Beginning
Google was founded in September 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California, USA.
Together they own about 14 percent of its shares and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervening stock.
Alphabet (the parent company of Google) stock - last 5 years.
Current Business
Google's core business is its Search Engine. However Google's rapid growth has triggered a chain of products. Its products are
- Google Search - its search Engine
- Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides
- Gmail and Google Calendar
- Google Drive
- Google - Duo, Hangouts and Meet
- Google Translate
- Google Maps
- Google Chrome and Chrome OS
Products in partnership
- Google Play music store and App Store.
- Google Pixel Smartphone
- Google Home Smart Speaker
- Google Wifi mesh wireless router
- Google Dayderam virtual reality headset
Other Brands
- Youtube
- Blogger
Strengths of Business (Moat)
Google is the most visited website in the world.
Several other Google services also figure in the top 100 most visited websites in the world - including Youtube and Blogger.
Google was restructured in October 2015 to create Alphabet - which is now the parent company o f Google.
Alphabet is the world's fourth largest technology company be revenue and one of the world's most valuable companies.
Revenue
Google search - the largest of its business had a revenue of $98.1 billion in 2019.
YouTube - its second largest business had a revenue of $15.1 billion in 2019 and is likely to cross $23.1billion in2020.
Google Cloud - contributed $8.9billion in sales in 2019 and is likely to have a revenue of $10billion in 2020.
Risks to business
With such large and monopoly business - the worst thing that could happen to Google is - if the Government (of USA) regulates the company (on what kind of advertising algorithms it can use etc.)
Presidential Candidates like Bernie Sanders have campaigned on breaking up of technology giants like Alphabet - the parent company of Google.
Whether this is just to "win an election" or a serious statement - we will know when the time comes.
As of now - Google is a monopoly business - specifically - the search engine on which our lives depend and an email service which is very widely used.
(Disclaimer : This blog is for education/information purposes and not to solicit any kind of business or offer any kind of advise. Stock market investing is a with risk investing including risk on capital invested. Please take an informed decision)
