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Google celebrated its 15th birthday on September 27. The search giant chose to celebrate the day by announcing one of its biggest algorithm update, Hummingbird. This algo is designed to answer complex queries , in a conversational style. As an apt companion of Google Now, Google hopes that voice search on smartphones will be the focus growth area. I wrote about the Hummingbird update here.
(image courtesy Forbes.com)
A quick look, at the search leader's evolution over the fifteen years, revealsthe road that Google has traveled.
When you chart the revenue and growth in the Search Volume, over the last six years, an amazing picture emerges. In the (cluttered) chart below, I have superimposed some new features/products
The search Volume data has been taken from StatisticBrain. They have compiled this from comScore. Revenue data has been taken from Google's Investor Reports
[caveat: I have taken the search volume for United States only, while the revenue numbers are Google's total revenue].
As you see from the graph above, Google continued to innovate across a wide spectrum of activities. Its competition made only half hearted attempts to catch up, that too only on one single front - the search.
An Efficient Machine
Google has been growing its revenue strongly, in line with the growth in the web search volume (CORR. COEFF = 0.97 between 2006-2012). Clearly it has been able to maintain a very high level of efficiency in converting the increasing search volumes into revenue.
Of course, it helps if you have cornered the market, and continue to be the undisputed search leader. But it is also a testimony to Google's strategy, that it has helped it retained the crown for now 9-10 years in running, while the competition got scattered.
Thinking Big, and building an intellectually capable, team that does not shy away from solving the giant scale problems, have helped Google in outdistancing the competition.
