Google Part I: Origins of Search

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
All right, David, last episode we are doing in our studios before Radio City.

**David Rosenthal** (0:04)
Ooh, that's right. How do you feel? We're about to go from like the stage of one, very, very small audience of one to the very, very big stage.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:13)
Where if we make a mistake, no one will notice.

**David Rosenthal** (0:15)
Yeah.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:15)
And we just rerecord it, and it's like it never happened.

**David Rosenthal** (0:18)
We should try that at Radio City. Just be like, ah, strike that. All right, let's take that again.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:21)
Yeah, hey, this is authentically Acquired, you guys. This is how we do it. You're gonna look at the inside. Probably not though. All right, let's do it.

**David Rosenthal** (0:28)
Let's do it.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:46)
Welcome to the summer 2025 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (0:53)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:55)
And we are your hosts. Artificial intelligence is the story of our time. It is definitively the next trillion dollar technology wave after PCs, the internet and mobile. And to understand AI, you have to understand the company most responsible for its technical foundation and the wave that came before it, Google. This episode begins our multi-part Google saga. Finally, as I'm sure many of you out there are saying right now, Google has been the front door to the entire internet for 25 years now, a quarter century, but it wasn't always this way.

**David Rosenthal** (1:31)
No, it was not.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:32)
Back in 1998, when Google was founded, there were a dozen other search engines that already existed, and there were a variety of different business models, most of which were not very interesting.

**David Rosenthal** (1:43)
Yeah, none of which were very interesting.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:45)
Yes. So today, we will try to answer the question, why did Google work? And once it did, how did it go from clever technology and nice product to the single greatest business of all time? I'm not being facetious, listeners. Google, and I should say alphabet today, generates more net income or profit than any other US company, more than Apple, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, JP. Morgan Chase, Berkshire Hathaway. This is a cash gusher. It is A, super high gross margin, B, in a giant market, and C, according to the US government, as of today, they are a monopoly in that market with 90% market share. That is three enormous numbers multiplied together to create that most profitable company in the US stat that I threw out earlier.

**David Rosenthal** (2:40)
Well, I'm glad we don't need to get to the government and all that until much, much later in our series. But yeah, this is the creation of the most beautiful business of all time.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:49)
And Google's market position has been seemingly unassailable at least until really this year, until the AI war has really heated up. So of course, it was that clean user experience that everyone talks about with just a search box on the homepage and the focus on the users and the high quality fast search that spread virally through word of mouth. But good product is far from the only reason that Google became dominant. So today we'll tell the story of why while Google was nowhere near the first search engine, it was the last.

**David Rosenthal** (3:21)
Well, Microsoft may take a little issue with that with Bing, but only a little issue.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:27)
A few percentage points of issue.

**David Rosenthal** (3:28)
A few percentage points of issue, yeah.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:30)
Well, listeners, if you want to know every time an episode drops, check out our email list. It is also the only place where we will share a hint at what our next episode will be, share corrections, updates, little tidbits we learned from previous episodes. That's acquired.fm slash email. After this episode, join the Slack to talk about this with us and the whole acquired community, acquired.fm slash Slack. And if you want more acquired between each episode, check out ACQ2, our interview show, where we talk with founders and CEOs building businesses in areas we've covered on the show. The most recent was with Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas. David, that was the most fun I've ever had recording basically any podcast episode.

**David Rosenthal** (4:10)
It was bananas. It was awesome.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:11)
Yes. Well, before we dive in, we want to briefly thank our presenting partner, JP. Morgan Payments.

**David Rosenthal** (4:17)
Yes. As you all know, JP. Morgan is our partner for our big Radio City show coming up on July 15th. We've been hard at work preparing. It's going to be an amazing night. The show is basically sold out. I think there are less than 100 tickets remaining right now out of the 6,000 total. If you haven't grabbed yours yet, go do it right now or they will all be gone. JP. Morgan will be showing off all their latest and greatest payments tech there. We'll have exclusive merch, a fan meetup before the show, an after party and an encore event the next day at the New York Stock Exchange. Details on all of that are in the Acquired Slack. We're so pumped.