From YouTube to Google Glass: The highs and lows of Google as tech giant celebrates 25 years

GOOGLE turns 25-years-old this week and although many people can think back – it’s hard to remember what life was like before its inception.

From the success of bringing YouTube under its wing, to the flop of Google Glass, let’s go through some of the tech giant’s highs and lows as it celebrates 25 years.

Web Design Museum

This is hat YouTube looked like in 2007, a year after Google purchased it[/caption]

Gmail

Gmail, launched on 1 April 2004, was one of Google’s first big successes – no joke.

The free web email outfit had the power of Google Search built right in and grouped your messages into conversation threads, making it easier to find and reply to them.

You could also store up to 1GB of data for free – nearly 100 times what was available at the time.

Gmail now has more than 1.8 billion users.

Google Maps

Just a year later, Google launched Google Maps and Google Earth.

2005 was the year when paperback maps were finally made redundant, with it gradually becoming the default for many drivers on the road.

Google Earth was also mind-boggling for the time, thanks to its ability to grant the power of exploring far-flung corners of the world in 3D to anyone with a PC.

Maps and Earth were then bolstered by the launch of Street View in 2007, giving web surfers the ability to roam the streets of anywhere in the world from behind a screen.

Android

Next came Android.

It began with a $50m of Android in 2005, which helped define the smartphone industry alongside long-time rival Apple.

Android is the foundation of nearly all non-Apple handsets, and has bested Microsoft and Nokia over the years.

YouTube

Then in 2006, Google made snapped up YouTube – the internet’s video record – for an eyewatering $1.65billion.

It was an excellent decision from Google’s overlords, considering YouTube’s growth trajectory since then.

But that’s not to say Google’s ideas have all been winners.

Nexus

Nexus was one of Google’s first branded devices, which range from smartphones, to tablets to now, watches.

Google partnered with popular phone companies such as HTC, Samsung, LG, ASUS for the manufacturing.

But Nexus unfortunately never took off, as it simply didn’t meet high expectations for what the future of smartphones should look like.

With Google wanting to prioritise its web-service support, the device was axed in favour of the Pixel, which has proven much more popular.

Google+

Then came Google+, the company’s attempt to disrupt the social media sector in 2011.

By then, Facebook was a household name and Instagram was just one year old.

The high-stakes venture, costing an estimated $585million, is one of Google’s most expensive mistakes yet.

There are numerous reasons why the project failed to gain traction among social media users, when Google+ could have blossomed in a similar vein to Instagram.

In large, Google tried to take on the biggest beast in the arena head-on without thinking of a unique selling point – unlike Instagram which rapidly gained popularity for its picture-based interactions.

Google Glass

One of the tech titan’s most notable failures is Google Glass, its futuristic augmented reality goggles that were introduced in 2012.

It took just three years before the project was shelved for good.

Record fine

These days, tech companies are fending off fines left, right and centre on both sides of the Atlantic.

But Google swallowed the largest fine ever recorded from the European Union in 2017.

The whopping £2.1billion fine was due to Google favouring its own shopping service in its search results.