Besides raising about $1.2 billion in cash, the IPO empowered Google Inc. with a stock that the company used to attract more brainy engineers and buy promising companies such as YouTube. Google now employs 52,000 workers, some 20 times more than at the time of the IPO and has snapped up more than 250 companies in the past 10 years.

The ambitious expansion has extended Google’s empire far beyond the influential search engine that processes more than 100 billion queries each month and still brings in most of the company’s projected $67 billion in revenue this year.

Google is also a leader in email, Web browsers, Internet video and mobile computing now.

The company already has amassed so much power that it has been the subject of broad antitrust investigations in the US and Europe amid allegations that it uses its size and stature to stifle competition. The Federal Trade Commission absolved Google of wrongdoing last year while the European Commission is still examining the issue.

When Google filed its IPO paperwork in April 2004, the iconoclasm of Page and Brin shone through the legalese and standard boilerplate language. The duo included an “owner’s manual” that declared Google’s intent to remain an unconventional company that pampered its employees, made risky gambles on long-term projects at the expense of short-term earnings growth and paid little heed to the unwritten Wall Street rules that prod executives to offer financial forecasts each quarter.

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