History of Google - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

This article covers the history of Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, the most widely used web-based search engine

Web search engine

A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other...

in the world.

Early history

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

began in March 1998 as a research project by Larry Page

Larry Page

Lawrence "Larry" Page is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. As of April 4, 2011, he is also the chief executive of Google, as announced on January 20, 2011...

and Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin

Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion....

, Ph.D.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

students at Stanford

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

working on the Stanford Digital Library Project

Stanford Digital Library Project

The Stanford Digital Library Project was a research program run by Hector Garcia-Molina, Terry Winograd, Dan Boneh, and Andreas Paepcke at Stanford University in the mid-1990s to 2004...

(SDLP). The SDLP's goal was “to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library." and was funded through the National Science Foundation

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

among other federal agencies. In search for a dissertation theme, Page considered—among other things—exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

, understanding its link structure as a huge graph

Graph (mathematics)

In mathematics, a graph is an abstract representation of a set of objects where some pairs of the objects are connected by links. The interconnected objects are represented by mathematical abstractions called vertices, and the links that connect some pairs of vertices are called edges...

. His supervisor Terry Winograd

Terry Winograd

Terry Allen Winograd is an American professor of computer science at Stanford University, and co-director of the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Group...

encouraged him to pick this idea (which Page later recalled as "the best advice I ever got") and Page focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlink

Backlink

Backlinks, also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, are incoming links to a website or web page...

s to be valuable information about that page (with the role of citation

Citation

Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source . More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source (not always the original source). More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated...

s in academic publishing

Academic publishing

Academic publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted is often called...

in mind). In his research project, nicknamed "BackRub", he was soon joined by Sergey Brin

Sergey Brin

, a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship

NSF-GRF

The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program is an annual grant awarded by the National Science Foundation to approximately 2,000 doctoral-level students in the natural, social, and engineering sciences at US institutions...

. Brin was already a close friend, whom Page had first met in the summer of 1995 in a group of potential new students which Brin had volunteered to show around the campus. Page's web crawler

Web crawler

A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters.This process is called Web...

began exploring the web in March 1996, setting out from Page's own Stanford home page as its only starting point. To convert the backlink data that it gathered into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank

PageRank

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page and used by the Google Internet search engine, that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set...

algorithm. Analyzing BackRub's output—which, for a given URL, consisted of a list of backlinks ranked by importance—it occurred to them that a search engine based on PageRank would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page).

A small search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services (a subsidiary of Dow Jones

Dow Jones & Company

Dow Jones & Company is an American publishing and financial information firm.The company was founded in 1882 by three reporters: Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser. Like The New York Times and the Washington Post, the company was in recent years publicly traded but privately...

) designed by Robin Li

Robin Li

Robin Li is a Chinese entrepreneur, co-founder of China's most popular search engine Baidu.Li studied information management at Peking University and the State University of New York, Buffalo. In 2000 he founded Baidu with Eric Xu...

was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking. The technology in RankDex would be patented and used later when Li founded Baidu

Baidu

Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....

in China.

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. By early 1997, the backrub page described the state as follows:

Some Rough Statistics (from August 29th, 1996)

Total indexable HTML urls: 75.2306 Million

Total content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes

...

BackRub is written in Java and Python and runs on several Sun Ultras and Intel Pentiums running Linux. The primary database is kept on an Sun Ultra II with 28GB of disk. Scott Hassan and Alan Steremberg have provided a great deal of very talented implementation help. Sergey Brin has also been very involved and deserves many thanks.

-Larry Page page@cs.stanford.edu

Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 4, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California

Menlo Park, California

Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...

.

Both Brin and Page had been against using advertising pop-ups in a search engine, or an "advertising funded search engines" model, and they wrote a research paper in 1998 on the topic while still students. However, they soon changed their minds and early on allowed simple text ads.

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol

Googol

A googol is the large number 10100, that is, the digit 1 followed by 100 zeros:The term was coined in 1938 by 9-year-old Milton Sirotta , nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner...

," which refers to the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros (although Enid Blyton

Enid Blyton

Enid Blyton was an English children's writer also known as Mary Pollock.Noted for numerous series of books based on recurring characters and designed for different age groups,her books have enjoyed huge success in many parts of the world, and have sold over 600 million copies.One of Blyton's most...

used the phrase "Google Bun" in The Magic Faraway Tree

The Magic Faraway Tree (novel)

The Magic Faraway Tree is a children's novel by Enid Blyton, first published in 1943.It is the second book in the The Faraway Tree series of novels, in which Jo, Bessie and Fanny, the protagonists of the series, have their cousin Dick over to stay with them...

