💻Why Google is not a tech company?

Diving deep into how Google got its name and building curiosity on why google is not a tech company anymore.

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How Google got its name?

The initial startup by Larry Page and Sergey Brin was named Backrub which was an early search engine from the 1990s. So, the two decided to rename their startup Backrub and as a result, they conducted a brainstorming session and the idea was to come up with a name that would evoke just how much the data they were indexing. Finally, they came up with the name 'Googolplex' which denoted the digit 1 followed by 100 zeros and Page countered with the shorted 'Googol'.

After deciding on a catchy name they decided to register that domain and an employee checked to see if that domain name was taken but accidentally searched for Google.com instead of Googol.com. Lary Page loved the typo name even better and registered the domain name for Brin and himself. Thus Google owes its name to simply typo by an employee.

To name a few of Google products and services:

• Pixel smartphones

• Andriod

• Drive

• Photos

• GPay

• Google Search and a lot more.

Google is not a tech company anymore

After glancing at all the products and services, one might wonder Google is the big tech company in the silicon-valley. But that's not true. Google was once a tech company and not anymore. Google is an ad company that also makes tech and software.

Google earns most of its revenue from Google Ads - which is online advertising where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users.

Have you ever googled 'Best Chinese food' and you get Chinese restaurants that are nearby you. So, how that's possible? Google ranks based on various ranking factors like Cost per click (CPC), Click-through rate (CTR), ad relevance, etc.

Of course, Alphabet is not completely a digital marketing agency with its investments in the automotive self-driving car industry, health care, and hardware. But the vast majority of its revenue comes from Google’s ad business.

Even, Facebook is more than a social networking platform. They have scaled their businesses by deploying Meta and Facebook Marketplace.

Similarly, Amazon is not just an e-commerce platform. Jeff generates a lot of revenue from Amazon web services (AWS) (as much as 45 Billion in 2020). It also generates revenues from Amazon Basics, Kindle. So Amazon is an international salesman selling consumer goods but also Amazon is sort of a tech company.

So, in a nutshell, it is very strenuous to distinguish a company what they really are since every industry uses computers, software, and internet services, and if that’s what “technology” means, then every company is in the technology business.