Online Encyclopedia
Google Inc.
- This page is about Google Inc. For the search engine produced by Google Inc., see Google.
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Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG http://quotes.nasdaq.com/asp/SummaryQuote.asp?symbol=NaodW29-item1683f34f4fed357
e&selected=GOOG ), is a U.S.-based corporation, established in 1998, that manages the Google search engine. Google is headquartered at the "Googleplex" in Mountain View, California, and employs over 1,000 workers. Dr. Eric Schmidt became Google's CEO (he was previously the CEO of Novell) when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.
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1.1 Beginnings |
History
Beginnings
Google began as a research project in early 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford Ph.D. students who developed the theory that a search engine based on analysis of the relationships between Web sites would produce better results than the basic techniques then in use. It was originally nicknamed BackRub because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance.
Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant ones, Page and Brin decided to test their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. They formally founded their company, Google, Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. In February 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home of a number of other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. Google quickly outgrew the University Avenue site, moving to a complex of buildings (known by some as "The Googleplex") in Mountain View's Amphitheater Parkway later that year.
The Google search engine gained a following among Internet users for its simple, clean design and relevant search results. Censored pages were sold by the keyword so that they would be more relevant to the end user, and the ads were text-based in order to keep page design uncluttered and fast-loading. The concept of selling Keyword advertising was originally pioneered by Overture[1] http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/about/news/mile.jhtml , formerly Goto.com. While many of its dot-com siblings went under, Google quietly rose in stature while turning a profit.
In September 2001, Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was awarded a U.S. Patent. The patent was officially awarded to Leland Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. [2] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtm
l/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=6,285,999.WKU.&OS=PN/6,285,999
&RS=PN/6,285,999
In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of Blogger, a pioneering and leading weblog-hosting Web site. The acquisition seemed inconsistent with the general mission of Google. However, the move secured the company's ability to use information gleaned from blog postings to improve the speed and relevance of articles contained in Google News.
At its peak in early 2004, Google handled upwards of 80 percent of all search requests on the world wide web through its Web site and clients like Yahoo!, AOL, and CNN.[3] http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox21.html Google's share fell in February 2004 when Yahoo! dropped Google's search technology in order to deliver independent results.
Google's declared code of conduct is Don't be evil. Their site includes humorous features such as cartoon modifications [4] http://www.google.com/holidaylogos.html of their logo for special occasions, the option to display the site in fictional or humorous languages such as Klingon and Leet, and April Fool's jokes about the company.
It is conjectured that Google's response to Yahoo will be personalized searches, using the personal data that is gathering from Orkut, Gmail, and Froogle to give results based on the individual. In fact, there is a Personalized Google Search http://labs.google.com/personalized Beta in Google Labs http://labs.google.com/ , the experimental section of Google.com.
Etymology
The name "Google" is a play on the word googol, which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of U.S. mathematician Edward Kasner in 1938, to refer to the number represented by 1 followed by a hundred zeros. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the Web.
Financing and IPO
Google's major investors are the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital. In October 2003, while discussing a possible IPO (Initial Public Offering of shares), the company was approached by Microsoft about a possible partnership or merger; no such deal ever materialized.
In January 2004, Google announced the hiring of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group to arrange an IPO. That IPO (one of the most anticipated in history) was projected to raise as much as $4 billion. According to a banker involved in the transaction, the deal would yield an estimated $12 billion market capitalization for Google.
On April 29, 2004, Google filed an S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO to raise as much as USD $2,718,281,828 (with a touch of mathematical humor in the exact amount). The 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 as the joint underwriters. No one really understood their strong will to use a "dutch auction" for the initial offering, instead of the regular "english auction". The result was that the offering was priced at $85, when the public valued it at $100.34 at the close of the first day of trading which saw 22,351,900 shares change hands.
After some initial stumbles, Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004. 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. The sale raised $1.67 billion, of which approximately $1.2 billion went to Google. The vast majority of Google's 271 million shares remained under Google's control. The IPO gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Ironically Yahoo! also benefited from the IPO because it owns 2.7 million shares of Google. The company was was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG.
Since the IPO, Google's stock market capitalization has risen to $50 billion as the stock price has doubled. On August 19 2004 the number of shares outstanding was 172.85 million while the "free float" was 19.60 million, in January 2005 the shares outstanding are 273.42 million, 53% is held by insiders which makes the float 127.70 million. The two founders is said to hold almost 30% of the outstanding shares. The company has not reported any treasury stock holdings as of the Q3 2004 report.
Salaries at Google Inc.
The basic salaries at Google are considered low by some. For instance, system admins earn no more than $33,000-37,000, which some argue to be pretty low especially by Bay Area standards.
