Today Google is worth 180 billion in stock displays record results 6

At the end of 1999, in a few weeks of the collapse of the dot-com bubble, Google was already a star. Only 12 months after its formal launch, the search engine, founded by Stanford Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students had just to settle near the site of the current Googleplex, Mountain View, but with only 8 employees. But the start-up had already raised $ 25 million to the two most famous companies of Silicon Valley venture capital: Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins.

Evidence of interest in the young grow were already, it was the first time that these two rivals invests together in a society... What will be said to John Doerr, one of the leaders of Kleiner Perkins: "I have never paid as for also have little share in a company." And indeed, in 2000, Google was already 4 million requests per day (1 billion today!), its search engine being acclaimed by all the specialists of the time. The bursting of the bubble will be had at the time, little impact on the development of society. In 2001, the start-up hires - after much research - CEO of Novell, former boss of the language Java at Sun Microsystems, Eric Schmidt. This recruitment will be crucial for the future of society: it is he that will delay the most possible entry in the stock market Google, convinced that the maintenance of its status as a "private" would allow it to better focus its development in the long term, without pressure from investors for more immediate profitability, but also short-sighted. Well seen.

And indeed, the introduction on the Nasdaq in August 2004, which will allow Google to raise $ 1.6 billion, fulfilling thus the company more than 23 billion dollars, will be the final signal that the market crisis of technology firms is complete.

Catalyst for the stock market

At the time, after four years of total gloom on Wall Street, the valorisation of Google seems too high. Talking about "bubble 2.0". And yet, introduced to 85 dollars, the action will fly during the next five years to exceed the $ 700 before the start of the current crisis. "No one could predict such escalation;" "the action of Google literally led the technology stock during this period", confirms an investor an experienced Silicon Valley, which bites finger not invested in the start-up. Today, Google is worth 180 billion in stock, displays record results ($ 6.5 billion of profits to 23.6 billion turnover) and will no longer know what to do with its cash flow investing in telecommunications, electricity, green energy or sequencing of DNA...

But if Google is a Silicon Valley icon, it is no longer the nice start-up that displayed motto "Don't be Evil." Much like Microsoft before it, its dominant position in its main market - online advertising - and especially its commitment to expansion, considered hegemonic, made a "World Company" which attracted a fire rolling of criticism. To the point that many of its employees, it has rendered so rich, had now left it to start their own start-up or finance other. This quarantine of investors, which form a very exclusive club, have already invested in more than 200 companies. Including the future Google