<p>Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, FWB: GGQ1) is a multinational public cloud computing, Internet search, and advertising technologies corporation. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products,[5] and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program.</p> <p>Google runs over one million servers in data centers around the world,[14] and processes over one billion search requests[15] and twenty petabytes of user-generated data every day.</p> <h1>History</h1> <p>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.</p> <h2>Financing and initial public offering</h2> <p>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.[33] On June 7, 1999, a $25 million round of funding was announced,[34] with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.[33]</p> <h2>Growth</h2> <p>In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[43] The next year, against Page and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine,[44] 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.</p> <h2>Acquisitions and partnerships</h2> <p>Since 2001, Google has acquired many companies, mainly focusing on small venture capital companies. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc..[53] The start-up company developed a product called Earth Viewer that gave a 3-D view of the Earth.</p> <h1>Products and services</h1> <h2>Advertising</h2> <p>Ninety-nine percent of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs.[80] For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues.</p> <h2>Search engine</h2> <p>The Google 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%.[89] Google indexes billions of Web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators.</p> <h2>Productivity tools</h2> <p>In addition to its standard web search services, Google has released over the years a number of online productivity tools. Gmail, a free webmail service provided by Google, was launched as an invitation-only beta program on April 1, 2004,[95] and became available to the general public on February 7, 2007.</p> <h2>Other products</h2> <p>Google Translate is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate between 35 different languages. Browser extensions allow for easy access to Google Translate from the browser. The software uses corpus linguistics techniques, where the program "learns" from professionally translated documents, specifically United Nations and European Parliament proceedings.</p> <h2>Enterprise products</h2> <p>Google entered the enterprise market in February 2002 with the launch of its Google Search Appliance, targeted toward providing search technology to larger organizations.[117] Providing search for a smaller document repository, Google launched the Mini in 2005.</p> <h1>Corporate affairs and culture</h1> <p>Google is known for its informal corporate culture, of which the many playful variation on the Google logo are an indicator. In 2007 and 2008, Fortune Magazine placed Google at the top of its list of the hundred best places to work.[20] Google's corporate philosophy embodies such casual principles as "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."</p> <h2>Googleplex</h2> <p>Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California is referred to as "the Googleplex" in a play of words; a googolplex being 1010100, or a one followed by a googol of zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf. multiplex, cineplex, etc.).</p> <h2>Innovation Time Off</h2> <p>As a motivation technique (usually called Innovation Time Off), some Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week, usually weekends in practice) on projects that interest them.</p> <h2>Easter eggs and April Fool's Day jokes</h2> <p>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.[150] In 2002, they claimed that pigeons were the secret behind their growing search engine.[151] In 2004, they featured Google Lunar (which claimed to feature jobs on the moon),[152] and in 2005, a fictitious brain-boosting drink, termed Google Gulp was announced.</p> <h1>See also</h1> <p>Google.org<br /> Google logo<br /> List of Google products<br /> Google China<br /> Censorship by Google<br /> Criticism of Google<br /> Google Ventures - venture capital fund<br /> Googlebot - web crawler<br /> Google Platform</p> <h1>External links</h1> <p>Google.com<br /> Corporate Homepage<br /> Official Google Blog<br /> On the Origins of Google<br /> Google Research<br /> "Earliest known google website from 1998". Archived from the original on 1998-11-11. - archive.org<br /> Online museum of google logos mostly from events and holidays</p>

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