My Science School

          Disney is credited with creative and entertaining ideas that made the world laugh. Walt Disney began his business with cartoons; he made animated cartoons when animation was taking baby steps.

          Disney also started merchandising his characters; soon markets were full of Mickey Mouse dolls, dishes, toothbrushes and stationery. By 1937, Disney started experimenting with films. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, his first film was a spectacular hit.

          With his success on screen, Walt Disney wanted to branch out and this time, he chose amusement parks. He was concerned with building a park where parents and children could go and have a good time together. This was the origin of Disneyland.

           The first Disneyland opened in California in 1955. The company never stopped animation; they continued with animated classics like The Jungle Book. By the 1970s, they also began producing educational films. In 1983, they launched the Disney Channel. Today, many big studios and TV stations including Marvel Entertainment, Pixar Animation Studios, and ESPN fall under the Disney umbrella.

Picture Credit : Google

           Imagine your childhood without the fun loving, adventurous Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Snow White, Cinderella and Rapunzel are some of the characters that filled our childhood. All these names can be traced to Walt Disney, the brain behind the Walt Disney Company.

          Walt Disney arrived in California in the summer of 1923, hoping to make money. He had made a cartoon about a little girl named Alice. A distributor in New York agreed to distribute the Alice Comedies and this was the start of the Walt Disney Company with Walt and his brother Roy as equal partners.

           Disney continued with Alice Comedies for four years, till he introduced a new character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Though the Rabbit conquered children’s minds, Walt lost the copyright of the character and in order to make up for the loss, he created Mickey Mouse. Sound films came out around the same time and Mickey Mouse became a cartoon star in no time.

Picture Credit : Google

          In I995, two computer scientists Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University collaborated on writing a program for a search engine. Working from their dorm rooms, the pair built a server network using cheap, used, and borrowed personal computers. It was not a cakewalk, but they managed to come up with a path-breaking search engine- Google.

          Their attempts to license the product failed miserably. Nobody wanted to take the risk of investing in an advanced product at an early stage of development. When all the doors closed, Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Sun Microsystem appeared as a saviour; he was so impressed by a quick demo of Google that he instantly decided to invest in it. Google Inc. formally came into being in 1998 with the mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google achieved a steady growth since then.

Picture Credit : Google

          For a long time, people relied on volumes of encyclopedias for all the information they needed. But the idea of an online encyclopedia is not more than 35 years old.

          Search engines, a sort of online encyclopedia came into being at the beginning of the Internet era. The most popular of them is Google. Got questions or need information about anything under the sun or beyond? Google has got it all.

          A search engine is a program that searches the internet and finds webpages based on the keywords that you provide. When it was first released in 1995, Google was considered unique because of the technology it used. In those days, search engines ranked results based on how often a search term appeared on a webpage.

          Google used something called PageRank, which allowed them to determine the relevance of a website by considering the number of pages, along with its importance using a technology known as backlink analysis. This simplified web searches.

Picture Credit : Google

           Facebook is the world’s most popular social networking page. Its popularity spread like wildfire when Mark Zuckerberg along with his classmates Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes set up Facebook.

           It was launched in 2004 as ‘The Facebook’ and the access was restricted to Harvard students. The website allowed students to rate the photographs of other students. Students who signed up for the service could post photographs of themselves and personal information about their lives. Its popularity increased; within 24 hours, 1,200 Harvard students had signed up, and in a month’s time, over half of the undergraduate population had a profile.

          The network soon extended to other universities and high schools in the US and later to the UK. In 2005, it was renamed as Facebook and a year later, it went beyond educational institutions. Anybody who was thirteen years of age with a registered email could create an account on Facebook.

Picture Credit : Google

          Alibaba, one of the world’s largest e-commerce ventures came into existence in 1999. It was founded by Jack Ma along with 17 others. Jack Ma was a Chinese who taught English. During one of his visits to the US, he learned about the growing internet market. He then decided to start one in his country.

          While sitting in a cafe in San Francisco, he thought of the name Alibaba. Alibaba is a famous character from Thousand and One Nights. He asked the waitress if she knew Alibaba. The waitress nodded and said, ‘Open Sesame’. He asked the same to many others and none of them found it difficult to recognize the name. The name was easy to pronounce and globally known; therefore he chose it for his company.

           Luck and time favoured Jack Ma. When he launched Alibaba’s online retail platform, the consumer internet boom had just arrived in China. The company made money from commissions on sales, fees for memberships, advertising and other services. When it needed technological assistance, Alibaba partnered with Yahoo. In 2016, Alibaba made a mark when the company crossed the revenue of its American counterparts such as Amazon and eBay. Two years later, Alibaba became the second Asian company to cross the $500 billion valuation mark.