(published 1941), The Folk of the Faraway Tree (published 1946), and called a clown character "Google" in Circus Days Again (published 1942), and there is also the Googleplex Star Thinker from Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams

Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...

' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...

). Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, "google

Google (verb)

The transitive verb to google refers to using the Google search engine to obtain information on the Web. However, it can also be used as a general term for searching the internet using any search engine, not just Google...

," was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary
Merriam-Webster
Merriam–Webster, which was originally the G. & C. Merriam Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, is an American company that publishes reference books, especially dictionaries that are descendants of Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language .Merriam-Webster Inc. has been a...

and the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

in 2006, meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet." The use of the term itself reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

By the end of 1998, Google had an index of about 60 million pages. The home page was still marked "BETA", but an article in Salon.com

Salon.com

Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...

already argued that Google's search results were better than those of competitors like Hotbot

HotBot

HotBot is a web search engine launched in May 1996 by Wired Magazine. It is currently owned by Lycos. HotBot became a popular tool with search results served by the Inktomi database and directory results provided originally by LookSmart and then the Open Directory Project since mid-1999...

or Excite.com, and praised it for being more technologically innovative than the overloaded portal site

Web portal

A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....

s (like Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

, Excite.com, Lycos

Lycos

Lycos, Inc. is a search engine and web portal established in 1994. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, webhosting, social networking, and entertainment websites.-Corporate history:...

, Netscape's Netcenter

NetCenter

Netcenter, located in the independent city of Hampton, Virginia, is a former Shopping Mall redeveloped beginning in 2000 and converted into a business center with supporting retail, personal services and food service amenities. It was the first of its kind in the Hampton Roads region.-History:The...

, AOL.com, Go.com

Go.com

Go.com is a web portal first launched by Jeff Gold, and now operated by the Walt Disney Internet Group, which is a part of The Walt Disney Company. The portal includes content from ABC News, ESPN, and FamilyFun.com, all of which are associated with Disney and are hosted under a .go.com name...

and MSN.com) which at that time, during the growing dot-com bubble

Dot-com bubble

The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...

, were seen as "the future of the Web", especially by stock market investors.

In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue

165 University Avenue

165 University Avenue is a small rented office building on University Avenue, the main commercial street in downtown Palo Alto, California. Located near Stanford University, the building has served as an incubator for several noted Silicon Valley companies, including Logitech, Google, PayPal,...

in Palo Alto

Palo Alto, California

Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...

, home to several other noted Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...

technology startups. After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...

(SGI) in 2003. The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex

Googleplex

The Googleplex is the corporate headquarters complex of Google, Inc., located at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California, United States, near San Jose. "Googleplex" is a portmanteau of Google and complex, and a reference to googolplex, the name given to the large...

(a play on the word googolplex, a number that is equal to 1 followed by a googol of zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

319 million.

The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

associated with search keywords

Keyword (Internet search)

An index term, subject term, subject heading, or descriptor, in information retrieval, is a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document. Index terms make up a controlled vocabulary for use in bibliographic records. They are an integral part of bibliographic control, which is the...

. The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and click-throughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click. This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! Search Marketing is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo!.Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc....

(later renamed Overture Services, before being acquired by Yahoo!

Yahoo!

and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! Search Marketing

). While many of its dot-com

Dot-com company

A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com , is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain, ".com" .While the term can refer to present-day companies, it is also used specifically to refer to companies with...

rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.

Google's declared code of conduct

Code of Conduct

A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the responsibilities of or proper practices for an individual, party or organization. Related concepts include ethical codes and honor codes....

is "Don't be evil

Don't Be Evil

"Don't be evil" is the informal corporate motto of Google, originally suggested by Google employees Paul Buchheit and Amit Patel at a meeting...

", a phrase which they went so far as to include in their prospectus

Prospectus

Prospectus may refer to:* Prospectus * Prospectus * Prospectus * Parkland College's newspaper...

(aka "S-1") for their 2004 IPO

Initial public offering

An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...

, noting, "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."

Financing and initial public offering

The first funding for Google as a company was secured on August 1998 in the form of a $100,000USD

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim

Andy Bechtolsheim

Andreas von Bechtolsheim is an electrical engineer who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer....

