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For the search engine produced by Google Inc., see Google search; for the underlying technology, see Google platform; for other uses see Google (disambiguation).

Google, Inc.
Company typePublic (NASDAQ: GOOG)
IndustryInternet
FoundedMountain View, California (1998)
FounderLarry Page
Sergey Brin Edit this on Wikidata
HeadquartersMountain View, California, USA
Key people
Eric E. Schmidt, CEO/Director
Sergey Brin, Technology President
Larry E. Page, Products President
ProductsList of Google services and tools
Revenue$3.19 billion USD (2004)
Number of employees
4,989 (September 30, 2005)
Websitewww.google.com

Google, Inc Nasdaq: GOOG, is a U.S. public corporation, initially established as a privately held corporation in 1998, which designed and managed the Internet Google search engine. Google's corporate headquarters is at the "Googleplex" in Mountain View, California and employs almost 5,000 workers. Dr. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Novell, was named the Chief Executive Officer when co-founder Larry Page stepped down. The company's overview web page states "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." jngjnksngjfdsngjfdsngjksngjfdsgnjkjnffffffffffffffggggjnjgfnjgnjdngjfdngfdngnjfdgnfjdgnfjdgnjfdngjfdgnjfdngjfdngfjdngfjdngfjgnjfngjgfnn jflgnjnjgnfjdsgnfjdsgnklfngnj nhsa hahahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahahhahhahahha

Salaries

File:Googler2-non.jpg
A license plate seen in the Googleplex parking lot

Prior to the IPO offering, typical salaries at Google were considered within the industry to be quite low. For instance, some system administrators earned no more than $33,000 — while $37,000 at that time was considered to be low by Bay Area employment market levels. 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 Founder's award, as well making higher salary offers to new employees.

Beyond monetary compensation, Google's workplace amenities, culture, global popularity, stellar prospects (relative to most Bay Area companies), and strong brand recognition continues to attract far more applicants than there are positions available. (It is estimated that less than one job offer is made per thousand resumes submitted.) Google reportedly employs one in-house legal recruiter just to assist the legal department in evaluating the high volume of resumes from attorneys seeking to join the corporation.

Management

Position: name, age, compensation in USD (as of June 2005)

Founders Brin and Page reportedly earned $1 billion in 2004, but after the IPO in Aug 2004, their compensation is reported in SEC filings annually. Page, Brin, and Schmidt have all declined recent offers of bonuses and increases in compensation by Google's board of directors. Institutional Shareholder Services ranked Google's corporate governance dead last in the list of members of the Standard & Poor's 500. [2]

According to the Forbes 400 list (2005), the combined net worth of Larry Page and Sergey Brin is $22 billion US. But due to the recent surge in stock price (April 2005-June 2005), their net worth is significantly higher. When recorded on the Forbes 400, Google's stock was around $111. In late 2005 Google shares were valued at $385. Page and Brin, however, had sold $2 billion before some of the largest stock gains.

Analysts

Research analysts covering Google Inc. See also GOOG: Star Analysts for GOOGLE - Yahoo! Finance

Technology

Google's services are run on several server farms, each consisting of many thousand low-cost commodity computers running customized versions of Linux. While the company does not provide detailed information about its hardware, it was estimated in 2004 that they were using over 60,000 Linux machines. See Google platform for the details.

Corporate culture

Philosophy

Google is 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", "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 Web site [3]. The company encourages equality within corporate levels. Twice a week there is a roller hockey game in the company parking lot.

"Twenty percent" time

Every Google engineer is encouraged to spend 20 percent (20%) of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of these end up as Google services (notably Adsense/Adwords — which provide the majority of the company's revenue), as well as Gmail and Google News.

Googleplex

Google's headquarters is called the Googleplex. 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. After eating, people can relieve themselves on digital toilets similar to Japanese toilets.

IPO and culture

Many people have suggested that after Google's IPO the corporate culture will not be able to stay so "fun" and focused on the future.[4] [5] The company may be required to answer to its new shareholders who may press the company to reduce employee benefits and to focus on short term advances. Also, it may be more challenging for the company to maintain a collegial atmosphere when approximately 1,000 (30%) of the employees are paper-millionaires. 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."

In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other news sources [6] began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy. The New York Times article was headlined, "Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain" [7].

