Cover story

Kabelo Makwane, Google South Africa

Can you remember the first time you used Google? For me, it was probably around 2000, after a colleague mentioned it. I’ve never looked back. And this was happening in offices all over the world; it spread like wildfire. I remember the primary colours of the big chunky logo, and how it seemed to make searching the internet fun, or at least more fun that it had been. And the search results were better than anything I’d ever seen. I was hooked, and never used AltaVista or Yahoo! again for search.

On January 12 this year, Google parent Alphabet briefly touched $4tn in market valuation, passing Apple to become the world’s second most valuable company, behind Nvidia. Alphabet’s shares rose 65% in 2025, unmatched among its peers.