By David Radin

Google's name conjures many different images -- from the fastest growing technology company in the world, to one of the most secretive, to a company that is changing the way the world behaves.

	By the numbers Google was started by two mathematicians. So let's look at the math behind Google: 5.48 billion: Google searches performed by Americans in January 2006 41.4%: Share of Web searches using Google More than 30 million: Estimated number of volumes expected to be scanned into Google's online full-text library 40,000: Number of books being scanned at Harvard over six months as part of its online pilot program and involvement in the Google Book Search Project. Expect the number to expand to its entire 15 million volumes after the pilot. 5: Initial library partners in the Google Book Search project (Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, Oxford, The New York Public Library) $85: Initial public offering price of Google stock in August 2004 $471.63: Highest closing price for Google stock (1/11/2006) $378.18: Closing price Friday (3/3/2006) $113.5 billion: Google market value as of Friday, in the same range as General Motors, McDonald's and Disney -- combined. 14,159,265: Number of shares offered at IPO (The eight digits to the right of the decimal point in the value of pi --3.14159265) 2: Classes of stock: Class A shares (publicly traded) are nonvoting shares; Class B shares (voting) are controlled by insiders $19.1 million: Revenue in 2000 $6.14 billion: Revenue in 2005; net income was $1.47 billion 99%: Percentage of Google revenues derived from advertising: 50% is from Google Web sites; 49% is from Google partner Web sites 12: Products that "graduated" from Google Labs

It has ridden the wave beyond the Internet bubble, and it has done so without spending millions of dollars on advertising. The company, which this year will open an engineering and research office on or near Carnegie Mellon University's campus that is expected to employ 100 to 200, has made its reputation through word of mouth.

Yet, despite not using the media to fuel its growth, it may become the most dominant media company ever -- with control over the way that small and large companies purchase advertising on the Net, in print and on broadcast stations.

From Google's earliest days, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, its founders, have resisted doing things the traditional way, even if they had to ruffle feathers of established players. Mr. Brin and Mr. Page started with a mission in mind -- to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

With a slim budget, the two scientists figured out a way to make searching the Internet easier for even the casual user -- and in doing so, rapidly surpassed the capabilities of the established search leaders. Raul Valdes-Perez, founder of Squirrel Hill search company Vivisimo, said, "In 1999, Google was distinctly, visibly better than Alta Vista, which was the best at the time."

Originally, the company had to deal with restrictive budgets because it didn't have much cash with which to build its products. And it was this cash crunch that caused the founders to be creative. Instead of buying expensive off-the-shelf computers, for example, it designed and created its own, some of which actually had cases built with Lego blocks. But they worked, and according to David Vice, author of "The Google Story," the proprietary systems implemented by Google give them an advantage over their competitors who use standard systems.

Mr. Vice describes the founders, who met at Stanford University, as reluctant entrepreneurs. "Nobody at Stanford would fund them. They were told search was a commodity."

So they had to get outside funding. But they did it their way, initially through a small investment from a Silicon Valley insider, then from several powerful venture capitalists, then -- keeping with their maverick ways -- by doing an unprecedented public offering that eschewed the traditional underwriting approach by using a public auction to solicit bids from investors, allowing Google to raise nearly $2 billion.

That gave them enough cash to fund a number of interesting projects (see accompanying story) and more opportunity to change the way the world accesses information. Along the way, it also required them to bring in a professional chief executive officer. Eric Schmidt, the man whom they picked, also had a scientific engineering background as well as executive experience at computer and software giants Sun Microsystems and Novell. The three run the company as a triumvirate, instead of resting control in the hands of any one of them.

The secret sauce

Google's growth has been attributed to a number of factors, but since they are so secretive, it's hard to tell which factor contributes the most.

In fact, the secrecy is among the top candidates for most influential factors. While other companies build strategies and share their visions with analysts well in advance of releasing the products based on these strategies, Google keeps almost everything secret -- even from the analysts.

One day, Google simply releases a beta version of a product to see how it fares with users. Then it make changes based on what researchers see and hear. It acts almost like a massive focus group, allowing decision makers to incrementally enhance products based on the market needs.

Google has one of the most extensive computing capabilities in the world, Mr. Vice says, giving it an infrastructure advantage that is difficult to beat. Microsoft, and other Google competitors, would be hard-pressed to catch up in search capability, he says, because it would take more than just throwing dollars at the problem. It would take expertise -- and most of the expertise is going to Google.

Not everybody shares this view. Mr. Valdes-Perez, who also designs products in the search space, told me that there were pros and cons to Google's hardware approach. He questions whether Google would make the same hardware-networking decisions today as it did a few years ago.

