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History
Beginning
Google began as a research project in January, 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey
Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University. 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 how many times the search term appeared on a page. It was
originally nicknamed, "BackRub," because the system checked backlinks to
estimate a site's importance. A small search engine called RankDex was already
exploring a similar strategy.
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 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated as Google
Inc. on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California.
In March, 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo
Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. After
quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company settled into their current home
in a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, in
2003. Silicon Graphics leased these buildings to Google.
The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of
Internet users. They were attracted to its simple, uncluttered design — a
competitive advantage to attract users who did not wish to enter searches on web
pages filled with visual distractions. This appearance, while imitating the
early AltaVista, had behind it Google's unique search capabilities. In 2000
Google began selling advertisements associated with the search keyword to
produce enhanced search results for the user. This strategy was important for
increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of hits users
make upon ads. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page
design and to maximize page loading speed. Keywords were sold based on a
combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per
click. This model of selling keyword advertising was originally pioneered by
Goto.com (later renamed Overture, then Yahoo! Search Marketing). While many of
its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose
in stature and generated revenue.
U.S. Patent 6,285,999 describing Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was
granted on September 4, 2001. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford
University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.
Growth
With Google's gargantuan size comes more competition from large mainstream
technology companies. One such example is its rivalry with Microsoft. Microsoft
has been touting its MSN Search engine, and more recently its Windows Live
search in February, 2006, to counter Google's competitive position. Furthermore,
the two companies are increasingly offering overlapping services, such as
webmail (Gmail vs. Hotmail), search (both online and local desktop searching),
and other applications (for example, Microsoft's Windows Live Local competes
with Google Local).
Click fraud has also become a growing problem for Google's business strategy.
Google's CFO George Reyes said in a December 2004 investor conference that
"something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because I think,
potentially, it threatens our business model." Some have suggested that Google
is not doing enough to combat click fraud. Jessie Stricchiola, president of
Alchemist Media, called Google, "the most stubborn and the least willing to
cooperate with advertisers," when it comes to click fraud.
On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with
NASA which would involve Google building a 1-million square foot R&D center at
NASA's Ames Research Center. NASA and Google are planning to work together on a
variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed
computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial
space industry. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing
for Google engineers.
Time Warner's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership on December
21, 2005, including an enhanced global advertising partnership and a $1 Billion
investment by Google for a 5% stake in AOL. As part of the collaboration, Google
plans to work with AOL on video search and offer AOL's premium-video service
within Google Video. This will allow users of Google Video to search for AOL's
premium-video services. Display advertising throughout the Google network will
also increase.
Additionally, Google has also recently formed a partnership with Sun
Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies. As part of
the partnership Google will hire employees to help in the open source office
program OpenOffice.org.
Google has also recently 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. 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.
They have been filling unsold space in the newspaper that would have normally
been used for in-house advertisements. The company has also created other
engines, such as Google Earth and Froogle.
Google was added to the Standard & Poor's 500 index (S&P 500) on March 31, 2006.
Google replaced Burlington Resources, a major oil producer based in Houston
which was acquired by ConocoPhillips.
On a sociological note, the growth of Google has made an impact on urban
language, with phrases such as "Google it" becoming general references to
searching for information on the internet.
Products and services
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Main article: List of Google services and tools
Google's core business is to provide a free internet search engine with
advertisements placed along side and above the "natural" search listings. As of
2005, Google's AdWords advertising program generated nearly all of Google's
income. Google also distributes ads to search partner companies, and a large
number of content network web sites participating in the Google AdSense program.
dodgeball.com is a new social networking site built specifically for mobile
phones, purchased by Google in 2005.
Froogle is Google's shopping search engine that is geared towards searching
online shopping websites for products based on price. Google Groups is a service
that lets users search the complete archive of Usenet newsgroups, as well as
hosting mailing lists and other discussion groups. In early 2006, the company
also launched Google Video, which not only allows users to search and view
freely available videos, but also offers various media publishers to offer their
content for a fee, including television shows on CBS, NBA basketball games, and
music videos. Videos offered via this service are protected using Google's own
Digital rights management system.
Google Maps, also known as Google Local, provides road maps for the United
States, Canada, the U.K., Ireland, and Japan. Medium-resolution satellite images
are also available for the entire globe, and sister projects Google Moon and
Google Mars provide satellite imagery of the Moon and Mars, respectively.
In 2004, Google and Keyhole provided Google Earth, a downloadable program that
allows the user to zoom into nearly any spot on the earth, close enough to make
out cars, and in some cases, people. The technology comes with hundreds of
add-ons, like "Crime rate", to see the crime rate of the city you are zoomed in
on, or "3D buildings", to create 3D models of the towers and buildings of larger
cities. There are three available versions, "free edition", "plus", and "pro".
Pro, having the most features and advantages.
In 2004, Google launched its own free web-based email service, known as Gmail.
Gmail features improved spam filtering technology, combined with the capability
to use Google search technology on individual email messages. Gmail shook up the
free, web-based email market by initially offering 1 GB of email storage,
prompting competitors Yahoo! and Hotmail to increase their storage quotas
considerably. Google has since expanded Gmail's mail quota (and continues to
expand it); as of May, 2006, the quota was over 2.7 GB. The service generates
revenue by displaying advertisements from the AdWords service that are tailored
to the content of the email messages displayed on screen. This feature has
proven controversial, with some privacy advocates expressing concern that the
company was reading individual emails. Google maintains, however, that the
process is fully automated and that no humans read the content of users'
messages.
