(Reuters) – A U.S. judge has ruled that Google illegally monopolized digital advertising markets, paving the way for a break up of the internet empire that was started out of a Stanford University dormitory nearly 27 years ago.
Google’s platform for advertisers, closely tied to the online search unit, is a core driver of its $300 billion-a-year advertising business that has been a key focus for the past 2-1/2 decades.
Here’s a look at some milestones in the history of the tech giant, whose parent is now known as Alphabet :
YEAR EVENT
1995-1996 Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford
University and create a search engine named
BackRub.
1998 The startup, now renamed Google, gets $100,000
in funding from Sun Microsystems co-founder
Andy Bechtolsheim.
1999 Google announces $25 million in funding from
Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins in its
very first press release, and officially
announces the term “Googlers” to the world.
June 2000 Google becomes the default search engine
provider for Yahoo, one of the most popular
websites at the time.
October Launches AdWords, the online advertising
2000 platform that would become core to Google’s
business.
2001 Eric Schmidt is named Google’s chief executive
officer and chairman of the board of
directors.
April 2004 Google announces it is testing the release of
Gmail, with up to 1GB of storage capacity.
August 2004 Launches initial public offering of roughly
19.6 million shares, at an opening price of
$85 per share.
February Launches Google Maps for desktop.
2005
August 2005 Acquires mobile startup Android.
Launches Google Talk instant messaging
service.
2006 Buys online video service YouTube for $1.65
billion.
April 2007 Announces acquisition of web ad supplier
DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.
May 2007 Introduces universal search that lets users
access search results across all content
types, like images, videos and news, at once.
September Debuts first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 or
2008 HTC Dream.
Launches Google Chrome web browser.
January Launches smartphone, Nexus One, co-developed
2010 with HTC.
March 2010 Stops censoring search results in China,
leading to its banning in the country.
October Google tests out its first self-driving
2010 vehicles with a small fleet of Toyota Prius
cars in California.
June 2011 Launches Google+ social networking service,
which was shut down in 2018.
August 2011 Announces acquisition of Motorola Mobility,
which includes Motorola’s cellphone and TV
set-top box businesses, for $12.5 billion.
2012 Launches Google Glass.
2013 Announces acquisition of Israeli mapping
startup Waze for about $1 billion.
2014 Announces in January that it will acquire AI
firm DeepMind.
In the same month, announces a $3.2 billion
deal to buy smart thermostat and smoke alarm
maker Nest Labs.
2015 Announces plans to create a new publicly
listed company, Alphabet, which will house
Google and other units, including YouTube and
research and venture capital businesses.
Sundar Pichai named CEO of Google.
October Launches the first Pixel smartphone.
2016
November Launches Google Home smart speaker.
2016
June 2017 The European Commission fines Google 2.42
billion euros for violating the neutrality of
its search.
February Google reports full-year sales of over $100
2018 billion a year for the first time.
July 2018 The European Commission fines Google 4.34
billion euros for anti-competitive practices
with respect to its Android operating system.
March 2019 The European Commission imposes a 1.49 billion
euros fine for anti-competitive practices with
respect to the company’s online advertising
business.
June 2019 Google announces acquisition of analytics
startup Looker for $2.6 billion.
November Announces acquisition of Fitbit for $2.1
2019 billion.
December Co-founders Page and Brin announce they are
2019 stepping down as CEO and president,
respectively; Pichai becomes CEO of Alphabet.
2020 Alphabet hits $1 trillion in market
capitalization.
January The company cuts 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its
2023 workforce.
February Google announces Bard, a generative AI-powered
2023 chatbot that can produce text content and
fetch information off the internet. However, a
factual error in the AI tool’s demo tanks
Alphabet shares, erasing $100 billion from the
company’s market capitalization.
Susan Wojcicki, one of Google’s first
employees, steps down as YouTube CEO; Neal
Mohan replaces her.
March 2023 Begins rolling out Bard to some users.
EU regulators say Google may have to sell part
June 2023 of its adtech business to address concerns
about anti-competitive practices
September The U.S. Justice Department and a coalition of
2023 state attorneys general begin a blockbuster
antitrust trial in Washington, alleging that
Google unlawfully abused its dominance in the
search-engine market to maintain monopoly
power
November Google begins U.S. trial with Epic Games over
2023 claims of violation of federal antitrust law
December Google launches Gemini, its most powerful
2023 generative AI model at the time
January Samsung says it will use Google’s Gemini large
2024 language models in its Galaxy S24 series
smartphones
February Google flags increased spending on servers for
2024 data centers, underscoring its hefty
investments to power AI that will later raise
investor concerns
February Google renames its Bard chatbot after the
2024 Gemini models that power it
February Nvidia snatches Goggle’s spot as the
2024 third-most valuable U.S. company, underscoring
the AI shift across Big Tech
February Google releases open source “Gemma” models,
2024 following in its AI competitor Meta Platforms’
footsteps
February Google pauses its AI tool that creates images
2024 of people, following inaccuracies in some
historical depictions generated by the model,
just weeks after first offering the service
February Thirty-two media groups including Axel
2024 Springer and Schibsted hit Google with a
2.1-billion-euro ($2.3 billion) lawsuit
alleging that they had suffered losses due to
its digital advertising practices
March 2024 A U.S. judge rules that Google must face
advertisers’ proposed class action lawsuit
claiming that it monopolizes the ad exchange
market
March 2024 EU antitrust regulators open their first
investigations under the Digital Markets Act
into Google, Apple, Meta for potential
breaches of the landmark EU tech rules.
April 2024 Google sued by U.S. artists over AI image
generator
April 2024 Alphabet announces first-ever dividend
June 2024 Google names Anat Ashkenazi as CFO
October Google shifts Gemini app team to DeepMind
2024
November Google must sell Chrome to restore competition
2024 in online search, DOJ argues
November Meta will face antitrust trial over Instagram,
2024 WhatsApp acquisitions
March 2025 Google defeats part of U.S. shareholder class
action over digital advertising practices and
user privacy protections
March 2025 Alphabet signs its biggest deal ever, to buy
cybersecurity startup Wiz for $32 billion
March 2025 U.S. drops bid to make Google sell AI
investments in antitrust case
April 2025 Google faces 5 billion pound UK lawsuit for
allegedly abusing dominance in online search
April 2025 U.S. judge finds Google’s holds illegal
monopolies in ad tech, paving the way for U.S.
antitrust prosecutors to seek a breakup of its
advertising products
(Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa, Kritika Lamba, Meghana Khare, Jaspreet Singh and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Pooja Desai and Devika Syamnath)
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