Google and the courts
A number of organizations (most controversially the Church of Scientology) 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 the "Google cache" feature violates copyright. However, the consensus seems to be that caching is a normal part of the functionality of the web, and that HTTP provides adequate mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled (which Google respects; it also honors the robots.txt file which is a mechanism to allow the owners of a site to request that part or all of their site not be included in search engine listings).
In 2002, news reports surfaced that the Google search engine had been banned in China. A mirror site (in all respects, including mirrored text) called elgooG proved useful to get around the ban. The ban was later lifted, and reports indicated that it was not Google itself that was targeted. Rather, Google's feature of a cached version of a Web site would allow Chinese users to circumvent any ban of a Web site itself, merely by visiting the cache instead. There is also a dynamic Google mirror working as a proxy server at http://www.zensur.freerk.com/google/. [5] http://www.zensur.freerk.com/google/
Google's efforts to refine its database has led to some legal controversy, drawing a lawsuit in October 2002 from a company, SearchKing , that sought to sell advertisements on pages with inflated Google rankings. In its defense, Google said that its rankings are its constitutionally protected opinions of the web sites that it lists. A judge threw out SearchKing's lawsuit in mid-2003 on precisely these grounds.
In late 2003 and early 2004, there were persistent rumors that Google would be sued by the SCO Group over its use of the Linux operating system, in conjunction with SCO's lawsuit against IBM over the 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. [6] http://www.baltimoresun.com/technology/bal-as.googol16may16,0,1939718.story
Google recently settled a patent infringement lawsuit with Yahoo! by issuing 2.7 million shares. Yahoo! had earlier alleged that Google's Ad Sense 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 year 2004.
Management
Job: name, age, pay
- CEO: Eric E. Schmidt, 49, $554.00K
- CFO: George Reyes , 50, ?
- President of Technology: Sergey Brin, 30, $370.00K
- President of Products: Larry E. Page, 31, $367.00K
- Sr. VP: Omid Kordestani , 40, $572.00K
Analysts
Research analyst covering Google Inc. See also GOOG: Star Analysts for GOOGLE - Yahoo! Finance http://finance.yahoo.com/q/sa?s=GOOG
- Tinker, John (Thinkequity Partners )
- Gallant, Michael (CIBC World Markets)
- Weinstein, Steve (Pacific Crest Securities )
- Khan, Imran (J.P. Morgan Chase)
- Terry, Heath (Credit Suisse First Boston)
- Wolk, Marianne (Susquehanna Financial Group )
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 [7] http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html . The company encourages equality along the corporate levels and tells its employees to work on a personal project one day a week. Twice a week there is a roller hockey game in the company parking lot.
Googleplex
The Googleplex's lobby (Google headquarters) 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 a Linux workstation and access to the corporate recreation center. The recreation center includes 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, M&Ms, 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 their culture will not be able to stay so "fun" and focused on the future.[8] http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63241,00.html?tw=wn_story_related [9] http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2004/104043001.asp The company may be required to answer to shareholders who will want the company to cut back on employee benefits and to focus on short term advances. Also, it may be hard to maintain a collegial atmosphere when some 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."
Products and services
AdSense
AdSense enables text or image advertisements to be displayed on Web sites that want ads to help raise money. The ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on a per-click basis. Google utilizes its search technology to serve ads based on Web site content, the user's geographical location, and other factors. Those wanting to advertise with Google's targeted ad system may sign up through AdWords.
AdWords
Adwords is a service that allows companies to sign up through google and have their ads appear on any google search page, GMail e-mail or AdSense page if certain keywords are displayed. The AdWords service is Google's largest source of income. The company only has to pay google per click and there is a bidding system to determine whose ad is displayed at the top of the page.
Blogger
In 2003, Google acquired the Pyra Labs and Blogger services. Formerly premium features that needed to be paid for were made available for free by Google. The tool, Blogger, is a service to make weblog publishing easier. The user does not have to write any code or worry about installing server software or scripts. Nevertheless, the user can influence the design of his blog freely.
Gmail
On April 1, 2004, Google announced its own free webmail service, Gmail, which would provide users with 1000 megabytes of storage for their mailboxes and would generate revenue by displaying advertisements from the AdWords service based on words in users' e-mail messages. Owing to April Fool's Day, however, the company's press release was greeted with much skepticism in the technology world. Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's vice-president of products, re-assured BBC News by saying "We are very serious about Gmail."
The service is set to allow up to 1000 MB of storage space. When Gmail was announced, this was vastly more than that of most other free webmail providers—for example, Microsoft's Hotmail only offered 2 MB, and Yahoo!'s Mail service offered 4 MB. In response to Gmail, these limits have been upgraded, to 250 MB. Other Web mail providers have followed suit, some of them now offering larger storage than Gmail. On November 13, 2004 Google anounced that Gmail will be POP3 compatible and have e-mail forwarding for no extra charge. This means that people will be able to read their mail through a POP3 compatible e-mail client like Outlook Express. Most other online email services charge for a POP3 connectivity and message forwarding.
