* Google has transformed more than any other Silicon Valley company in the last decade – and a trip back to its old corporate website reveals just how much.
* A look at the website from 2009 shows just how much the company has transformed, from around 20,000 full-time employees of the time to more than 120,000 today.
* "Google is not a conventional company, and we don't intend to become one," it read more than a decade ago. But employees say Google has become a much more corporate company.
* Do you work at Google? You can contact this reporter securely using encrypted messaging app Signal (+1 628-228-1836) or encrypted email (hslangley@protonmail.com).
* Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
A lot has changed in the past decade – take a trip back to Google's website circa 2009 and you'll appreciate just how much.
Google has arguably seen the biggest transformation of any Silicon Valley company in the last decade. In fact, Google isn't even in charge of Google anymore – it lives under parent company Alphabet.
But the changes haven't been only structural: as Google has grown in size, its company culture has shifted dramatically. As of last count, there are 123,048 full-time employees on Google's payroll. In 2009, there were around just 20,000.
This week, we journeyed back in time, via the Wayback Machine, to Google's old corporate information pages, and it reveals a lot about how the company has changed over more than a decade.
"Google is not a conventional company, and we don't intend to become one," read the description on the company's Life at Google page back in 2009.
"True, we share attributes with the world's most successful organizations – a focus on innovation and smart business practices comes to mind – but even as we continue to grow, we're committed to retaining a small-company feel."
But many employees believe this "small-company feel," which Google tried to hold onto for so long, no longer exists, as it inevitably shifted to a more corporate culture over time.
When cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin officially stepped down last year, it marked the end of an era for Google, but the culture change had been happening for several years – and insiders say 2018 was a major tipping point.
Google's old website also had a list of the "Top 10 Reasons to Work at Google." Check them out:
Some of these still ring true today, particularly the office perks, which have always been one of Google's great talent magnets – although employees have had to forego almost all of these while working from home during the pandemic.
But while Google could boast about its great benefits for all employees in 2009, today the company has an enormous shadow workforce of contractors and vendors which outnumber full-time employees, yet don't enjoy many of the same benefits – something that the pandemic has further highlighted.
'Don't be evil'
Take a look at Google's philosophical guidelines and things start to look even more dated.
Take, for example, Google's rule that "you can make money without doing evil" – a nugget of corporate philosophy Google more famously codified as "don't be evil." But since 2018 Google has moved away from this motto, which no longer prefaces the company's code of conduct.
It's also interesting to see how Google once described its internet-indexing PageRank technology. "This technique actually improves as the web gets bigger, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted," it read under commandment number 4: "Democracy on the web works."
In the time since, Google's technology has grown so extraordinarily that it's now facing the possibility of multiple antitrust lawsuits being brought against its search and advertising business for using its monopoly power.
There are plenty of other great nuggets that highlight how much Google has changed over the years, and we recommend you to go back and look at some of these pages yourself.
Pay particularly close attention to the Google corporate management list which has changed considerably, not only in the names featured but in the corporate structure.
You might notice a few of the old guard who have stuck around long enough to find a place inside CEO Sundar Pichai's list of direct reports.
SEE ALSO: Meet the 15 Google execs who report to CEO Sundar Pichai and are leading the internet company's most critical businesses
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