Google partnerships

On Sept 28 Google announced a partnership with NASA which would involve Google building an R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center. As reported by SearchEnginejournal.com, NASA and Google were said to be 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.

Google also has a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share distribute each other's technologies [8]. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help the open source office program OpenOffice.org.

Acquisitions

2001

  • Feb 2001: Deja (the Usenet archive, not the company) was acquired, and was incorporated to become part of the re-launched Google Groups [9].
  • Sep 2001: Google acquired Outride Inc. [10].

2003

  • Feb 2003: Google acquired Pyra Labs, a weblogging provider and owner of Blogger [11].
  • Apr 2003: Neotonic Software was acquired as part of Google's plan to bring its CRM technology in house [12].
  • Sep 2003: Kaltix was acquired to develop and launch Google Personal [14].
  • Oct 2003: Sprinks was acquired to enhance Google's Adwords and AdSense program [15].
  • Oct 2003: Google acquired Genius Labs, another web logging provider [16].


2004

  • Apr 2004: Ignite Logic was acquired [17].
  • Jun 2004: Google made a $10M investment into partial ownership of Baidu [18].
  • Jul 2004: Picasa was acquired to provide picture management tools to Blogger [19].
  • Oct 2004: Keyhole was acquired to provide the core mapping capabilities in Google Maps and Google Earth [20].
  • Sept-Dec 2004, Google revealed in its annual 10-K filing that it had acquired 2 Silicon Valley start-up companies: ZipDash and Where2. The technology provided by ZipDash was used to develop and launch Google Ride Finder. Where2 was a mapping software provider.

2005

  • May 2005: DodgeBall [22], a social networking software provider for mobile devices, was acquired [23].
  • Jul 2005: Google announced in its Q2 quarterly conference call that it had acquired Akwan Information Technologies as a part of its plan to open an R&D office and expand its presence into Latin and South America. [25]
  • Aug 2005: Google acquires Android Inc., a software provider for mobile devices [26]
  • September 28: both Google and Ames Research Center disclosed details to a long-term research partnership. In addition to pooling engineering talent, Google plans to build a 1-million square foot facility on the ARC campus.[27]

Criticism and controversy

A number of organizations have used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to demand that Google remove references to allegedly copyrighted material on other sites. Google typically handles this by removing the link as requested and including a link to the complaint in the search results.

There have also been complaints that Google's Web cache feature violates copyright. However, Google provides mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled (which Google respects; it also honors the robots.txt file which is another mechanism that allows operators of a website to request that part or all of their site not be included in search engine results).

On June 2005, Google Watch revealed the details of a contract between the University of Michigan and Google to create digitized copies of the copyrighted materials stored at the University's library. This contract is part of Google Print's effort to digitize millions of books and make the full text searchable. There are claims that it is a violation of copyright laws to use copyrighted material for profit by placing search ads beside the search results of these digitized books. Also, Google is setting a new precedent by making digital copies of copyrighted material on a wide scale without explicit permission from copyright holders. Meanwhile, Google claims that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books. The contract between Google and the U. of Michigan does make it clear that Google will provide only excerpts of copyright text in a search. The contract says that it will comply with "fair use", an exemption in copyright law that allows people to reproduce portions of text of copyrighted material for research purposes.

Dispute with Agence France Presse

In March 2005, Agence France Presse (AFP) sued Google for $17.5 million, alleging that Google News infringed on its copyright because "Google includes AFP's photos, stories and news headlines on Google News without permission from Agence France Presse." [28] It was also alleged that Google ignored a cease and desist order, though Google counters that it has opt-out procedures which AFP could have followed but did not.

It is possible that AFP will make additional arguments in court that it has not yet made in public, but currently, many pundits are confused by the decision to sue [29][30][31] because Google does not display the full article on its site, provides a link to one of AFP's 600 online clients such as Singapore's Channel NewsAsia (which presumably benefits AFP because more people view the article and advertising), and because the articles are available via the providers' websites regardless of Google's actions. It was argued that had AFP wanted to prevent free use of its articles, it should have asked its providers to require subscriptions rather than suing Google. Additionally, "in 2002, a federal appeals court ruled that Web sites may reproduce and post 'thumbnail' or downsized versions of copyrighted photographs," so Google News' thumbnails are likely legal. [32] Still, AFP argues that the headline and first sentence of an article constitutes the "heart" of the work and that reproducing it is copyright infringement.

