[Some screenshots from the early Google days
provided by the Wayback Machine > web.archive.org]
It might be hard to understand how important the arrival of Google was to the Internet scene back in 1998. Two Phd students at Standford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, made a decision in September 1998 that would change the world forever. With AOL, Altavista, Lycos and Yahoo already dominating the world of online Search, no-one was expecting a 1998 started to change the landscape of the web in 10 years time. But, it happened.
Some might argue that Page and Brin just had a better understanding of the true spirit of the web, like how Tim Berners-Lee had envisioned it. Other might say they were better entrepreneurs. Even arguments can be made they had a bit of dot-com bubble luck. In the end, you could make a case for all of them. What did matter first and foremost was their approach to search. While conventional engines had a keyword approach, which counted how many times a search term was used, Google’s algorithm, more particularly PageRank, also took the relationship among websites into account. The PageRank algorithm changed the way the internet was indexed and Google Search growth never stopped until they had near complete world dominance. As of 2020, Google accounts for over 85% of search market share, with over 90% of all searches on mobile phones. Interestingly enough, PageRank was inspired by RankDex, developed by Robin Li in 1996. Li ended up creating Baidu, the biggest search engine in China.
However Search wasn’t the only reason to Google’s succes. It was bad mergers, bad business deals and basically, the overvaluation of tech companies which led to the dot-com bubble. While most of Google’s biggest competitors survived the bubble, the impact of bad mergers and acquisitions did put them back. Just for perspective, Lycos, the 4th most popular website in 1999 and 2001, sold for $12.5 billion in May 2000, only to be sold for a measly $95 million four years, at less than 2% of its previous investment. It was again sold in 2010 for $35 million. While Lycos still is a still a multi-million dollar company, with millions of users, it is no longer considered an online empire as it was 20 years ago.
Similar, or even worse bad fortune awaited AOL, which went from online empire to an afterthought. In the 1990s, AOL was a central part of the commercial side of the world wide web. Having an AOL connection (dail up internet at the time) was so popular, users cancelled their accounts due to constant busy signals. AOL bought Netscape in 1999 for $4.2 billion, an acquisition that was seen as a countermove to be able to compete with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In 2001, during the Aftermath of the dot-com bubble AOL and Time Warner joined forces in the biggest merger in U.S. history as the largest media conglomerate and the largest internet provider joining forces was deemed to be a big succes. Unfortunately, it never became the intended succes. AOL vastly declined after, in part due to the development of broadband internet, which killed off dail up internet is we knew it. AOL kept losing market share, Netscape was disbanded and AOL ended up being acquired for $4.4 billion in 2015 by Verizon.
In the end, AOL did end up playing a vital role in Google’s prolonged succes in the online sphere. It was AOL who allowed Google become AOL’s new search partner in 2002, which ended AOL’s relationship with Overture and boosted the Google Adwords (now Google Ads) platform. To strengthen the relationship Google bought a 5% AOL stake for $1 billion in 2005, which avoided the possibility of an AOL-Microsoft alliance, which would have dropped Google further behind Microsoft (MSN) and Yahoo!, but now propelled then into pole position.
Another leading search engine that suffered from the dot-com bubble was AltaVista. Altavista’s search was popular as it was the first search engine allowing search in people’s native language, it broadened the use of additional search functions and it was the first to offered search for images, video and audio alongside text content. According to an Forbes article in 2000, Altavista still held the edge (17%) over user reach compared to Google (7%). But the landscape changed quick enough. Altavista had been fighting with the Search strongholds AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo! For market share and saw other search engines innovating their search. One of the search engines was Google, which ended taking over a lot of its users. As Altavista prepared an IPO in April 2000, the IPO was cancelled amidst the dot-com bubble. In 2003, Altavista was sold to Overture, which was sold to Yahoo! in the same year. After the acquisition, AltaVista’s search was integrated with Yahoo! Search, which they already had a relationship since 1996.
To many people’s recollection, for years Yahoo! was considered the online empire of the world. Up until the Google-AOL alliance, Yahoo! had the biggest market share. Like many others, several business decisions during the dot-com bubble somewhat strangled their opportunities to fight back. While Yahoo! Managed to survive 2 more decades, they lost the battle before they had begon, going completely buy crazy during the dot-com bubble. The two biggest acquisitions? Buying Geocities for $3.6 billion and Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion in 1999. Yes, you read that correctly, Yahoo! Bought two companies in 1999 for $9.3 billion that no longer exist. This might sound even crazier, as Yahoo! had the opportunity to buy Google in 2002, but thought the price tag of $5 billion was a bit too steep. Even worse, Yahoo! Ended selling all its online entities to Verizon in 2017 for $4.8 billion.