, co-founder of Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

, given to a corporation which did not yet exist.

On June 7, 1999, a round of equity funding totalling $25 million was announced; the major investors being rival venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital "one of the highest-caliber venture firms", and noted that it is "one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture-capital firms"...

.

While Google still needed a lot of funding for their further expansion, Brin and Page were hesitant to take the company public even though that would basically solve most of their financial issues. They were not ready to give up their control over Google. After borrowing the $25 million venture capital money from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, Sequoia forced Brin and Page to hire a CEO

Chief executive officer

A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...

or else they would take back that borrowed $12.5 million. Finally, Brin and Page gave in and hired Eric Schmidt as Google’s first CEO in March 2001 and the company went public three years later.

In October 2003, while discussing a possible initial public offering

Initial public offering

of shares (IPO), Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

approached the company about a possible partnership or merger. However, no such deal ever materialized. In January 2004, Google announced the hiring of Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley is a global financial services firm headquartered in New York City serving a diversified group of corporations, governments, financial institutions, and individuals. Morgan Stanley also operates in 36 countries around the world, with over 600 offices and a workforce of over 60,000....

and Goldman Sachs Group to arrange an IPO. The IPO was projected to raise as much as $4 billion.

On April 29, 2004, Google made an S-1 form SEC filing for an IPO to raise as much as $2,718,281,828. This alludes to Google's corporate culture with a touch of mathematical humor as e

E (mathematical constant)

The mathematical constant ' is the unique real number such that the value of the derivative of the function at the point is equal to 1. The function so defined is called the exponential function, and its inverse is the natural logarithm, or logarithm to base...

≈ 2.718281828. April 29 was also the 120th day of 2004, and according to section 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934

Securities Exchange Act of 1934

The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 , , codified at et seq., is a law governing the secondary trading of securities in the United States of America. It was a sweeping piece of legislation...

, "a company must file financial and other information with the SEC 120 days after the close of the year in which the company reaches $10 million in assets and/or 500 shareholders, including people with stock options." Google has stated in its annual filing for 2004 that every one of its 3,021 employees, "except temporary employees and contractors, are also equity holders, with significant collective employee ownership", so Google would have needed to make its financial information public by filing them with the SEC regardless of whether or not they intended to make a public offering. As Google stated in the filing, their, "growth has reduced some of the advantages of private ownership. By law, certain private companies must report as if they were public companies. The deadline imposed by this requirement accelerated our decision." The SEC filing revealed that Google turned a profit every year since 2001 and earned a profit of $105.6 million on revenues of $961.8 million during 2003.

In May 2004, Google officially cut Goldman Sachs from the IPO, leaving Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston

Credit Suisse First Boston

Credit Suisse First Boston was the former name of the banking firm Credit Suisse.-History:In 1978, Credit Suisse and First Boston Corporation formed a London-based 50-50 investment banking joint venture called the Financière Crédit Suisse-First Boston...

as the joint underwriters

Underwriting

Underwriting refers to the process that a large financial service provider uses to assess the eligibility of a customer to receive their products . The name derives from the Lloyd's of London insurance market...

. They chose the unconventional way of allocating the initial offering through an auction (specifically, a "Dutch auction

Dutch auction

A Dutch auction is a type of auction where the auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer's price, or a predetermined reserve price is reached. The winning participant pays the last announced price...

"), so that "anyone" would be able to participate in the offering. The smallest required account balances at most authorized online brokers that are allowed to participate in an IPO, however, are around $100,000. In the run-up to the IPO the company was forced to slash the price and size of the offering, but the process did not run into any technical difficulties or result in any significant legal challenges. The initial offering of shares was sold for $85 a piece. The public valued it at $100.34 at the close of the first day of trading, which saw 22,351,900 shares change hands.

Google's initial public offering took place on August 25, 2004. A total of 19,605,052 shares

Stock

The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...

were offered at a price of $85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 (another mathematical reference as √2 ≈ 1.4142135) were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. The sale raised US$

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

1.67 billion, and gave Google a market capitalization

Market capitalization

Market capitalization is a measurement of the value of the ownership interest that shareholders hold in a business enterprise. It is equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding of a publicly traded company...

of more than $23 billion. The vast majority of Google's 271 million shares remained under Google's control. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!

