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| History | |
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Main article: History of Google
Google's original homepage had a simple design since its founders were not experienced in HTML, the language for designing web pages.[23]
Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California.[24]
While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites.[25] They called this new technology PageRank, where a website's relevance was determined by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site.[26][27]
A small search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking.[28] The technology in RankDex would be patented[29] and used later when Li founded Baidu in China.[30][31]
Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site.[32][33][34]
Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word "googol",[35][36] the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine wants to provide large quantities of information for people.[37] Originally, Google ran under the Stanford University website, with the domain google.stanford.edu.[38]
The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997,[39] and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in a friend's (Susan Wojcicki[24]) garage in Menlo Park, California. Craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee.[24][40][41]
In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed 1 billion for the first time, an 8.4 percent increase from May 2010 (931 million).[42]
Tags:Googol,Sergey Brin,Larry Page,Billion,Html,Pagerank,Robin Li,Baidu,Susan Wojcicki,Menlo Park, | |
| Financing and initial public offering | |
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Google's first production server. The first iteration of Google production servers was built with inexpensive hardware.[43]
The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of US$100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was even incorporated.[44] Early in 1999, while still graduate students, Brin and Page decided that the search engine they had developed was taking up too much of their time from academic pursuits. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer, and later criticized Vinod Khosla, one of Excite's venture capitalists, after he had negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. On June 7, 1999, a $25 million round of funding was announced,[45] with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.[44]
Google's initial public offering (IPO) took place five years later on August 19, 2004. The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share.[46][47] Shares were sold in a unique online auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal.[48][49] The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.[50] The vast majority of the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google, and many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited because it owned 8.4 million shares of Google before the IPO took place.[51]
Some people speculated that Google's IPO would inevitably lead to changes in company culture. Reasons ranged from shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions to the fact that many company executives would become instant paper millionaires.[52] As a reply to this concern, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised in a report to potential investors that the IPO would not change the company's culture.[53] In 2005, however, articles in The New York Times and other sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy.[54][55][56] In an effort to maintain the company's unique culture, Google designated a Chief Culture Officer, who also serves as the Director of Human Resources. The purpose of the Chief Culture Officer is to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on: a flat organization with a collaborative environment.[57] Google has also faced allegations of sexism and ageism from former employees.[58][59]
The stock's performance after the IPO went well, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on October 31, 2007,[60] primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market.[61] The surge in stock price was fueled mainly by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds.[61] The company is now listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG and under the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GGQ1.
Tags:Andy Bechtolsheim,Venture Capital,Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,Sequoia Capital,Initial Public Offering,Morgan Stanley,Credit Suisse,Sexism,Ageism,Nasdaq,Ticker Symbol,Frankfurt Stock Exchange, | |
| Growth | |
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In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[62] The next year, against Page and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine,[63] Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.[24] In order to maintain an uncluttered page design and increase speed, advertisements were solely text-based. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bids and click-throughs, with bidding starting at five cents per click.[24] This model of selling keyword advertising was first pioneered by Goto.com, an Idealab spin-off created by Bill Gross.[64][65] When the company changed names to Overture Services, it sued Google over alleged infringements of the company's pay-per-click and bidding patents. Overture Services would later be bought by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing. The case was then settled out of court, with Google agreeing to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license.[66]
During this time, Google was granted a patent describing its PageRank mechanism.[67] The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased its current office complex from Silicon Graphics at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.[68] The complex has since come to be known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol zeroes. The Googleplex interiors were designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects. Three years later, Google would buy the property from SGI for $319 million.[69] By that time, the name "Google" had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb "google" to be added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."[70][71]
Tags:Mountain View,Palo Alto, California,Silicon Valley,Idealab,Bill Gross,Silicon Graphics,Mountain View, California,Googolplex,Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, | |
| Acquisitions and partnerships | |
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See also: List of acquisitions by Google
Since 2001, Google has acquired many companies, mainly focusing on small venture capital companies. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc.[72] The start-up company developed a product called Earth Viewer that gave a three-dimensional view of the Earth. Google renamed the service to Google Earth in 2005. Two years later, Google bought the online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.[73] On April 13, 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, giving Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies.[74] Later that same year, Google purchased GrandCentral for $50 million.[75] The site would later be changed over to Google Voice. On August 5, 2009, Google bought out its first public company, purchasing video software maker On2 Technologies for $106.5 million.[76] Google also acquired Aardvark, a social network search engine, for $50 million, and commented on its internal blog, "we're looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it".[77] In April 2010, Google announced it had acquired a hardware startup, Agnilux.[78]
In addition to the many companies Google has purchased, the company has partnered with other organizations for everything from research to advertising. In 2005, Google partnered with NASA Ames Research Center to build 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) of offices.[79] The offices would be used for research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing, and the entrepreneurial space industry. Google entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems in October 2005 to help share and distribute each other's technologies.[80] The company also partnered with AOL of Time Warner,[81] to enhance each other's video search services. Google's 2005 partnerships also included financing the new .mobi top-level domain for mobile devices, along with other companies including Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson.[82] Google would later launch "Adsense for Mobile", taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market.[83] Increasing its advertising reach even further, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corporation entered into a $900 million agreement to provide search and advertising on popular social networking site MySpace.[84]