No place like the office

Google's unique way of deploying and managing employees also contributes to its culture of innovation. Coming from a university environment, Mr. Brin and Mr. Page have emulated academic surroundings at Google headquarters, nicknamed the Googleplex.

Engineers work in small teams on their projects to give them a sense of ownership of the project. They are able to allocate 20 percent of their work time to a different project of their choosing. This "20 percent time" has given Google several of the biggest successes, including the Froogle shopping engine, which lets a user look up a product to find who carries it and then compare prices.

The management team also has made the Googleplex a self-sustaining world. Google employees almost never have to leave. They are fed their meals for free by a gourmet chef, have friends and social lives with people who work there, and can even bring their dogs to their offices. This saves time, boosts productivity and provides more opportunity to focus on Google activities.

Its most famous innovation, though, is not its own. Google did not pioneer pay-per-click advertising on the Web. But it did tweak the model by favoring advertisements that received more clicks.

And, because the company was involved in so many searches, it popularized the model, which is highly dependent on economies of scale to be profitable and productive. It shares much of its revenue with its partners -- companies and individuals who run their own Web sites. However, in typical Google secrecy, most of the partners don't even know what share of the revenues they get to keep.

Under the microscope

The meteoric growth of Google has subjected its principals to scrutiny, not the least of which is the company's secrecy stance and "Don't be evil" mission.

In ultracompetitive environments, it seems logical to be secretive. But with the secrecy level so high, it makes it difficult for some to believe the "Don't be evil" mantra. So every decision and company move is watched closely by the financial community, by competitors (and would-be competitors), by users and by governments.

When the U.S. government asked the four large search providers to turn over certain information to help them in their quest to find and prosecute child pornographers, America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo! complied, in part, to the government request. Google did not. This made some people anxious that Google had something to hide. It made others feel better about the company, thinking that it was protecting their interests.

Similarly, when Google introduced its G-mail service, the media and individuals picked up on the fact that Google intended to index the information in private e-mail messages, thereby allowing it to serve readers of these messages advertisements related to what was in the original message.

Even its international prominence causes major waves. The company has made a deal with the Chinese government to allow Google to create a Chinese search Web site. To get the deal, it has made compromises, including censoring information on the Chinese Web site; users can access the censored information from Google if they're outside of China.

Beyond the Web

If you think Google is a force on only the Internet, think again. It is already making strides outside the Net, particularly in the advertising and media arena. It has been experimenting with PC Magazine, The Chicago Sun-Times and other print publishers on ways to let advertising buyers purchase available ad pages.

In January, it purchased dMarc, a company that offers a way to purchase and manage radio advertising. And last year, it acquired a company that provides analysis tools to measure the effectiveness of Web advertising.

The analysis tools have been relaunched as Google Analytics, and are already being offered to Google's advertising customers. It has proven so popular that Google had to restrict the number of customers getting to use Google Analytics.

Tim Armstrong, Google's vice president of advertising, said the analytical arm fitted into Google's stated mission of organizing the world's data. He said it would help agencies make better decisions and test concepts with hundreds of thousands of users around the globe.

Of course, it makes lots of broadcast, print and direct media executives nervous about whether they will lose revenue as Google enters their markets. But if Google is right, they may have nothing to fear. "The ad business is not a zero sum game," Mr. Armstrong said, implying that Google would be expanding the advertising pie when it organizes the industry and brings better access.

So far, Google has made a lot of right bets, perhaps earning it the benefit of the doubt in its latest global push. "Advertising is information," Mr. Vice noted, and, "It is the last area that lacks corporate accountability."

With Google's ability to make advertising transparent, so that advertiser can better understand what is happening, it actually may bring the missing accountability to the industry.

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The Google Radar Screen
So many products have been introduced by Google in rapid succession that it's hard to keep up. Here are a few to watch:

GOOGLE TALK
Send instant messages for free. Competes against similar services from America Online and Microsoft.

GOOGLE EARTH
Fly from space into your neighborhood and explore Earth in 3D views.

GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH
(Beta version) search the full text of books in some of the world's famous libraries.

FROOGLE MOBILE US
Compare prices via cell phone to make sure the item you plan to purchase from the retail shelf is priced competitively.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Track and analyze the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Google has restricted the number of businesses able to use this tool.

GOOGLE NEWS FOR CELL PHONES
Get news headlines that have been optimized to view by mobile users.

dMARC
Bid on and buy advertising in broadcast media. This is a new acquisition for Google. Expect it to change dramatically -- including getting a new name.

-- David Radin