According to the Canada Free Press, "Google Inc. is now attempting to remove all postings of Agence-France Presse material from its site, although AFP spokesmen say that even if this is done, the lawsuit will continue... It seems that the basis of the lawsuit is just the abstract notion of copyright without any real damages to justify the action." The article concluded "It would be a sad day for those who look to the Internet for news if AFP is successful in limiting what Google can display... AFP's lawsuit, if successful, is bound to have a major impact on how news is delivered on the Internet."

The lawsuit's outcome will likely depend on whether Google can successfully argue that its use of AFP's material constitutes "fair use" under copyright law. Google could even argue that it "adds value" to AFP's news without harming the French news wholesaler.[33]

Lawsuit by Authors Guild

On September 20, 2005, the Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, with a children's book author, and a former Poet Laureate of the United States, filed a class action suit in federal court in Manhattan against Google over its unauthorized scanning and copying of books through its Google Library program. The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction that will prevent the company from continuing their very ambitious digitization project. Arguments in the case will hinge around the interpretation of the four factors of Fair Use.

Many commentators in the world of copyright law and technology were not surprised by this development as The Authors Guild has also been involved in attempting to make online publishers pay royalties to writers whose stories appear in any number of online databases without their express consent. In a concession to general concerns about the nature of their project, Google had announced plans back in August that they would respect the wishes of copyright holders who contacted the company to inform them that they did not want their works included in this digitization project.

Multinational corporation

Google is a multinational corporation, having offices in over a dozen countries [34]. In order to comply with the varying laws of these countries, several versions of Google restrict very specific keyword searches. According to American law, any copyright owner can require material to be removed via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whereas under French and German law, for example, hate speech and Holocaust denial are illegal. Google complies with these laws by banning keyword searches related to these terms.

China's Censoring

The People's Republic of China, whose human rights record has been widely criticized by the international community, has in the past restricted citizen access to popular search engines such as Altavista, Yahoo!, and Google. The mirror search site elgooG has been used by Chinese citizens to get around blocked content. This complete ban is currently lifted. However, the government remains active in filtering Internet content.

In the summer of 2005 Google's name became associated with commercial contracts between the Government of China, Microsoft and Cisco Systems which block access to websites using words like "democracy." Google has been involved with the removal of specific sites that are blocked in China from their Chinese news portal. The French news agency, AFP, reported that Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google have all agreed to cooperate in censoring the Internet from their China based sites by filtering out content objectionable to the Chinese government. The list of forbidden words includes "democracy," "freedom," "human rights," and "Taiwan independence."

In October 2005, Blogger and access to the Google Cache are now available in China.

Google's efforts to refine its database has led to some legal controversy, notably a lawsuit in October 2002 from the company SearchKing which sought to sell advertisements on pages with inflated Google rankings. In its defense, Google stated that its rankings are its constitutionally protected opinions of the web sites that it indexes. A judge subsequently threw out SearchKing's lawsuit in mid-2003 on precisely these grounds.

In late 2003 and early 2004, there were rumors that Google would be sued by the SCO Group over their use of the Linux operating system, in conjunction with SCO's lawsuit against IBM over the claimed ownership of intellectual property rights relating to Linux.

In May 2004, the Baltimore Sun interviewed Peri Fleisher, a great-niece of Edward Kasner, the mathematician whose nephew coined the word googol, who said Kasner's descendants were "exploring" legal action against Google due to its name.

Google recently settled a patent infringement lawsuit with Yahoo! by issuing 2.7 million shares. Yahoo! had earlier alleged that Google's AdSense program violated a patent held by Yahoo!'s Overture unit. The settlement cost Google around $275 million which resulted in the company posting a net loss in the third quarter of 2004.

Personnel issues

Former Google sales executive Christina Elwell, promoted to national sales director at Google in late 2003, accused her supervisor of discrimination against her after informing him of her pregnancy [35]. After the loss of 3 of her quadruplets, which she claimed was due to the stressful circumstances created by Google, Elwell sued the company. She also refused an offer from Shona Brown, Google Vice President of Business Operations, to reinstate her to a "low-level operations position".

