Google's pivotal IPO launched a decade of big bets

Google's IPO, a decade ago this week, launched the company on a trajectory that continues to reshape its business and much of the world in its orbit.
And CEO Larry Page is determined to push even further.
Page's vision is that Google's products and services will become the control center of people's lives: The company's driverless cars will chauffeur people around safer roads and deliver goods within hours of an online order.
People won't even have to bother leaving their homes, which will be made more comfortable and enjoyable through the use of smart appliances.
Robots will handle tedious chores and other jobs, freeing up time for people to enjoy lives prolonged by health-management tools and disease-fighting breakthroughs engineered by Google. Internet-connected eyewear and watches will supplement the smartphones that ensure Google is a constant companion capable of anticipating questions and desires.

Google's big bets are fueled by Page's belief that "... incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, because change tends to be revolutionary, not evolutionary," he wrote in May in Google's annual letter to shareholders.

Although Page has been taking risks since he co-founded Google with Sergey Brin 1998, the stakes probably wouldn't be as high if not for the company's pivotal IPO on Aug. 19, 2004.
Besides raising about USD 1.2 billion in cash, the IPO empowered Google Inc. With a stock that the company used to attract more brainy engineers and buy promising companies such as YouTube. Google now employs 52,000 workers, some 20 times more than at the time of the IPO and has snapped up more than 250 companies in the past 10 years.

The ambitious expansion has extended Google's empire far beyond the influential search engine that processes more than 100 billion queries each month and still brings in most of the company's projected USD 67 billion in revenue this year.
Google is also a leader in email, Web browsers, Internet video and mobile computing now.
The company already has amassed so much power that it has been the subject of broad antitrust investigations in the US and Europe amid allegations that it uses its size and stature to stifle competition. The Federal Trade Commission absolved Google of wrongdoing last year while the European Commission is still examining the issue.

When Google filed its IPO paperwork in April 2004, the iconoclasm of Page and Brin shone through the legalese and standard boilerplate language. The duo included an "owner's manual" that declared Google's intent to remain an unconventional company that pampered its employees, made risky gambles on long-term projects at the expense of short-term earnings growth and paid little heed to the unwritten Wall Street rules that prod executives to offer financial forecasts each quarter.