As of August 25, 2004, the service was being tested internally. It is not known when the service will be made available to the public. However, the service is available to Blogger users and by invitation from current Gmail users. However, the invites system has led to Gmail invites being exchanged for cash and goods through Web sites like Gmail swap http://www.gmailswap.com/ , making Google change its policy on invites by disallowing cash exchanges.
There has been a great deal of criticism regarding Gmail's privacy policy.[10] http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/privacy.html Much of the controversy involved the clause "residual copies of email may remain on our systems for some time, even after you have deleted messages from your mailbox or after the termination of your account." Many believed that this meant that Google would intentionally archive copies of deleted mail forever. Google later stated that they will "make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our systems as quickly as is practical." Most of the criticism, however, was against Google's plans to add context-sensitive advertisements to e-mails by automatically scanning them.
Google’s most famous creation is the Google search engine. Google.com http://www.google.com has indexed 8 billion Web sites, has 200 million requests a day and is the largest search engine on the Internet. The search engine allows you to search through images, products (Froogle), news, and the usenet archive. It uses a proprietary PageRank system and 253,088 GHz of processing power to deliver the most relevant search results. A culture has grown around the very popular search engine and the word to google has come to mean, "to search for something on Google."
Google browser
After Google registered "gbrowser.com" speculation began that it plans to release an Internet browser to compete with Internet Explorer. Executives have been secretive about whether they intend to develop a browser. A spokesman hinted that, "[Google believes] in reinventing the wheel with respect to browser technologies." Google has recently hired Adam Bosworth, a Microsoft former employee who helped write Internet Explorer, and Joe Beda, the man who has been working on Microsoft's next generation graphics engine. With the 1.0 version of the Mozilla Firefox browser, the default home page is set to a web page hosted by google. Further speculation involves Google modifying either Netscape, Mozilla or Firefox browsers.
Google Desktop Search
Formally known under the codename Puffin, Google Desktop Search runs locally on a PC and will index all Microsoft Outlook & Outlook Express emails, text documents, Microsoft Office documents, AOL Instant Messenger conversations and the Internet Explorer history on that PC and allow the user to search them from a browser. Google Desktop Search is an extension of Google Search. After indexing your files, your local results will turn up on normal Google search on your local computer. Google Desktop Search does not store your files on the web and your personal information is not sent to Google.
Google Desktop Search was likely developed in response to file and Web search capabilities that will be offered in the next major release of Microsoft Windows, codenamed Longhorn (slated for release in 2006) — features that directly compete with Google's core Internet search business.
Google Groups
Google acquired DejaNews and offers local Google based groups and usenet newsgroups. However, the service is now expanding to mailing list discussions based on the Gmail service.
Google News
Google offers a news service. Google News uses Google's search technolgy to gather news stories from many news services and then shows a small perview of the the story.
Keyhole
On October 27, 2004, Google acquired Keyhole http://www.keyhole.com/ a company creating online satellite maps that has the ability to view geographical information in 3D view. Keyhole does cover the entire globe with satellite imagery but not high resolution. They will focus on the larger and initially US metropolitan areas. Keyhole has the largest commercial imagery database online in 3D today. It covers over 80 major metropolitan areas and thousands of cities. The satellite imagery, aerial photography, elevation data, street vectors, business listings, together are worth millions of dollars. The data is updated every two to three years on average. The image resolution ranges from one foot to two meters.
Orkut
Though not mentioned on the Google homepage, Orkut is a service hosted, created and maintained by Google engineers. Orkut is a social networking service, where users can list their personal and professional information, create relationships amongst friends and join communities of mutual interest.
There is some speculation saying that Orkut and Gmail are part of a Google effort to gather information about their users, with the intention of offering a better personalized search service in future. Google already has a personalized search in Google Labs.
Picasa
On July 13, 2004 Google acquired Picasa http://picasa.com , software for management and sharing of digital photographs. Picasa has also been integrated with Google's Blogger. It is currently free.
External links
- Google's Corporate Web Page http://www.google.com/corporate/index.html
- Google Corporate History http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html
- Google Initial Public Offering http://www.ipogoogle.org/
Conference calls
- October 21, 2004 - Q3 2004 earnings conference call (presentation http://investor.google.com/ ) (audio http://a1606.m.akastream.net/7/1606/1459/1096909052/video.vdat.com/EncodedMedia/
videonewswire/audio/windows/41036_42322.asf#0;1.000;0;0;1:2;2:2 )