Yahoo!

, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owns 2.7 million shares of Google.

The company is listed on the NASDAQ

NASDAQ

The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

stock exchange under the ticker symbol

Ticker symbol

A stock symbol or ticker symbol is a short abbreviation used to uniquely identify publicly traded shares of a particular stock on a particular stock market. A stock symbol may consist of letters, numbers or a combination of both. "Ticker symbol" refers to the symbols that were printed on the ticker...

GOOG.

Growth

In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs

Pyra Labs

Pyra Labs is the company that coined the word Blog, creating the service Blogger.The co-founders were Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, and the company's first product, also named 'Pyra', was a web application which would combine a project manager, contact manager, and to-do list...

, owner of Blogger, a pioneering and leading web log

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

hosting website. Some analysts considered the acquisition inconsistent with Google's business model. However, the acquisition secured the company's competitive ability to use information gleaned from blog postings to improve the speed and relevance of articles contained in a companion product to the search engine Google News

Google News

Google News is a free news aggregator provided by Google Inc, selecting recent items from thousands of publications by an automatic aggregation algorithm....

.

At its peak in early 2004, Google handled upwards of 84.7% of all search requests on the World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

through its website and through its partnerships with other Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

clients like Yahoo!, AOL

AOL

AOL Inc. is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is headquartered at 770 Broadway in New York. Founded in 1983 as Control Video Corporation, it has franchised its services to companies in several nations around the world or set up international versions of its services...

, and CNN

CNN

Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...

. In February 2004, Yahoo! dropped its partnership with Google, providing an independent search engine of its own. This cost Google some market share

Market share

Market share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...

, yet Yahoo!'s move highlighted Google's own distinctiveness, and today the verb "to google

Google (verb)

" has entered a number of languages (first as a slang

Slang

Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

verb and now as a standard word), meaning, "to perform a web search" (a possible indication of "Google" becoming a genericized trademark

Genericized trademark

A genericized trademark is a trademark or brand name that has become the colloquial or generic description for, or synonymous with, a general class of product or service, rather than as an indicator of source or affiliation as intended by the trademark's holder...

).
After the IPO, Google's stock market capitalization rose greatly and the stock price more than quadrupled. On August 19, 2004 the number of shares outstanding

Shares outstanding

Shares outstanding are common shares that have been authorized, issued, and purchased by investors. They have voting rights and represent ownership in the corporation by the person or institution that holds the shares. They should be distinguished from treasury shares, which is common stock held by...

was 172.85 million while the "free float" was 19.60 million (which makes 89% held by insider

Insider

An insider is a member of any group of people of limited number and generally restricted access. The term is used in the context of secret, privileged, hidden or otherwise esoteric information or knowledge: an insider is a "member of the gang" and as such knows things only people in the gang...

s). In January 2005 the number of shares outstanding was up 100 million to 273.42 million, 53% of that was held by insiders, which made the float 127.70 million (up 110 million shares from the first trading day). The two founders are said to hold almost 30% of the outstanding shares. The actual voting power of the insiders is much higher, however, as Google has a dual class stock structure in which each Class B share gets ten votes compared to each Class A share getting one. Page says in the prospectus

Prospectus (finance)

In finance, a prospectus is a document that describes a financial security for potential buyers. A prospectus commonly provides investors with material information about mutual funds, stocks, bonds and other investments, such as a description of the company's business, financial statements,...

that Google has, "a dual class structure that is biased toward stability and independence and that requires investors to bet on the team, especially Sergey and me." The company has not reported any treasury stock

Treasury stock

A treasury stock or reacquired stock is stock which is bought back by the issuing company, reducing the amount of outstanding stock on the open market ....

holdings as of the Q3 2004 report.

On June 1, 2005, Google shares gained nearly four percent after Credit Suisse First Boston raised its price target on the stock to $350. On that same day, rumors circulated in the financial community that Google would soon be included in the S&P 500

S&P 500

The S&P 500 is a free-float capitalization-weighted index published since 1957 of the prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. The stocks included in the S&P 500 are those of large publicly held companies that trade on either of the two largest American stock...

. When companies are first listed on the S&P 500 they typically experience a bump in share price due to the rapid accumulation of the stock within index funds that track the S&P 500. The rumors, however, were premature and Google was not added to the S&P 500 until 2006. Nevertheless, on June 7, 2005, Google was valued at nearly $52 billion, making it one of the world's biggest media companies by stock market value.