Of course, it wasn’t only the acquisitions that caused Yahoo! to lose its place on top. Some consider it to be the lack of vision or the right CEO’s at the right time or place, but there was another search related fight that Yahoo! lost to Google. The fight for search ads. As Overture lost to Google as AOL Search provider, Yahoo! Acquired the company and its subsidiaries AltaVista and AlltheWeb in 2003. Overture had already sued Google over infringement of their patent, a case which was finally settled after Yahoo! took them over. But with Google already having the system in place and getting the placements at AOL (as well as going public in 2004) and Yahoo! fighting to integrate Overture with their own system, the speed of Google’s approach and innovations won. By the time Google passed Yahoo! In total visitors in 2006, it was clear that Yahoo! had missed their shot. To make matters worse, a 2008 Microsoft deal to buy Yahoo! For $44.6 billion was also rejected, making the $4.8 billion sale a decade later even more painful. To avoid hurting more people with Yahoo! stories, we’ll leave out the story of Yahoo!’s Alibaba investment.
While Yahoo! crumbled, other parts of Google’s model started to quickly develop as well. YouTube, acquired by Google in November 2006, grew 24-fold in traffic within a month, becoming the #1 online video platform in the world. In 2004, Google launched the beta version of Gmail, which took over the email client market share top spot in 2019. In 2008 Google launched Google Chrome, the browser that officially ended the reign of Internet Explorer as go to web browser on the internet just 3 years later. Along with other Google products such as Google Calendar, Google Maps and many others, Google successfully transformed a search engine into an all in one online business.
Google was able to create the biggest search engine in the world, just as several others managed to do that before them. What made Google different is how they ended up leveraging that position to not only to own search, but also own the Internet landscape in the process. Google, since 2015 under the name conglomerate name of Alphabet, is now one of the 5 biggest companies in the world by market capitalization and a top 40 company based on revenue.
While Google grew from University start up to online empire in ten years time it was only the beginning.
[...to be continued...]
About Social Media in Suriname
This story is part 30 of my #Maynia goal to write a book in the month of May. The topics I'll be writing about from May 1st until May 31st, 2020:
(Want to read them all? The chapters will become clickable as the month progresses. Please note that I'm not always writing in chronological order, so check all 31 to see which are clickable)
The history of the Internet according to the Internet
1 - Predicting the Future
2 - The origin of the online community
3 - The birth of the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web
4 - Endless opportunities
5 - For education and entertainment
6 - Social Media before Social Media
The Rise of Web 2.0
7 - In Search of the Online Empires
8 - User Generated Content
9 - Let’s Get Connected
The Golden Generation
10 - From friends and relatives to personal interest
11 - The birth of the like button
12 - Being number 1
The Battle for the internet
13 - Socialnomics and the fight for online supremacy
14 - The features and takeovers that shaped the landscape
15 - It’s more than just Social
The Mainstream and The Alternatives
16 - The rise of the creator and the influencer
17 - The comeback of traditional media
18 - The age of information overload
The Marketeer and the Community
19 - Can’t we all have a little fun?
20 - Is age really just a number
21 - The Dangers of Dopamine and Instant Gratification
Suriname: From Dail Up to Tik Tok
22 - Getting connected
23 - Before Facebook Conquered the World
24 - The Growth of Social Media minded Suriname
25 - The Rise of Social Media Entertainment
26 - Twisting The Rules
27 - Free Facebook
28 - The diversification of Social Media
29 - From Brand Ambassadors to Social Media Influencers
30 - The Fight against Fake
The Recap
31 - What’s next?
Maynia Log
Learn more about Maynia by reading about it here.
Today's word count: 1.353
Total word count: 6.406
Daily review:
This one took awhile to write, but interesting nonetheless.
Daily question:
This month I'll post a daily question on which you can comment. Everyday I will give away a Hive SBI to my favorite. 😉
Today's question:
What was the first search engine you remember using?
Sources:
https://fourweekmba.com/google-market-dominance/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2016/07/26/why-yahoo-lost-and-google-won/#6d7a80a95e15
https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/largest-companies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue
https://www.forbes.com/2000/10/20/1020alta.html#1df6fbbe79f3
https://www.reliablesoft.net/top-10-search-engines-in-the-world/
https://digital.com/about/altavista/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycos
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/whatever-happened-to-those-early-search-engines-121214.html
https://www.wired.com/2007/02/yahoo-3/
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/technology/23google.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/remember-yahoo-turned-down-1-132805083.html
https://medium.com/swlh/6-reasons-why-yahoo-failed-6004d67e86ff
https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2002/04/30/overture-inktomi-out-google-in-at-aol/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-flashback-time-warner-aol-entered-a-doomed-182-billion-alliance-20-years-1267322
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/03/altaba-alibaba-sale/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2005/dec/22/newmedia.city
https://litmus.com/blog/infographic-the-2019-email-client-market-share
