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Google Inc. ( and ) is an American Public Corporation , first Incorporated as a Privately Held Corporation in September, 1998 , that designs and manages a popular Internet search engine. The company employs approximately 6,800 employees and is based in Mountain View, California . Eric Schmidt , formerly Chief Executive Officer of Novell , was named Google's CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down. The name "Google" is a play on the word ", 2006 . Google's services are run on several Server Farm s, each consisting of many thousand low-cost commodity computers running stripped-down versions of Linux . While the company does not provide detailed information about its hardware, it was estimated in 2005 that they were using over 100,000 Linux machines See Google Platform for more details on their technology . HISTORY See Also: History of Google Beginning Google began as a research project in January, , 24-29. 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. Originally the search engine used the Stanford University website with the domain ''google.stanford.edu''. The domain ''google.com'' was registered on September 15 , 1997 , and the company was incorporated as ''Google Inc.'' on September 7 , 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California . In March, 1999 , the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto , home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company settled into their current home in a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, in 2003. Silicon Graphics leased these buildings to Google. The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue. describing Google's ranking mechanism ( PageRank ) was granted on September 4 2001 . The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. Growth With Google's gargantuan size comes more competition from large mainstream technology companies. One such example is the rivalry between Microsoft and Google.Dvorak, John C. " A Google-Microsoft War ." '' PC Magazine .'' November 16 , 2004 . Microsoft has been touting its MSN Search engine, and more recently its Windows Live search in February, 2006 , to counter Google's competitive position. Furthermore, the two companies are increasingly offering overlapping services, such as webmail ( Gmail vs. Hotmail ), search (both online and local desktop searching), and other applications (for example, Microsoft's Windows Live Local competes with Google Local ). .'' December 2 , 2004 . 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 begun to experiment with other markets, such as , 2006 . They have been filling unsold space in the newspaper that would have normally been used for in-house advertisements. The company has also created other engines, such as Google Earth and Froogle . Google was added to the Standard & Poor's 500 index ( S&P 500 ) on March 31 , 2006 . Google replaced Burlington Resources , a major oil producer based in Houston which was acquired by ConocoPhillips . See also: Recent Criticisms And Controversies PRODUCTS AND SERVICES See Also: List of Google services and tools Google's core business is to provide a free internet search engine with advertisements placed along side and above the "natural" search listings. As of 2005, Google's program. Dodgeball.com is a new social networking site built specifically for mobile phones, purchased by Google in 2005. Froogle is Google's shopping search engine that is geared towards searching online shopping websites for products based on price. Google Groups is a service that lets users search the complete archive of Usenet newsgroups, as well as hosting mailing lists and other discussion groups. In early 2006 , the company also launched Google Video , which not only allows users to search and view freely available videos, but also offers various media publishers to offer their content for a fee, including television shows on CBS , NBA basketball games, and music videos. Videos offered via this service are protected using Google's own Digital Rights Management system. Google Maps , also known as Google Local, provides road maps for the United States , Canada , the U.K. , Ireland , and Japan . Medium-resolution satellite images are also available for the entire globe, and sister projects Google Moon and Google Mars provide satellite imagery of the Moon and Mars, respectively. In 2004, Google and Keyhole provided Google Earth , a downloadable program that allows the user to zoom into nearly any spot on the earth, close enough to make out cars, and in some cases, people. The technology comes with hundreds of add-ons, like "Crime rate", to see the crime rate of the city you are zoomed in on, or "3D buildings", to create 3D models of the towers and buildings of larger cities. There are three available versions, "free edition", "plus", and "pro". Pro, having the most features and advantages. In 2004 , Google launched its own free web-based email service, known as Gmail . Gmail features improved spam filtering technology, combined with the capability to use Google search technology on individual email messages. Gmail shook up the free, web-based email market by initially offering 1 GB of email storage, prompting competitors Yahoo! and Hotmail to increase their storage quotas considerably. Google has since expanded Gmail's mail quota (and continues to expand it); as of May , 2006 , the quota was over 2.7 GB. The service generates revenue by displaying advertisements from the AdWords service that are tailored to the content of the email messages displayed on screen. This feature has proven controversial, with some privacy advocates expressing concern that the company was reading individual emails. Google maintains, however, that the process is fully automated and that no humans read the content of users' messages. Google also branched into the Instant Messaging arena in August of 2005 by introducing Google Talk , a Jabber -based instant messaging service. Since February , 2006 , Google Talk has been integrated with Gmail, allowing users to send instant messages directly from their email service, as well as to save and archive messages. Google Desktop is a service that brings the search engine to the local computer desktop, allowing one to search individual files, folders, and emails that reside locally on one's own PC. March 2006 saw the dawn of Google Page Creator , an easy to use, WYSIWYG webpage creator. The domains are currently limited only to individuals with a Gmail account, the users individual pages reside at http://''username''.googlepages.com In April 2006 , Google launched Google Calendar , a shared calendar application. SALARIES Originally, typical salaries at Google were considered to be quite low by industry standards. For example, some System Administrator s earned no more than $ 33,000 — while $40,000 at that time was considered to be low for the Bay Area job market. Nevertheless, Google's excellent stock performance following the IPO has enabled these early employees to be competitively compensated by participation in the corporation's remarkable equity growth. In 2005 , Google has implemented other employee incentives such as the Google Founders' Award , in addition to offering higher salaries to new employees. Google's workplace amenities, culture, global popularity, and strong brand recognition have also attracted potential applicants. After the company's IPO in August .'' March 9 , 2006 . CORPORATE CULTURE seen in the Googleplex parking lot]] Google is particularly known for its relaxed corporate culture, reminiscent of the game in the company parking lot. Google's relaxed corporate culture can also be seen externally through their holiday variations of the Google Logo . "Twenty percent" time Every Google engineer is encouraged to spend 20 percent (20%) of their work time on projects that interest them. The time can be allocated to one day a week, or pooled into a month. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail , Google News and Orkut , are said to have originated from these independent endeavors. Googleplex See Also: Googleplex As a further play on Google's name, its headquarters, located in California, are referred to as "the Googleplex" — a .'' February 16 , 2006 . April Fool's Day jokes Main article: Google's Hoaxes Google has a tradition of creating 's Swedish Chef . They also offer versions in Pig Latin , Elmer Fudd , and Klingon . Some people thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004 around April Fool's Day (as well as the doubling of Gmail's storage space to two gigabytes in 2005 ) was a joke. In 2005, featured on the Gmail homepage, was a comedic graph depicting Google's goal of "infinity plus one" GB of storage. IPO and culture Many people speculated that Google's IPO would inevitably lead to changes in the company's culture,, 2004 . Later Mr. Page said, "We think a lot about how to maintain our culture and the fun elements." As Google grows, many analysts are finding that the company is becoming more "corporate". In .'' August 25 , 2005 . GOOGLE PARTNERSHIPS On ,'' Press Release. September 28 , 2005 . .'' December 21 , 2005 . 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 will allow users of Google Video to search for AOL's premium-video services. Display advertising throughout the Google network will also increase. Additionally, Google has also recently formed a partnership with , 2005 . Google also is involved in collaborative development efforts with the browser. They also offer a download of Firefox with the Google Toolbar pre-installed. SEE ALSO
REFERENCES FURTHER READING EXTERNAL LINKS Google's content links
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