On August 18, 2005 (one year after the initial IPO), Google announced that it would sell 14,159,265 (another mathematical reference as π

' is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter. is approximately equal to 3.14. Many formulae in mathematics, science, and engineering involve , which makes it one of the most important mathematical constants...

≈ 3.14159265) more shares of its stock to raise money. The move would double Google's cash stockpile to $7 billion. Google said it would use the money for "acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies or other assets".

On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

which would involve Google building a 1000000 square feet (92,903 m²) R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center, and on December 31, 2005 Time Warner

Time Warner

Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...

's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership—see Partnerships below.

Additionally in 2005, Google formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

to help share and distribute each other's technologies. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help in the open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

office program OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...

.

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 Bing

Bing

Bing is a web search engine from Microsoft.Bing may also refer to:* An onomatopœia of a bell sound* Bing cherry, a variety of cherry* Bing , Chinese flatbread* Bing , a German company that manufactured toys and kitchen utensils...

search engine to counter Google's competitive position. Furthermore, the two companies are increasingly offering overlapping services, such as webmail

Web-based email

The term Webmail is used to describe two things. One use of the word is to describe a Webmail client: an email client implemented as a web application accessed via a web browser. This article focuses in this use of the term...

(Gmail vs. Hotmail

Hotmail

Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group. It was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith and launched in July 1996 as "HoTMaiL". It was one of the first...

), search (both online and local desktop searching), and other applications (for example, Microsoft's Windows Live Local

Windows Live Local

Bing Maps is a web mapping service provided as a part of Microsoft's Bing suite of search engines and powered by the Bing Maps for Enterprise framework....

competes with Google Earth

Google Earth

Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency funded company acquired by Google in 2004 . It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite...

). In addition to an Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...

replacement Google is designing its own Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

-based operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

called Chrome OS to directly compete with Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. There were also rumors of a Google web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

, fueled much by the fact that Google is the owner of the domain name

Domain name

A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....

"gbrowser.com". These were later proven when Google released Google Chrome

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...

. This corporate feud is most directly expressed in hiring offers and defections. Many Microsoft employees who worked on Internet Explorer have left to work for Google. This feud boiled over into the courts when Kai-Fu Lee, a former vice-president of Microsoft, quit Microsoft to work for Google. Microsoft sued to stop his move by citing Lee's non-compete contract

Non-compete clause

A non-compete clause , or covenant not to compete , is a term used in contract law under which one party agrees not to pursue a similar profession or trade in competition against another party . As a contract provision, a CNC is bound by traditional contract requirements including the...

(he had access to much sensitive information regarding Microsoft's plans in China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

).

Google and Microsoft reached a settlement out of court on 22 December 2005, the terms of which are confidential.

Click fraud

Click fraud

Click fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target...

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.

While the company's primary market is in the web content arena, Google has also recently began 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 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
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...

. They have been filling unsold space in the newspaper that would have normally been used for in-house advertisements.

During the third quarter 2005 Google Conference Call, Eric Schmidt said, "We don't do the same thing as everyone else does. And so if you try to predict our product strategy by simply saying well so and so has this and Google will do the same thing, it's almost always the wrong answer. We look at markets as they exist and we assume they are pretty well served by their existing players. We try to see new problems and new markets using the technology that others use and we build."

After months of speculation, Google was added to the Standard & Poor's

Standard & Poor's

Standard & Poor's is a United States-based financial services company. It is a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks and bonds. It is well known for its stock-market indices, the US-based S&P 500, the Australian S&P/ASX 200, the Canadian...

500 index (S&P 500) on March 31, 2006. Google replaced Burlington Resources

Burlington Resources

Burlington Resources, was an American oil and gas company. Their headquarters were in Houston, Texas. The company was acquired by ConocoPhillips in 2006....

, a major oil producer based in Houston

Houston, Texas

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...

that had been acquired by ConocoPhillips

ConocoPhillips

ConocoPhillips Company is an American multinational energy corporation with its headquarters located in the Energy Corridor district of Houston, Texas in the United States...

. The day after the announcement Google's share price rose by 7%.

