Google: Google international expansion

I – 2 Google international expansion

In January 1996 a 24 year-old PhD student called Larry Page studying at the University of Stanford was looking for a theme for his thesis.
Encouraged by his supervisor he studied the following topic “exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web“ working in collaboration with another student called Sergey Brin.
To make it simple, it is from this work and collaboration which will came up “Google Inc”(officially created in September the 7th 1998).
Two months later Google is already included in the Top 100 of world websites of PC magazine( a reference in the United States for computers).
Even if Google is formerly a web based application in English it is a worldwide service available on the Internet for all. As his creator(Larry Page) said "Google's search engine has always had strong global appeal,".
Here is a non exhaustive list of Google abroad activities.
Year 1999: first non engineer employee hired.
Year 2000: Google provides an interface in several languages: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
Year 2001: Google is now available in 26 languages and open his first international office, in Tokyo. A partnership with Universo Online (UOL)(the largest online service and Internet provider in Latin America) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans
Google first international office is sat up in Tokyo in 2001.
Year 2002: Google is available in 72 languages, partnership with AOL and first office in Australia in Sidney.
Year 2003: several national acquisitions to extend Google services which at the end extend as well the world services abroad of Google, for example the blog services “Blogger”. Dublin became the first location for Google's regional operations outside the U.S.
Year 2004: more than 100 Google domain names are available. Google opens new engineering offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad in India. R&D center opened in Tokyo.
Year 2005: the famous Google Maps application is release for Europe. New R&D center opens this time in China. First offices in Mexico and Argentina.
Year 2006: several other acquisitions to extend their services with for each of them translation in several languages.
Year 2007: Partnership with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile Telecommunication carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China. Sign partnerships to give free access to Google Apps for Education to 70,000 university students in Kenya and Rwanda.
Year 2008: Series of acquisitions and translations of other Google services.

As we just saw in ten years Google developed a lot of International marketing structures from simple representation offices to R&D centers to complex partnerships. I did not mentioned it but Google acquired several companies(more than 50). The purpose of these acquisitions was to extend their range of services which are then translated in order to be internationally exportable. I however did not find until now an acquisition of another search engine. Google seems to prefer the partnership(the company keep her brand but use Google, the best example is AOL).