15-09-2017, 12:07 PM
Google Inc. is a US multinational technology company specializing in services and products related to the Internet. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software and hardware. Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students from Stanford University, California. Together, they own about 14 percent of their shares and control 56 percent of shareholders' voting power through supervisory actions. Google was incorporated as a private company on September 4, 1998. An IPO took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, dubbed the Googleplex. In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google, the leading affiliate of Alphabet, will continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet's Internet interests. Following the completion of the restructuring, Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google; replaced Larry Page, who became the CEO of Alphabet.
The rapid growth of the company since its incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships that go beyond Google's main search engine (Google Search). It offers services designed for work and productivity (Google Docs, Sheets and Presentations), email (Gmail / Inbox), scheduling and time management (Google Calendar), cloud storage (Google Drive), social networks Google+), instant messaging and video (Google Allo / Duo), language translation (Google Translate), mapping and navigation step by step (Google Maps / Waze), video sharing (YouTube) (Google Keep) and organizing and editing photos (Google Photos). The company leads the development of Android mobile operating system, Google Chrome Web browser and Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system based on the Chrome browser. Google has moved more and more into the hardware; from 2010 to 2015, partnered with leading electronics manufacturers in the production of its Nexus devices, and in October 2016, launched several hardware products (including the Google Pixel smartphone, smart home speaker, wireless mesh router Wifi and virtual reality Daydream View headphones). New hardware chief Rick Osterloh said: "A large part of the innovation we want to do now ends up requiring end-to-end user experience control." Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet company. In February 2010, Google Fiber announced a fiber optic infrastructure that was installed in Kansas City; in April 2015, launched Project Fi in the United States, combining Wi-Fi and cellular networks from different providers; and in 2016 announced the Google Station initiative to make Wi-Fi public worldwide, with an initial deployment in India.
Alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google.com as the most visited website in the world. Several other Google services are also among the 100 most visited websites, such as YouTube and Blogger. Google is the most valuable brand in the world, but has received significant criticism on issues such as privacy, tax evasion, antitrust, censorship, and search neutrality. Google's mission statement from the beginning was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and its unofficial slogan was "Do not be mean." In October of 2015, the motto was replaced in the corporate code of conduct of the alphabet by the phrase "to do the right thing".
The rapid growth of the company since its incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships that go beyond Google's main search engine (Google Search). It offers services designed for work and productivity (Google Docs, Sheets and Presentations), email (Gmail / Inbox), scheduling and time management (Google Calendar), cloud storage (Google Drive), social networks Google+), instant messaging and video (Google Allo / Duo), language translation (Google Translate), mapping and navigation step by step (Google Maps / Waze), video sharing (YouTube) (Google Keep) and organizing and editing photos (Google Photos). The company leads the development of Android mobile operating system, Google Chrome Web browser and Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system based on the Chrome browser. Google has moved more and more into the hardware; from 2010 to 2015, partnered with leading electronics manufacturers in the production of its Nexus devices, and in October 2016, launched several hardware products (including the Google Pixel smartphone, smart home speaker, wireless mesh router Wifi and virtual reality Daydream View headphones). New hardware chief Rick Osterloh said: "A large part of the innovation we want to do now ends up requiring end-to-end user experience control." Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet company. In February 2010, Google Fiber announced a fiber optic infrastructure that was installed in Kansas City; in April 2015, launched Project Fi in the United States, combining Wi-Fi and cellular networks from different providers; and in 2016 announced the Google Station initiative to make Wi-Fi public worldwide, with an initial deployment in India.
Alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google.com as the most visited website in the world. Several other Google services are also among the 100 most visited websites, such as YouTube and Blogger. Google is the most valuable brand in the world, but has received significant criticism on issues such as privacy, tax evasion, antitrust, censorship, and search neutrality. Google's mission statement from the beginning was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and its unofficial slogan was "Do not be mean." In October of 2015, the motto was replaced in the corporate code of conduct of the alphabet by the phrase "to do the right thing".