A new article at Fortune.com relates Google's history and its present, what threats the web monster will be facing in the coming months/years and what's up with the plans of an IPO. Here's an interesting quote:

In 18 months the company has quadrupled in size, now employing more than 1,300 people. Annualized revenues have sextupled, to about $900 million. Annualized pretax profits have grown by a factor of 23, to about $350 million, according to a handful of people who have been told the figures. Only a few high-tech companies in history, like Apple, Compaq, Sun, and more recently Amazon.com, have generated that kind of revenue growth so fast.