From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Industry | Internet, Computer software |
|---|---|
| Products | See list of Google products |
| Revenue | $10.604 Billion USD (2006)[1] |
| Net income | $3.077 Billion USD (2006)[1] |
| Employees | 10,674 (December 31, 2006)[2] |
| Slogan | Don't Be Evil |
| Website | http://www.google.com/ |
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American public corporation, specializing in Internet search and online advertising. The company had 10,674 full-time employees as of December 31, 2006, and is based in Mountain View, California. Google's mission statement is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."[3]
Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University, and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998. Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising $1.67 billion, making it worth $23 billion.[4] The company grew rapidly since its IPO, acquiring smaller companies such as Writely, JotSpot, and online video sharing site YouTube in 2006, and moving into the office software market with the release of its Google Apps Premium Edition in 2007. Additionally, Google is also involved in many cooperational partnerships with other corporations, such as NASA, Sun Microsystems, Time Warner's America Online, and NewsCorp's MySpace
Like most large corporations, Google's businesses have drawn some controversy, such as copyright disputes in its book search project, or accusations of censorship of search results as it works with countries such as France, Germany, and China. Additionally, in the post September 11 era, several governments have raised concerns about the security risks posed by geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging.[5]
Google is particularly known for its relaxed corporate culture. Their corporate philosophy is based on many casual principles including, "You can make money without doing evil", "You can be serious without a suit," and "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun." This relaxed culture can also be seen externally through their holiday variations of the Google logo, as well as their various hoaxes and April Fool's Day jokes.
The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol,"which refers to 10100 (the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, "google," was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."
History
Google began as a research project in January 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California.[10] They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques, which essentially ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page.[11] Their search engine was originally nicknamed, "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance.[12] A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy.[13]
Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford University website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 14, 1997, and the company was incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. The total initial investment raised for the new company eventually amounted to almost US$1.1 million, including a $100,000 check by Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.[14]
In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[15] After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1999.[16] The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex, a 1 followed by a googol of zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million.[17]
The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[18] In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.[10] The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed.[10] Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click.[10] This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture Services, before being acquired by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing).[19][20][21] While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.[10]
A patent describing part of Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on September 4, 2001.[22] The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.
Growth
- Main article: History of Google (Growth)
While the company's primary market is in the web content arena, Google has begun to experiment with other markets, such as radio and print publications. On January 17, 2006, Google announced that it had purchased the radio advertising company dMarc, which provides an automated system that allows companies to advertise on the radio.[27] This will allow Google to combine two niche advertising media -- the Internet and radio -- with Google's ability to laser-focus on the tastes of consumers. Google has also begun an experiment in selling advertisements from its advertisers in offline newspapers and magazines, with select advertisements in the Chicago Sun-Times.[28] They have been filling unsold space in the newspaper that would have normally been used for in-house advertisements.
Google was added to the S&P 500 index on March 30, 2006. Google replaced Burlington Resources, a major oil producer based in Houston which was acquired by ConocoPhillips.
Products
Google has created services and tools for the general public and business environment alike, including Web applications, advertising networks and solutions for businesses.
Advertising
Most of Google's revenue is derived from its online advertising programs. Google AdWords allows Web advertisers to display advertisements in Google's search results and the Google Content Network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. Google AdSense website owners can also display adverts on their own site, and earn money every time ads are clicked.
Applications
Google is well-known for its web search service, which is a major factor of the company's success. As of December, 2006, Google is the most used search engine on the web with a 50.8% market share, ahead of Yahoo! (23.6%) and Windows Live Search (8.4%).[37] Google indexes billions of Web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators. Google has also employed the Web Search technology into other search services, including Image Search, Google News, the price comparison site Froogle, the interactive Usenet archive Google Groups, Google Maps and more.
