Lawrence Page, CEO and 10% owner of Google Inc. (GOOG, Financial), received more than $38 million for 66,664 shares of Google stock. The stock sold for $572.76 per share, making the transaction worth $38,010,479.
Google, an American corporation focusing on internet-related products and services based in Mountain View, Calif., was founded by two Stanford University Ph.D. students on September 4, 1998, in California. It started as their doctoral research project in 1996. Search engines of that time ranked results by how frequently terms appeared on a page. The idea behind Google was to analyze relationships between websites.
Its mission was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google’s unofficial slogan is “Don’t be evil,” which, as part of the company’s code of conduct, reads in full: "Do the right thing: don't be evil. Honesty and Integrity in all we do. Our business practices are beyond reproach. We make money by doing good things."
The company’s 2013 revenue was $59.825 billion. Its revenue the year before was $50.175 billion.
Google has grown to include web log hosting, webmail and other productivity tools, mapping and mobile communications. A 1 million-square-foot office is due to open in London in 2016. As of September 2013, Google had 70 offices in more than 40 countries.
The company has more than 52,000 employees, nearly a quarter of whom are software developers.
