Sunday marks the ten year anniversary of the incorporation of Google, and during the decade that has now  passed since its founding, the Mountain View, California-based company has achieved numerous phenomenal successes on its way to becoming the Internet giant it is today. Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page started Google in the fall of 1998 after applying for incorporation on September 4 and having the paperwork ultimately approved on September 7. A Meteoric Rise From Garage To Googleplex Before applying for incorporation the pair had sought to sell their fledgling search engine business for a few million dollars, a sale that would likely have changed the Internet landscape considerably had the two found a willing buyer. From its earliest days operating on just four computer systems in Brin and Page's Stanford dorm room and later slightly more hospitable digs in a Menlo Park, California garage, Google has gone on to become the fastest growing company in history, today controlling nearly 40 percent of online advertising and some 70 percent of the Internet search market. Google has an annual growth rate of some 35 percent and a market value of around $150 billion, with revenue during the past four quarters of $19.6 billion, making Page and Brin the world's richest people under 40, despite company stock falling to $450 per share after rising above the $700 mark last year. Building on a famous "don't be evil" code of conduct and a goal to "organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," Google has over the past ten years grown to become a regular on polls of the most desirable companies to work for and lists of the world's most recognizable brand names, and has led to a very busy human resources department that receives an estimated 1 million-plus resumes annually from young workers looking to join what is likely the most successful business on the Web. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt Sees Chrome Browser Bringing More Choice To Users Those joining Google's workforce of nearly 20,000 have been able to thrive in an environment famous for free healthy meals, massage therapy, laundry services, swimming, gym and softball facilities, and the so-called  20-percent program, which allows workers to spend one day each week on a separate project of interest outside the scope of their regular duties. Among Google's staff are five permanent lobbyists in Washington. By 2001 Google had seen enough success to warrant the addition of a chief executive, which led Page and Brin to hire former Novell leader and Sun Microsystems chief technology officer Eric Schmidt. On Tuesday Google for the first time entered the Web browser marketplace with the release of Chrome, the search leader's new challenge to Microsoft's dominant Internet Explorer and Mozilla's popular Firefox software. "People are just downloading it now. We tested it pretty thoroughly within Google, but you never really know until you get it out in people's hands," Schmidt said in a recent interview with the Financial Times. "But so far it looks like a really great success," Schmidt added. "I should say that Internet Explorer's market share has been declining year on year and we think that's a good thing, because more choices in browsers is always good," he also noted. Before taking their search engine company public, Brin and Page joined Schmidt in adding an unusual pact to the firms prospectus that stated the three pledged to work there together through at least 2024. Revenue A Stellar $1 Million Per Employee In some areas, such as enterprise computing and traditional desktop computer software, Microsoft is more successful than Google, while others such as search and online advertising find the two rivals in reversed roles. Microsoft, 33 years old to Google's 10, has been said to bring in some $672,000 revenue for each of its nearly 90,000 employees -- a healthy figure by all accounts, yet lagging well behind Google's impressive figure of $1 million revenue per employee. After ten years of growth and indexing more than one trillion Web pages, only three technology companies remain that still have a greater market value than Google, with Microsoft leading the way followed by I.B.M. and Apple. In 1998 a growing Google said that users of its search engine were conducting 10,000 searches each day, a figure that shot up of nearly 500,000 daily the following year, and which may today perform upwards of 235 million searches daily based on July estimates from Web traffic analysis firm comScore. Google has continued expanding the scope of its Web-centric services over the past decade, from its acquisitions which have included top video sharing site YouTube and image-sharing site Picasa to making a push into such traditional advertising areas as television, radio and newspapers. Google Marks Ten Years Of Growth Since Founding Google's Marissa Mayer, who was the company's twenty-second employee and who now heads its search products group, sees the firm as just getting started in many of its core pursuits. "We are still making big breakthroughs and if you think about putting pictures and video into search, then search just gets better," Mayer said in a recent B.B.C. report. "Internet search has just gotten started. The best search engine would be  your friend, with a photographic memory about you and know what you know," Mayer said. "The right way to think about search is as a science that will evolve," Mayer added. As many as 500 of Google's original 2,300 pre-2004 IPO employees, of which 900 became instant millionaires, have reportedly sold their stock options and left the company. One industry observer sees Google's meteoric rise as stunning. "I don't think it's possible to exaggerate the significance of this thing," author and business entrepreneur Andrew Keen said in a recent Guardian report. "Every time I think of it, I'm amazed at every level. They're absolutely in the business of revolutionizing the nature of knowledge; search has become integral in the way we think and act. In 50 or 100 years' time, when the real histories get written of the Internet, it will start with those two boys at Stanford," Keen said. Related Links:
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