Picture Credit : Google

          Netflix, the American entertainment company has evolved with the changing times. It began as a DVD rental company and is now the world’s largest media-streaming platform.

          Back in 1997, American entrepreneurs Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph saw an opportunity for business in renting DVDs. By 1999, they started an online subscription programme, wherein subscribers could choose the movie and show titles online and the DVDs would be mailed to them. Netflix had thousands of movie titles in its catalogue and more than 100 distribution centres.

          With the advancement of technology, Netflix started streaming movies and shows directly through the Internet. This happened in 2007 and for most subscription plans, the streaming service was unlimited. By 2010, they cut down DVDs and went for unlimited streaming plans. The same year, Netflix went international. 2013 marked another achievement; Netflix started producing original content, starting with the series ‘The House of Cards’. By the end of 2018 Netflix offered approximately 1,000 original titles.

Picture Credit : Google

          Amazon began with the promise of delivering any book to any reader anywhere. This was the beginning of a changing book world. Though there were established bookseller chains, Amazon survived by helping publishers clear their backlists of slow-selling books.

          In 2007, Amazon introduced Kindle, an e-book platform. Kindle enabled readers to browse, download and buy books and other online content. Also, it was cheaper than other e-books. This revolutionized the book business; Kindle began to outsell printed books. 2009 was another landmark for Amazon’s book hub.

          The company introduced its first publishing line, Amazon Encore, concerned with popular self-published and out-of-print books. This platform gained popularity as it also let individuals publish their own e-books. In 2011, Amazon began publishing its own titles. Amazon is now a major competitor in the book industry.

Picture Credit : Google

          Amazon is one of the world’s largest e-service providers. Started by Jeff Bezos in 1994, Amazon now provides everything under the sky in their online store.

          When Jeff Bezos began his business, he wanted his enterprise to be known as a technology company that made online transactions simpler. He started his venture in Seattle. The people of Seattle were technology savy as Microsoft was located there. He started with online retailing of books. Though many business experts predicted that Amazon would become a grand failure, the venture exceeded their expectations; they focused on growing big, fast.

          The company went public in 1997 and they diversified into selling music and videos. In 1998, Amazon began international operations by acquiring online booksellers in the UK and Germany. By 1999, the company was also selling consumer electronics, video games, software, home-improvement items, toys and games, and much more.

          Today, Amazon is an ‘everything store’. It also provides other services like Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Alexa, Amazon Robotics and Amazon Prime Now.

Picture Credit : Google

          Foods, cleaning products, personal care items, Unilever has it all. Many of our favourite brands like Pears, Dove, Brooke Bond, Close-Up and Vaseline belong to the Unilever family. Unilever was founded by the Lever brothers in 1885 and it has flooded our markets with a lot of fast moving consumer goods. The company maintained the policy of ‘acquire and grow’ that added more goods to their product line and widened their reach.

          The company has two headquarters- Unilever PLC, based in the United Kingdom, and Unilever N.V., based in the Netherlands. It is one of the oldest multinational companies; Unilever maintains production facilities in 88 countries with products sold in over 190 countries.

Picture Credit : Google

          When it comes to baby products, the first name that comes to most of our minds is Johnson and Johnson. But, the brand name was associated with surgical dressing when it began in 1886.

          Johnson and Johnson was established by Robert Johnson, James Johnson and Edward Johnson in New Jersey, after they split from their former company Seabury & Johnson. It was during the same time that Joseph Lister advocated the use of antiseptics and their importance. Johnson brothers were inspired by his speech and decided to start a business in order to create a line of ready-to-use surgical dressings.

          In 1894, they ventured into baby business. Their maternity kits and baby powder became extremely popular. Today, Johnson and Johnson focuses on three main areas: consumer items, medical devices and diagnostics and pharmaceuticals.

Picture Credit : Google

          Both William Procter and James Gamble migrated to the US. Procter made candles while Gamble sold soaps. Their paths crossed as they married sisters Olivia and Elizabeth Norris, which led to the creation of one of the most recognized brands in the world, P&G.

          For their business, Gamble and Procter needed the same raw materials. Their father-in-law suggested a joint venture to avoid competition and the result was P&G. This happened in 1837. The partnership clicked and business flourished. During the Civil War, the company received a single order that widened their reach; the Union Army ordered for soaps and candles.

          After the war, Procter & Gamble achieved a massive growth, thanks to a new product, Tide. It became a top selling brand as detergent replaced soaps. Their product line further expanded with Pampers - the first disposable diaper, Pringles, and many others. Over the years, the company established its reputation internationally.

Picture Credit : Google