Google also branched into the instant messaging arena in August of 2005 by
introducing Google Talk, a Jabber-based instant messaging service. Since
February, 2006, Google Talk has been integrated with Gmail, allowing users to
send instant messages directly from their email service, as well as to save and
archive messages.
Google Desktop is a service that brings the search engine to the local computer
desktop, allowing one to search individual files, folders, and emails that
reside locally on one's own PC.
March 2006 saw the dawn of Google Page Creator, an easy to use, WYSIWYG webpage
creator. The domains are currently limited only to individuals with a Gmail
account, the users individual pages reside at http://username.googlepages.com
In April, 2006, Google launched Google Calendar, a shared calendar application.
In May, 2006, Google introduced Google SketchUp, which is a program that allows
users to make buildings to put in Google Earth.
On May 10, 2006, four new products were announced: Google Co-op, Google Desktop
4 (an updated version of Google Desktop), Google Notebook, and Google Trends.
Salaries
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Originally, typical salaries at Google were considered to be quite low by
industry standards. For example, some system administrators earned no more than
$33,000 — while $40,000 at that time was considered to be low for the Bay Area
job market. Nevertheless, Google's excellent stock performance following the IPO
has enabled these early employees to be competitively compensated by
participation in the corporation's remarkable equity growth. In 2005, Google has
implemented other employee incentives such as the Google Founders' Award, in
addition to offering higher salaries to new employees. Google's workplace
amenities, culture, global popularity, and strong brand recognition have also
attracted potential applicants.
After the company's IPO in August 2004, it was reported that Founders Sergey
Brin and Larry Page, as well as CEO Eric Schmidt, have accepted a base salary of
$1.00. They have all declined recent offers of bonuses and increases in
compensation by Google's board of directors. In a 2006 report of the world's
richest people, Forbes reported that Sergey Brin was #26 with a net worth of
$12.9 Billion, and Larry Page was #27 with a net worth of $12.8 Billion.
Corporate culture
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A license plate seen in the Googleplex parking lotGoogle is particularly known
for its relaxed corporate culture, reminiscent of the Dot-com boom. Google's
corporate philosophy is based on many casual principles including, "You can make
money without doing evil" (The sincerity of this so-called corporate philosophy
has been arguably marred by Google's participation in China's Internet
censorship program, more commonly known as the Great Firewall of China), "You
can be serious without a suit" and, "Work should be challenging and the
challenge should be fun." A complete list of corporate fundamentals is available
on Google's website. The company encourages equality within corporate levels.
Twice a week there is a roller hockey game in the company parking lot. Google's
relaxed corporate culture can also be seen externally through their holiday
variations of the Google logo.
"Twenty percent" time
All Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on
projects that interest them. The time can be allocated to one day a week, or
pooled into a month. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News
and orkut, are said to have originated from these independent endeavors.
Googleplex
Welcome to the GoogleplexMain article: Googleplex
As a further play on Google's name, its headquarters, located in California, are
referred to as "the Googleplex" — a googolplex being 1 followed by a googol of
zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf. multiplex, cineplex, etc).
The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, and a real-time projection of
current search queries. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles.
Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational
amenities are scattered throughout the campus, and include a workout room with
weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room,
assorted video games, Foosball, a baby grand piano, a pool table, and ping pong.
In addition to the rec room, there are snack rooms stocked with various cereals,
gummy bears, toffee, licorice, cashews, yogurt, carrots, fresh fruit, and dozens
of different drinks including fresh juice, soda, and make your own cappuccino.
April Fool's Day jokes
Google has a tradition of creating April Fool's Day jokes such as Google
MentalPlex, which featured the use of mental power to search the web. In 2002,
they claimed that pigeons were the secret behind their growing search engine. In
2004, it featured Google Lunar, which featured jobs on the moon, and in 2005, a
fictitious brain-boosting drink, termed Google Gulp, was announced. In 2006,
they came up with Google Romance. One can find other pranks hidden between
Google's pages. Additionally, in the languages list one can find the Bork! Bork!
Bork! version, imitating the Muppet Show's Swedish Chef. They also offer
versions in Pig Latin, Elmer Fudd, Klingon, and a Leet (or h4x0r) version of
Google. Some people thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004 around April
Fool's Day (as well as the doubling of Gmail's storage space to two gigabytes in
2005) was a joke. In 2005, featured on the Gmail homepage, was a comedic graph
depicting Google's goal of "infinity plus one" GB.
IPO and culture
Many people speculated that Google's IPO would inevitably lead to changes in
the company's culture, because of shareholder pressure for employee benefit
reductions and short-term advances, or because a large number of the company's
employees would suddenly become millionaires on paper. In a report given to
potential investors, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised that the
IPO would not change the company's culture. Later Mr. Page said, "We think a lot
about how to maintain our culture and the fun elements."
As Google grows, many analysts are finding that the company is becoming more
"corporate". In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other sources began
suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, Don't Be Evil
philosophy. |