Over the course of the past decade, Google has become quite well known for its corporate culture and innovative, clean products, and has had a major impact on online culture. In July 2006, the verb "to google

Google (verb)

" was officially added to both the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

, meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.". In November 2009, The Global Language Monitor

Global Language Monitor

The Global Language Monitor is an Austin, Texas-based company that collectively documents, analyzes and tracks trends in language usage worldwide, with a particular emphasis upon the English language...

named google No. 7 on the Top Words of the Decade list. In December 2009 the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

highlighted Google in their Portrait of the Decade (Words) series.

Philanthropy

In 2004, Google formed a non-profit philanthropic wing, Google.org

Google.org

Google.org is the charitable arm of Internet search engine company Google.The organization has committed over $100 million in investments and grants as of May 2010. To fund the organization, Google granted them 3 million shares during their initial public offering. As of August 2011, Google.org's 3...

, giving it a starting fund of $1 billion. The express mission of the organization is to help with the issues of climate change

Climate change

Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

(see also global warming

Global warming

Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

), global public health, and global poverty. Among its first projects is to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle

Electric vehicle

An electric vehicle , also referred to as an electric drive vehicle, uses one or more electric motors or traction motors for propulsion...

that can attain 100 mpg

Fuel economy in automobiles

Fuel usage in automobiles refers to the fuel efficiency relationship between distance traveled by an automobile and the amount of fuel consumed....

Acquisitions

Since 2001, Google has acquired several small companies, often consisting of innovative teams and products. One of the earlier companies that Google bought was Pyra Labs

Pyra Labs

. They were the creators of Blogger

Blogger (service)

Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com. Up until May 1, 2010 Blogger allowed users to publish...

, a weblog publishing platform, first launched in 1999. This acquisition led to many premium features becoming free. Pyra Labs was originally formed by Evan Williams

Evan Williams

Evan Williams may refer to:* Evan Williams , Canadian actor* Evan Williams , entrepreneur, Blogger and Twitter co-founder* Evan Williams , Scottish football goalkeeper* Evan Williams , horse racing jockey and trainer...

, yet he left Google in 2004. In early 2006, Google acquired Upstartle, a company responsible for the online collaborative word processor, Writely. The technology in this product was combined with Google Spreadsheets to become Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

On October 9, 2006, Google announced that it would buy the popular online video site YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

for $1.65 billion. The brand, YouTube, will continue to exist, and will not merge with Google Video. Meanwhile, Google Video signed an agreement with Sony BMG Music Entertainment

Sony BMG Music Entertainment

Sony BMG Music Entertainment was a recorded music company, which was a 50–50 joint venture between the Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann AG...

and the Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group

Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...

, for both companies to deliver music videos to the site. The deal was finalized by November 13.

On October 31, 2006, Google announced that it had purchased JotSpot, a company that helped pioneer the market for collaborative, web-based business software to bolster its position in the online document arena.

On March 17, 2007, Google announced its acquisition of two more companies. The first is Gapminder's Trendalyzer

Trendalyzer

Trendalyzer is an information visualization software for animation of statistics that was initially developed by Hans Rosling's Gapminder Foundation in Sweden. In March 2007 it was acquired by Google Inc....

software, a company that specializes in developing information technology for provision of free statistics in new visual and animated ways On the same day, Google also announced its acquisition of Adscape Media, a small in-game advertising

In-game advertising

In-game advertising refers to advertising in computer and video games. IGA differs from advergaming, which refers to a game specifically made to advertise a product.The IGA industry is large and growing...

company based in San Francisco, California

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

.

Google also acquired PeakStream Technologies.

Partnerships

Google has worked with several corporations, in order to improve production and services.
On September 28, 2005,Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a 1000000 square feet (92,903 m²) 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

Biotechnology

Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...

-info

Information technology

Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing for Google engineers. In October 2006, Google formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

to help share and distribute each other's technologies. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help the open source

Open source

office program OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org

.

Time Warner

Time Warner

Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...

's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership on December 21, 2005, including an enhanced global advertising partnership and a $

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

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 did not allow users of Google Video to search for AOL's premium-video services. Display advertising throughout the Google network will also increase.

In August 2003, Google signed a $900 million offer with News Corp.'s

News Corporation

News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...

Fox Interactive Media unit to provide search and advertising on MySpace

MySpace

Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

and other News Corp. websites including IGN

IGN

IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...

, AmericanIdol.com

American Idol

American Idol, titled American Idol: The Search for a Superstar for the first season, is a reality television singing competition created by Simon Fuller and produced by FremantleMedia North America and 19 Entertainment...

