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 <GOOGL.O>:
| 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 2000 | Launches AdWords, the online advertising 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 2005 | Launches Google Maps for desktop. |
| 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 2008 | Debuts first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 or HTC Dream. Launches Google Chrome web browser. |
| January 2010 | Launches smartphone, Nexus One, co-developed with HTC. |
| March 2010 | Stops censoring search results in China, leading to its banning in the country. |
| October 2010 | Google tests out its first self-driving 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 2016 | Launches the first Pixel smartphone. |
| November 2016 | Launches Google Home smart speaker. |
| June 2017 | The European Commission fines Google 2.42 billion euros for violating the neutrality of its search. |
| February 2018 | Google reports full-year sales of over $100 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 2019 | Announces acquisition of Fitbit for $2.1 billion. |
| December 2019 | Co-founders Page and Brin announce they are stepping down as CEO and president, respectively; Pichai becomes CEO of Alphabet. |
| 2020 | Alphabet hits $1 trillion in market capitalization. |
| January 2023 | The company cuts 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce. |
| February 2023 | Google announces Bard, a generative AI-powered 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. |
| June 2023 | EU regulators say Google may have to sell part of its adtech business to address concerns about anti-competitive practices |
| September 2023 | The U.S. Justice Department and a coalition of 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 2023 | Google begins U.S. trial with Epic Games over claims of violation of federal antitrust law |
| December 2023 | Google launches Gemini, its most powerful generative AI model at the time |
| January 2024 | Samsung says it will use Google’s Gemini large language models in its Galaxy S24 series smartphones |
| February 2024 | Google flags increased spending on servers for data centers, underscoring its hefty investments to power AI that will later raise investor concerns |
| February 2024 | Google renames its Bard chatbot after the Gemini models that power it |
| February 2024 | Nvidia snatches Goggle’s spot as the third-most valuable U.S. company, underscoring the AI shift across Big Tech |
| February 2024 | Google releases open source “Gemma” models, following in its AI competitor Meta Platforms’ <META.O> footsteps |
| February 2024 | Google pauses its AI tool that creates images of people, following inaccuracies in some historical depictions generated by the model, just weeks after first offering the service |
| February 2024 | Thirty-two media groups including Axel Springer and Schibsted <SCHA.OL> 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 <AAPL.O>, 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 2024 | Google shifts Gemini app team to DeepMind |
| November 2024 | Google must sell Chrome to restore competition in online search, DOJ argues |
| November 2024 | Meta will face antitrust trial over Instagram, 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
