retained 73.7 percent of US desktop search activity.[^c21]
The majority of Google's revenue comes from advertising through AdMob, AdSense, and DoubleClick.[^c11] In 2025, Alphabet posted a record $403 billion in annual revenue,[^c12] with Google alone projected to capture $213.3 billion, or 85.8 percent of the global search advertising market.[^c13] In the first quarter of 2026, Alphabet reported revenue of $109.9 billion, up 22 percent year-over-year, with net income of $62.58 billion.[^c26] Capital expenditure for 2026 is projected between $180 billion and $190 billion, primarily for AI infrastructure.[^c25] In June 2026, Alphabet announced an $80 billion equity offering — the largest in its history — to fund AI compute infrastructure, with Berkshire Hathaway committing $10 billion as anchor investor.[^c33] By the first quarter of 2026, Google's paid subscriptions across services including YouTube Premium and Google One reached 350 million, adding 25 million in the quarter.[^c27] The company has 13 services with over 1 billion users each, as confirmed by CEO Sundar Pichai at Google I/O 2026,[^c15] including Google Search, Android, Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, and [[Google Photos]]. The company operates a three-part business model: Google Services (search, YouTube, Play Store), Google Cloud, and Other Bets led by Waymo.[^c24] It developed Gemini as a ChatGPT competitor,[^c16] and its DeepMind division created Gemini Deep Think, an AI system capable of tackling professional-level research problems in mathematics, physics, and computer science.[^c17] Google merged its Brain and DeepMind research units in 2023, accelerating the pipeline from AI research to product deployment.[^c22] In March 2025, Alphabet agreed to acquire cloud security firm Wiz for $32 billion, its largest acquisition, to strengthen Google Cloud's security offerings.[^c23]
The company has faced significant legal and regulatory challenges. In August 2024, a U.S. court found Google had an illegal monopoly over internet search under the Sherman Act.[^c18] A September 2025 remedies ruling barred exclusive default search contracts but did not require a divestiture of Chrome or Android.[^c19] In March 2026, Google settled a separate antitrust case brought by Epic Games, agreeing to allow third-party app stores on Android and reduce developer commissions.[^c28] In April 2026, the European Commission proposed measures requiring Google to give rival AI assistants equal system-level access on Android under the Digital Markets Act.[^c29] In June 2026, the UK Competition and Markets Authority issued a world-first order requiring Google to let publishers opt out of AI Overviews. In 2025, Google was ordered to pay $425 million by a U.S. jury for privacy violations, while France's data protection authority fined the company €325 million for similar offenses.[^c20] In May 2026, a Google engineer was charged with insider trading for using confidential search data to place bets on the Polymarket prediction platform.
Growing criticism of Google's strategy and execution has accompanied its financial success. In 2026, the company was described as suffering from bloat and declining user trust, with its vertical integration model characterized as dead weight rather than the advantage it was once considered.[^c30] Critics highlighted the degradation of Search through AI Overviews that strip links from content creator work, the company's history of killing products, the treatment of enterprise customers, and the erosion of Android's openness.[^c31] Google's trajectory was compared to IBM's slow decline into irrelevance, with former CEO Eric Schmidt being booed on stage cited as a symptom of brand toxicity.[^c32]