Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include search, cloud computing, software and online advertising technologies.[6] Most of its profits derive from AdWords.[7][8]
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Together they own about 16 percent of its stake. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. Its mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"[9] and its unofficial slogan was "Don't be evil".[10][11] In 2006 Google moved to headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Google's core search engine. It offers online productivity software including email, an office suite, and social networking. Desktop products include applications for web browsing, organizing and editing photos, and instant messaging. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, and of the browser-only Google Chrome OS[12] for a specialized type of netbook known as a Chromebook. Google has moved increasingly into communications hardware: it partners major electronics manufacturers in production of its high-end Nexus series of devices, and acquired Motorola Mobility in May 2012.[13] A fiber-optic infrastructure was installed in Kansas City to facilitate a Google Fiber broadband service.[14]
The corporation has been estimated to run over one million servers in data centers around the world[15] and to process over one billion search requests[16] and about twenty-four petabytes of user-generated data each day.[17][18][19][20] In December 2012 Alexa listed google.com as the most visited website in the world. Numerous Google sites in other languages figure in the top one hundred, as do several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube and Blogger.[21] Google ranks second in the BrandZ brand equity database.[22] Its market dominance has led to criticism over issues including copyright, censorship and privacy.[23][24]
Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Together they own about 16 percent of its stake. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. Its mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"[9] and its unofficial slogan was "Don't be evil".[10][11] In 2006 Google moved to headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Google's core search engine. It offers online productivity software including email, an office suite, and social networking. Desktop products include applications for web browsing, organizing and editing photos, and instant messaging. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, and of the browser-only Google Chrome OS[12] for a specialized type of netbook known as a Chromebook. Google has moved increasingly into communications hardware: it partners major electronics manufacturers in production of its high-end Nexus series of devices, and acquired Motorola Mobility in May 2012.[13] A fiber-optic infrastructure was installed in Kansas City to facilitate a Google Fiber broadband service.[14]
The corporation has been estimated to run over one million servers in data centers around the world[15] and to process over one billion search requests[16] and about twenty-four petabytes of user-generated data each day.[17][18][19][20] In December 2012 Alexa listed google.com as the most visited website in the world. Numerous Google sites in other languages figure in the top one hundred, as do several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube and Blogger.[21] Google ranks second in the BrandZ brand equity database.[22] Its market dominance has led to criticism over issues including copyright, censorship and privacy.[23][24]