Partiality

In February 2003, Google banned the ads of Oceana, a two-and-a-half-year-old non-profit organization, which was protesting the environmental effects of a major cruise ship operation's sewage treatment practices. Google claimed that their editorial policy states, "that Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations."

Offensive search results

In April 2004, Google received complaints that a search for "Jew" on its site listed the anti-Semitic website Jew Watch at or towards the top of the list. Google insisted this was a result of their content-oblivious PageRank algorithm. [36]. As a reaction, some webloggers launched a Google bomb to put the corresponding Wikipedia article at the top of the search results.

In addition, this google bomb led to the respective site, Jew Watch, to go down in its ranking considerably. A counter google-bomb was initiated and coordinated by the forum users at StormFront that resulted in Jew Watch regaining its top position. The effort was led by a forum user there using "Kilay" as his handle.

Privacy

Main article: Google and privacy issues

Some have pointed out the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users' searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government.

It has been claimed that Google infringes the privacy of visitors by uniquely identifying them using cookies which are used to track Web users' search history. The cookies possess notably distant expiration dates and it is claimed users' searches are recorded without permission for advertising purposes. In response Google claims cookies are necessary to maintain user preferences between sessions and offer other search features. The use of cookies with such distant expiration dates is not very uncommon.

Some users believe the processing of email message content by Google's Gmail service goes beyond proper use. The point is often made that people without Gmail accounts, who have not agreed to the Gmail terms of service, but send email to Gmail users have their correspondence analyzed without permission. Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder, and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements. Other popular email services such as Hotmail also scan incoming email to try to determine whether it is unsolicited spam email (which Gmail also does).

Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC warned that "As courts become more frequent integrators of electronic records, there is a greater risk of Google ... becoming a serious privacy threat."

The PageRank system

Google's central PageRank system has been criticized, some, such as Daniel Brandt, calling it "undemocratic". Common arguments are that the system is unfairly biased towards large web sites, and that the criteria for a page's importance are not subject to peer review. The system is also susceptible to manipulation and fraud through the use of dummy sites. See Google bomb and Spamdexing.

Specific searches

File:Google Maps sample.png
Google Maps web site sample

For users searching for more specific results, at the top of Google pages are additional tabs to more narrowly define a user's search results.

  • Images: Allows the user to limit a search to images on the Internet; the images are identified by Google by the image name saved on the webpage (just because the picture is saved as badger.jpg, for example, does not guarantee a badger picture).
  • Groups: Allows the user to create, search and browse groups for discussion.
  • News: Brings the user directly to the Google News search page, formatted similar to news websites such as MSNBC or BBC News. The search page provides the option for twenty countries. Google.com.au allows selection criteria for Australia.
  • Froogle: Allows the user to shop online searching websites within a user specified budget.
  • Local: Useful for looking for places (shops, other specific landmarks) in a neighborhood or region; for the United States, Canada, and the UK only.
  • Earth: Allows the user to download a program to have a 3D version of satellite pictures.
  • Maps: Provides the user with access to satellite and aerial images of locations which the user can zoom in, zoom out, or pan in any direction. See Google Maps.
  • Desktop: Allows the user to search their computer for files, folders, and emails. See Google Desktop.
  • Talk: Allows users with Gmail accounts to communicate with each other through instant messaging and have online conversations.
  • Videos: Allows the user to limit a search to videos on the Internet; Use Google to find reviews and showtimes for movies playing somewhere near you.
  • Blogs: Blog Search allows the user to only search blogs based on RSS feeds. Results can be sorted by relevance or by date. Although it allows you to search specific blogs, this feature is currently malfunctioning.
  • Scholar: Allows users to search some peer-reviewed, scholarly journals. Non-peer reviewed material is also included in the index.

Clicking on the "More" tab at the top directs the user to even more Google Services such as Blogger, University Searches, Google products in their Labs section, Help and Alerts.

April Fool's Day jokes

Main article: Google's hoaxes

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. You can find other pranks hidden between google's pages. In the languages list you can find the Bork! Bork! Bork! version. Bork! is the mock Swedish of the Muppets Show's Swedish Chef. Some people thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004 around April Fools Day was actually a joke.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Google.
Wikinews has news related to:

Company websites

In the news

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