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This article is about the corporation. For the search engine produced by this corporation, see Google search; for the underlying technology, see Google platform; For the number, see googol; for other uses see Google (disambiguation). Google Inc. Type Public (NASDAQ: GOOG), (LSE: GGEA) Founded Menlo Park, California (September 27, 1998) Headquarters Mountain View, California, USA Key people Eric E. Schmidt, CEO/Director Sergey Brin, Technology President Larry E. Page, Products President George Reyes, CFO Industry Internet Products See list of Google products Revenue $7.14 Billion USD (2006) Net income $1.47 Billion USD (2005) Employees 9,378 (September 30, 2006)[1] Website www.google.com Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American public corporation, specializing in Internet search and online advertising. The company had 9,378 full-time employees as of September 30, 2006, and is based in Mountain View, California. Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998. Eric Schmidt is Google's chief executive officer, after Larry Page stepped down. Contents [hide] 1 History 1.1 Growth 1.2 Criticism and controversy 2 Products 2.1 Applications 2.2 Advertising 2.3 Search appliances 3 Platform 4 Corporate affairs and culture 4.1 Branding 4.2 Googleplex 4.3 "Twenty percent" time 4.4 Easter eggs and April Fool's Day jokes 4.5 IPO and culture 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links History Google.com in 1998Main article: History of Google Google began as a research project in January, 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California.[2] They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites 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).[3] It was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance.[4] A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.[5] 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 14, 1997, and the company was incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. The total initial investment raised for the new company eventually amounted to almost US$1.1 million, including a $100,000 check by Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.[6] 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, also in 1999. The complex has since become known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex, a 1 followed by a googol of zeros). Silicon Graphics leased the buildings to Google. The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users. They were attracted to its simple, uncluttered, clean design — a competitive advantage to attract users who did not wish to enter searches on web pages filled with visual distractions. This appearance imitated AltaVista's, but incorporated Google's unique search capabilities. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. This strategy was important for increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of hits users make upon ads. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click. This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture, then Yahoo! Search Marketing).[7] While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue. U.S. Patent 6,285,999 describing part of 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 Main article: History of Google (Growth) According to the Nielsen cabinet, Google is the most used search engine on the web with a 54% market share, ahead of Yahoo! (23%) and MSN (13%). However, independent estimates from popular sites indicate that more than 80% of search referrals come from Google, with Yahoo! a distant second and MSN occupying barely 5%. The Google search engine receives about a billion search requests per day. While the company's primary market is in the web content arena, Google has begun 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.[8] This will allow Google to combine two niche 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.[9] They have been filling unsold space in the newspaper that would have normally been used for in-house advertisements. Google was added to the S&P 500 index on March 30, 2006. Google replaced Burlington Resources, a major oil producer based in Houston which was acquired by ConocoPhillips. Since 2001, Google has acquired several small start-up companies, often consisting of innovative teams and products. One of the earlier companies that Google bought was Pyra Labs. They were the creators of Blogger, a weblog publishing platform, first launched in 1999. This acquisition lead to many premium features becoming free. Pyra Labs was originally formed by Evan Williams, yet he left Google in 2004. In early 2006, Google acquired Upstartle, a company responsible for the online word processor, Writely. The technology in this product was used by Google to eventually create Google Docs & Spreadsheets. In late 2006, Google bought online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.[10] Shortly after, on October 31, 2006, Google announced that it had also acquired JotSpot, a developer of wiki technology for collaborative Web sites.[11] Google has also worked with large companies to improve production and services, including a long-term research partnership with NASA in a variety of areas, and a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies. Recently, Google entered into partnerships with Time Warner's America Online, to enhance each other's video search services, and with News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media to provide search and advertising on the popular social networking site, MySpace. Criticism and controversy Main article: History of Google (Criticism and controversy) As it has grown, Google has found itself the focus of various controversies related to its business practices and services. For example, Google Book Search's effort to digitize millions of books and make the full text searchable has led to copyright disputes with the Authors Guild. Google's cooperation with the governments of China, and to a lesser extent France and Germany (regarding Holocaust denial) to filter search results in accordance to regional laws and regulations has led to claims of censorship. Google's persistent cookie and other information collection practices have led to concerns over user privacy. A number of governments have raised concerns about the security risks posed by geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging.[12] Moreover, Google advertisers have filed several lawsuits against the company in 2006, claiming that up to 14-20% of the clicks on the bills were in fact fraudulent or invalid.[13] Products Main article: List of Google products Google has created services and tools for the general public and business environment alike, including Web applications, advertising networks and search appliances. Applications Google is well-known for its Web Search service, which is a major factor of the company's success. It indexes billions of Web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators. Google has also employed the Web Search technology into other search services, including Image Search, Google News, the price comparison site Froogle, the interactive Usenet archive Google Groups, Google Maps and more. 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. The service generates revenue by displaying advertisements from the AdWords service that are tailored to the content of the email messages displayed on screen. In early 2006, the company launched Google Video, which not only allows users to search and view freely available videos, but also offers users and media publishers to publish their content, including television shows on CBS, NBA basketball games, and music videos. Google has also developed several desktop applications, including Google Earth