Get used to it, it's not going anywhere.

Founded as an intelligent little search engine by two students at the Stanford University in California in 1998; US$150+ billion corporation in 2009. Sergey Brin and Larry Page certainly made their parents proud. With the days when ‘the internet’ was something nerdy kids talked about at school now a distant memory, everyone has used, or at least heard of Google. It’s presence is undoubtedly the biggest on the Internet when it comes to, well, anything. Search engine, advertising, satellite maps, software, email, videos (youtube.com, Google owned) and many others; Google really knows how to multi-task.  Want something? “Google it.” Indeed.

So how did two students go from bedroom coding to billion-dollar-business in such a relatively small amount of time? Well, simply put, Google gets around 90% of their revenue from advertising and most of their capital from investors. In 2008, Google was worth US$157 billion; only US$3 Billion short of consumer electronics giant Apple’s worth. Now, to put that into perspective for you, Apple have been around for over 40 years making powerful yet simplistic and stylish computers, laptops that fit in envelopes, CD-killing culture phenomenon’s (and in recent years, ones with phones built inside of them that DON’T look like bricks) and much, MUCH ground breaking and innovative stuff. Google has been around for 1/4 of that time. I’ll bet Forrest Gump wishes he waited a couple of years to invest his money in Google instead.

Another way the lads at Google like to earn the pocket money is by buying up fellow Internet Behemoth’s. As most will already be aware, Google bought Youtube.com in 2006 for US$1.6 billion after its exploding popularity; It seems they don’t like it when other websites steal their headline limelight. I would like to predict that Twitter, due to its current booming success will be the next to wear the “Google owned“ tag.

If not, they could always buy bitcolumns in a few years!