, Fox.com, and Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

, although Fox Sports

Fox Sports (USA)

Fox Sports is a division of the Fox Broadcasting Company . It was formed in 1994 with Fox's acquisition of broadcast rights to National Football League games...

is not included as a deal already exists between News Corp. and MSN

MSN

MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...

.

On 6 December 2006, British Sky Broadcasting

British Sky Broadcasting

British Sky Broadcasting Group plc is a satellite broadcasting, broadband and telephony services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, with operations in the United Kingdom and the Ireland....

released details of a Sky and Google alliance. This includes a feature where Gmail will link with Sky and host a mail service for Sky, incorporating the email domain "@sky.com".

In 2007, Google displaced America Online

AOL

as a key partner and sponsor of the NORAD Tracks Santa

NORAD Tracks Santa

NORAD Tracks Santa is an annual Christmas-themed entertainment program, which has existed since 1955, produced under the auspices of the North American Aerospace Defense Command...

program. Google Earth

Google Earth

was used for the first time to give visitors to the website the impression that they were following Santa Claus

Santa Claus

Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...

' progress in 3-D

3D computer graphics

3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...

. The program also made its presence known on YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

in 2007 as part of its partnership with Google.

In January 2009, Google announced a partnership with the Pontifical Council for Social Communications

Pontifical Council for Social Communications

The Pontifical Council for Social Communications is a dicastery of the Roman Curia...

, allowing the Pope

Pope

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...

to have his own channel on YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

New mobile top-level domain

In coordination with several of the major corporations, including Microsoft

Microsoft

, Nokia

Nokia

Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...

, Samsung

Samsung

The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...

, and Ericsson

Ericsson

Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...

, Google provided financial support in the launch of the .mobi

.mobi

The domain name mobi is a top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet. Its name is derived from the adjective mobile, indicating its use by mobile devices for accessing Internet resources via the Mobile Web....

top level domain created specifically for the mobile internet, stating that it is supporting the new domain extension to help set the standards that will define the future of mobile content and improve the experience of Google users. In early 2006, Google launched Google.mobi, a mobile search portal offering several Google mobile products, including stripped-down versions of its applications and services for mobile users. On September 17, 2007, Google launched, "Adsense for Mobile", a service to its publishing partners providing the ability to monetize their mobile websites through the targeted placement of mobile text ads. Also in September, Google acquired the mobile social networking site, Zingku.mobi to "provide people worldwide with direct access to Google applications, and ultimately the information they want and need, right from their mobile devices."

Gonzales v. Google

On Wednesday, January 18, 2006, the U.S. Justice Department

United States Department of Justice

The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...

filed a motion to compel

Motion to compel

A motion to compel asks the court to order either the opposing party or a third party to take some action. This sort of motion most commonly deals with discovery disputes, when a party who has propounded discovery to either the opposing party or a third party believes that the discovery responses...

in United States district court

United States district court

The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...

in San Jose

San Jose, California

San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...

seeking a court order that would compel search engine company Google Inc. to turn over, "a multi-stage random sample of one million URL’s

Uniform Resource Locator

In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....

", from Google’s database, and a computer file with, "the text of each search string entered onto Google’s search engine over a one-week period (absent any information identifying the person who entered such query)." Google maintains that their policy has always been to assure its users privacy and anonymity, and challenged the subpoena

Subpoena

A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...

. On March 18, 2006, a federal judge ruled that while Google must surrender 50,000 random URLs, the Department of Justice did not meet the necessary burden to force Google to disclose any search terms entered by its users.

Bedrock Computer Technologies, LLC vs. Google, Inc

A jury in Texas awarded Bedrock Computer Technologies $5 million in a patent lawsuit against Google. The patent allegedly covered use of hash tables with garbage collection and external chaining in the Red Hat Linux kernel. The judgment was later vacated

Vacated judgment

A vacated judgment makes a previous legal judgment legally void. A vacated judgment is usually the result of the judgment of an appellate court which overturns, reverses, or sets aside the judgment of a lower court....

by the court.

External links

Google Corporate History (official)
David Hart: On the Origins of Google National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...

, August 17, 2004

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Early history

Financing and initial public offering

Growth

Philanthropy

Acquisitions

Partnerships

New mobile top-level domain

Gonzales v. Google

Bedrock Computer Technologies, LLC vs. Google, Inc

Further reading

External links