WHERE THEY CAME FROM
Sergey Brin and Larry Page had an idea to create a better search engine by tapping into the collective intelligence of the Web. After raising $1 million in seed money, the two Ph.D.-track students at Stanford dropped out of school as had so many Silicon Valley boy wonders before them and started Google in 1998. This move would ultimately make them two of the richest 30-somethings in the world.

WHAT THEY DO
Google organizes the world's information, makes it searchable, sells ads coordinated with user searches, and rakes in a huge pile of money in the process. Along the way, it professes to "do no evil" and has created a $1 billion philanthropic foundation.

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
Pick a success, any success: Google leads the search business with 50 to 70 percent of the market and has managed to carefully craft and control its image. It had an innovative initial stock offering in 2004, and in late 2006, it outmaneuvered its competitors to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion and a 5 percent stake in America Online for $1 billion. In April 2007, the company announced it was acquiring DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.

Google has tried to maintain a culture of inventiveness by catering to its employees' every need at its headquarters, known as the Googleplex. From free food at gourmet cafeterias to on-site doctors, employees are treated like royalty so that they can concentrate on the one thing that matters most: Google. The hallmark of this approach may be the company’s 70-20-10 policy: Employees are expected to spend 70 percent of their time on the core search and advertising businesses, 20 percent on related activities, and 10 percent on entirely new projects.

WHAT THEY GOT WRONG
Explosive growth combined with a self-righteous attitude have led Google to more than one serious gaffe. The company has created a host of gee-whiz and me-too products—Google Earth, Google Maps, and Froogle, to name a few—which create very little revenue. Google’s most publicized misstep was its decision in early 2006 to self-censor search results in China. For a company whose mission statement includes the phrase "unbiased, accurate, and free access to information," the move seemed like a naked play for profit. The company argued, however, that it would be more beneficial for the people of China if Google stayed rather than pulled out.

The hypersecretive nature of the company also made it look downright hypocritical in 2005 when a CNET reporter used basic Web searches to find personal information on C.E.O. Eric Schmidt, who joined the company in 2001. In response, Google refused to talk to CNET reporters for a year. Some privacy advocates also worry that the gargantuan amount of personal information Google captures could create problems in the future.

WHAT'S NEXT
By Schmidt’s tally, it will take another 300 years to organize the world’s information, so the company is rapidly growing its engineer-heavy workforce and ramping up its infrastructure by purchasing server farms to help deliver its many products. Many analysts are waiting for Google to monetize its numerous side projects, but in truth, analysts don’t receive enough information from the company to make pertinent recommendations. Google has tried to shield itself from Wall Street, providing little guidance on its future direction and maintaining a dual-class stock structure that gives more than two-thirds of the voting power to Brin, Page, and Schmidt.