Why Google is worth billions

Google's greatness has become quotidian for those in the industry. Thankfully, we have clients who haven't been drinking the kool-aid (or at least as much). They ask us the questions we sometimes forget to ask. One is "Why is Google worth so much?"

Let's put things into context: on a global valuation, Google is currently worth $85US billion. That is more than General Electric ($71.4B), Microsoft, ($70.89m), Coca-Cola ($58.2m) and China mobile ($57.2m). In just over ten years (google.com domain was purchased 9/15/1997), they grew the company to 10,674 employees and revenue of $13.40B.

But why are they worth so important?

Think of it this way: Google has made it so that people can successfully search the largest amount of human information ever. The technology behind this feat is astounding. First, there is the aspect we all know: search algorithms -- the things that make it so that when we type in "Top Steak House Restaurant in Atlanta" we get served up highly relevant search results. And while this is amazing enough, it isn't what makes them unique. Rather, it is also the

• the bandwidth to handle web traffic
• the sheer complexity of the databases that house all these information
• the synchronization of these servers around the globe,
• the utterly amazing processing power to make it so that when you type in something, you get back something relevant in milliseconds.

They are important because they have made history.