In October 2006, Google announced that it had acquired the video-sharing site YouTube for US$1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006.[85] Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube's running costs, and YouTube's revenues in 2007 were noted as "not material" in a regulatory filing.[86] In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 YouTube revenue at US$200 million, noting progress in advertising sales.[87] In 2007, Google began sponsoring NORAD Tracks Santa, a service that follows Santa Claus' progress on Christmas Eve,[88] using Google Earth to "track Santa" in 3-D for the first time,[89] and displacing former sponsor AOL. Google-owned YouTube gave NORAD Tracks Santa its own channel.[90]
In 2008, Google developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing Google with high-resolution (0.41 m monochrome, 1.65 m color) imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 6, 2008.[91] Google also announced in 2008 that it was hosting an archive of Life Magazine's photographs as part of its latest partnership. Some of the images in the archive were never published in the magazine.[92] The photos were watermarked and originally had copyright notices posted on all photos, regardless of public domain status.[93]
In 2010, Google Energy made its first investment in a renewable energy project, putting $38.8 million into two wind farms in North Dakota. The company announced the two locations will generate 169.5 megawatts of power, or enough to supply 55,000 homes. The farms, which were developed by NextEra Energy Resources, will reduce fossil fuel use in the region and return profits. NextEra Energy Resources sold Google a twenty percent stake in the project to get funding for its development.[94] Also in 2010, Google purchased Global IP Solutions, a Norway-based company that provides web-based teleconferencing and other related services. This acquisition will enable Google to add telephone-style services to its list of products.[95] On May 27, 2010, Google announced it had also closed the acquisition of the mobile ad network AdMob. This purchase occurred days after the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation into the purchase.[96] Google acquired the company for an undisclosed amount.[97] In July 2010, Google signed an agreement with an Iowa wind farm to buy 114 megawatts of energy for 20 years.[98]
On April 4, 2011, The Globe and Mail reported that Google bid $900 million for six thousand Nortel Networks patents.[99]
On August 15, 2011, Google announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion[100][101] subject to approval from regulators in the United States and Europe. In a post on Google's blog, Google Chief Executive and co-founder Larry Page revealed that Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility is a strategic move to strengthen Google's patent portfolio. The company's Android operating system has come under fire in an industry-wide patent battle, as Apple and Microsoft have taken to court Android device makers such as HTC, Samsung and Motorola.[102] This purchase was made in part to help Google gain Motorola's considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies to help protect it in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies,[103] mainly Apple and Microsoft[102] and to allow it to continue to freely offer Android.[104]
Tags:Admob,Doubleclick,Motorola Mobility,On2 Technologies,Android,Operating System,Youtube, | |
| Google Data Centers | |
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Google Inc. currently owns and operates 6 data centers across the U.S., plus one in Finland and another in Belgium. On September 28, 2011 the company has announced to build 3 data centers worth more than $200 million in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan) which the land has been owned by Google Inc. It will be operated between one to two years ahead.[105]
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| Advertising | |
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Ninety-nine percent of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs.[106] For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues.[107] Google has implemented various innovations in the online advertising market that helped make it one of the biggest brokers in the market. Using technology from the company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they are relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them.[108][109] Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page.[110] Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google's AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website, and earn money every time ads are clicked.[111]
One of the disadvantages and criticisms of this program is Google's inability to combat click fraud, when a person or automated script "clicks" on advertisements without being interested in the product, which causes that advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claim that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were in fact fraudulent or invalid.[112] Furthermore, there has been controversy over Google's "search within a search", where a secondary search box enables the user to find what they are looking for within a particular website. It was soon reported that when performing a search within a search for a specific company, advertisements from competing and rival companies often showed up along with those results, drawing users away from the site they were originally searching.[113] Another complaint against Google's advertising is its censorship of advertisers, though many cases concern compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. For example, in February 2003, Google stopped showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ship's sewage treatment practices. Google cited its editorial policy at the time, stating "Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations."[114] The policy was later changed.[115] In June 2008, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on its web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized due to antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2008.[116][117]
In an attempt to advertise its own products, Google launched a website called Demo Slam, developed to demonstrate technology demos of Google Products.[118] Each week, two teams compete at putting Google's technology into new contexts. Search Engine Journal said Demo Slam is "a place where creative and tech-savvy people can create videos to help the rest of the world understand all the newest and greatest technology out there."[119]
Tags:Adwords, | |
| Search engine | |
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Main article: Google Search
Google reverted its homepage. The previous one had a drag-down navigation bar service. Now, there is older black bar seen previously.[120]
Google Search, a web search engine, is the company's most popular service. According to market research published by comScore in November 2009, Google is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%.[121] Google indexes billions[122] of web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators. Despite its popularity, it has received criticism from a number of organizations. In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google's indexing, claiming that Google's caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content.[123] In this case, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google.[124][125] Furthermore, the publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly has compiled a list of words that the web giant's new instant search feature will not search.[126] Google Watch has also criticized Google's PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor established sites,[127] and has made allegations about connections between Google and the NSA and the CIA.[128] Despite criticism, the basic search engine has spread to specific services as well, including an image search engine, the Google News search site, Google Maps, and more. In early 2006, the company launched Google Video, which allowed users to upload, search, and watch videos from the Internet.[129] In 2009, however, uploads to Google Video were discontinued so that Google could focus more on the search aspect of the service.[130] The company even developed Google Desktop, a desktop search application used to search for files local to one's computer. Google's most recent development in search is its partnership with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to create Google Patents, which enables free access to information about patents and trademarks.
One of the more controversial search services Google hosts is Google Books. The company began scanning books and uploading limited previews, and full books where allowed, into its new book search engine. The Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, filed a class action suit in a New York City federal court against Google in 2005 over this new service. Google replied that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books.[131] Google eventually reached a revised settlement in 2009 to limit its scans to books from the U.S., the UK, Australia and Canada.[132] Furthermore, the Paris Civil Court ruled against Google in late 2009, asking it to remove the works of La Martinière (Éditions du Seuil) from its database.[133] In competition with Amazon.com, Google plans to sell digital versions of new book Tags:Web Search Engine, | |
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