Letter to the Committee Dear Delegates, We want to first welcome you to VAMUN XL! We are honored to serve as your chairs during a conference that somehow is happening during these historic times! My name is Daniela Moreno and I am a third-year from Panama and Costa Rica. I am going to major in Youth and Social Innovation in the UVA School of Education and Human Development. My MUN experience started when I was in high school in Kampala, Uganda where I was head of the MUN Club at school. I chaired the European Space Union Committee for last year's WGSS. I am delighted to be back chairing a WGSS committee and I cannot wait to see what you all have in store for us. I want all of you to leave this committee feeling accomplished in your work and satisfied with your participation. I encourage you all to collaborate and work together to create innovative directives to put us ahead. My name is Sarah Rocca and I am also a third-year from Norfolk, VA. I am a Foreign Affairs major with a minor in Spanish. I did MUN all throughout high school and have contributed to VAMUN WGSS both as a delegate and a crisis director. My hope is that you all have fun, practice your skills as a crisis delegate, and build the Google empire to take over the world! Do not hesitate to email either of us with any questions; we know it will be a different experience this year because of the pandemic, but we still want to make this as enjoyable as possible for everyone. Letter to the Committee 1 This year's WGSS topic is a very unique one that allows for creativity and it's a chance for you all to explore taking risks in committee and with your crisis arcs. So whether this is your first time or last time at VAMUN, we encourage you all to treat this as a learning opportunity and a chance to grow. We are very excited to meet you all! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Daniela Moreno Sarah Rocca Letter to the Committee 2 Topic One: Company Background Background Started in 1995 by two college students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google has grown to be one of the main technology companies that have shaped what we know of the modern internet.1 This partnership, which started out by working in their Stanford dorm rooms, gave rise to the search engine that used links to determine the impor- tance of pages on the internet. They called this search engine Backrub which was later changed to the name we know of today - Google. The name itself is a play on their mission statement: \to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"2 The name is a mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. From there on out in the following years, Google captivated the attention of the academic community. Being in the heart of tech, Silicon Valley, investors became very curious and in August 1998, Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, wrote both Larry and Sergey a check for 100,000 dollars, which they used to create Google Inc. This investment was huge; Larry and Sergey were able to move from their dorm offices to a garage in Menlo Park, California. As Google grew and made advancements, so did their offices. Eventually, a garage with colorful carpets and a ping pong table was not enough and The Googleplex was born in Moun- tain View California. 1"How We Started And Where We Are Today" - Google 2"How We Started And Where We Are Today" - Google Company Background 3 Google's mission to this day is to \search for better answers."3 Today, there are 69 Google Locations in the U.S. and Canada, 8 in Latin America, 41 in Europe, 28 in the Asia-Pacific region, and 8 in Africa and the Middle East. 4 Google's size and broad portfolio make it one of the top four influential companies in the high-tech marketplace. Besides their many products and services ranging from Gmail to YouTube to consumer products, the original search tool remains the core of its success. More than 70 percent of the world's online searches are handled by Google placing it at the heart of the majority of the internet uses' experiences and daily lives.5 Google and Alphabet Inc. Google activity began to explode in 2000 when it became the client search engine for Yahoo!. By 2004, Yahoo! eventually dispensed with Google services but by this time, users were using Google up to 200 million times daily. By 2011, this number was up into the billions.6 The company became so popular that searching the internet became an actual verb and `to google' or `googling' is now a part of our everyday language when searching the internet. This extraordinary growth eventually became too much and in 2001, Brin and Page hired Eric Schmidt as chairman and chief executive officer of Google. Together Schmidt, Page, and Brin ran the company until 2011 where they had a rearrangement of roles. Page took over as the CEO, Schmidt as executive chairman, and Brin as director of special projects.7 3"How We Started And Where We Are Today" - Google 4"Google's Global Headquarters And Offices Around The World" - 2020 5"Google | History Facts" - 2020 6"Google | History Facts" 2020 7"Google | History Facts" 2020 Company Background 4 Google's initial public offering in 2004 raised 1.66 billion dollars and caught the public eye on how the selling of its shares was handled. Initially, shares were sold in a public auction. By doing this it put shareholders and new investors on even grounds as the financial industry professionals, which were different for a company this size. Google kept growing more and more and on August 15, 2015, Google recognized itself as the subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet Inc.8 The things that remained under Google were: internet search, advertising apps, maps, Android, and Youtube. Under Alphabet Inc., there were separate Google ventures such as biology research company Calico, home products company Nest, and research lab Google X. Once again, there was a re- organization of roles for Google and Alphabet. Page became CEO of Alphabet, Brin president of Alphabet, and Schmidt executive chairman. Sundar Pichai became the new CEO of Google.9 Through Alphabet, each company in the umbrella makes products for a different industry. It can be argued that each company within Alphabet has operations independent from the google search engine. The separation between Alphabet's main business - google search- and other companies provides space and a safety net to carry out experiments with- out worrying about how it would affect their cash cow the search engine.10 In 2017, Alphabet decided to once again reorganize themselves and create an intermediate holding company called XXVI Holdings.11 What this action did was to make Google a limited liability company. In 2018 and 2019, Schmidt, Brin, and Page left their respective posts but remained on Alphabet's board 8"Google | History Facts" 2020 9"Google | History Facts" 2020. 10"Why Google Became Alphabet" 2020 11"Google | History Facts" 2020 Company Background 5 of directors. Sundar Pichai became CEO of XXVI while also maintaining his position at Google. Google Services and Growth Google Video and Youtube Google bought Youtube in October 2006 for 1.65 billion which is about 2.1 billion today.12 Currently, Youtube brings in roughly 15 million/year which is 10 percent of all Google revenue.13 Youtube has approximately 2 billion users and 79 percent of internet users reported having a Youtube account.14 Google Earth In October 2004, Google bought Keyhole Corporation which was a digital mapping service.15 Google took the technology developed by Keyhole and made what is now Google Maps. Maps recently started having ads, so it generates some revenue but is not as instrumental as Youtube or Chrome.16 Google Apps and Chrome Chrome makes up 70 percent of the internet browser market, leaving Mi- crosoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox significantly behind in market value. Even though it was late to the market, Chrome has surpassed other options and is \ a very profitable part of the company" according to Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.17 12Sorkin and Peters 13Statt 14Mohsin 15WSJ 16Hartmans 17Page Company Background 6 Google Cloud Google Cloud makes up roughly 7 percent of Google's revenue, which is equal to 17 billion dollars. Furthermore, it is 3rd on the market for cloud software, behind Amazon Web services and Microsoft Azure. Cloud's Chief, Tom Kurian, is optimistic about the cloud's ability to find gaps in the market and rise in the ranks.18 Android Google phones, while not the most popular, are on the rise. In 2018, despite the value of the smartphone market declining, Google Pixel phones increased in value by 43 percent. Furthermore, most Google phone users are happy with their phone which puts Google in a position to expand their Android market.19 Alphabet Inc. Branches Calico Calico is a research organization looking into the biology of aging and age- related diseases. They emphasize their unique approach to research: a combi- nation of technology, scientific research, and computing to develop answers to some of biology's hardest questions. As a result of their research, Calico has produced medications and published their findings in scientific journals across the world.20 However, Google and Calico have been criticized for keeping some of their research secret for undisclosed reasons and their vague reports.21 18Stavitz 19Maring 20Calico 21Belluz Company Background 7 Google X As Alphabets premiere Moonshot organization, they have also been crit- icized for their semi-secret operations.