Google!

Type:
Public (NASDAQ: GOOG), (LSE: GGEA)
Founded:
Menlo Park, California (September 27, 1998)
Headquarters:
Mountain View, California, USA
Key people:
Eric E. Schmidt, CEO/DirectorSergey Brin, Technology PresidentLarry E. Page, Products PresidentGeorge Reyes, CFO
Industry:
Internet
Products:
See list of Google services and tools
Revenue:
$6.138 Billion USD (2005)
Net income:
$1.465 Billion USD (2005)
Employees:
7,942 (June 30 2006)
Website:
http://www.google.com/

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," which refers to 10100 (a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Google has had a major impact on online culture. The verb "google" was recently added to both the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."

According to the Nielsen cabinet, Google is the most popular search engine on the web with a 54% market share, ahead of Yahoo! (23%) and MSN (13%). However, independent estimates from popular sites indicate that more than 80% of search referrals come from Google, with Yahoo! a distant second and MSN occupying barely 5%. It receives about a billion search requests per day.

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.

With Google's increased size comes more competition from large mainstream technology companies. One such example is the rivalry between Microsoft and Google. 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 Maps).

Some Criticisms
- A number of governments have raised concerns about the security risks posed by geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging
- Google's persistent cookie and other information collection practices have led to concerns over user privacy.

Google have a wide range of services and programs that include:
- Froogle
- Google Video,
- Google Earth
- Google Maps
- Gmail
- Google Groups
- Google SMS
- Google Talk
- And loads more…………….

Google April Fools
Google has a tradition of creating April Fool's Day jokes - such as Google MentalPlex, which allegedly 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, they featured Google Lunar (which claimed to feature 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.

Future Plans
- On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve
- 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.
- Additionally, Google has also recently formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies.
- In August, 2006, Google signed a $900 million deal with News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media unit to provide search and advertising on MySpace and other News Corp.

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.