Google search engine history of creation. What is Google

Today, almost every Internet user knows Google. Its founder, Sergei Brin, a Jew by nationality, has long thought about the need for such a discovery. His biography is a vivid example of the fact that today it is quite possible to make a discovery, to create an ingenious project.

Sergey's biography dates back to the USSR, so the Russian people can proudly say today that the creator of the unique Google system, Sergey Mikhailovich Brin, is our fellow countryman, a Russian. Brin Sergey Mikhailovich was born in Moscow in a family of mathematicians in 1973.

His mother, Evgenia, worked as an engineer, while his father was a gifted mathematician. However, in the former Soviet Union, Mikhail Brin experienced enormous inconveniences: latent anti-Semitism posed obstacles to the talented mathematician. After graduating from Moscow State University, he was denied admission to graduate school, which prompted him to work on his Ph.D. thesis "in private." They didn’t let mathematicians go abroad for scientific conferences either. But for unknown reasons, he was signed a visa to travel to the United States by private invitation.

And at the end of the 70s of the last century, families began to release from the Soviet Union, wishing to change their place of residence. Mikhail Brin was one of the first to decide to leave the country. In the United States, he had many acquaintances of mathematicians, so the choice fell on this power. So the biography of six-year-old Sergei made a sharp turn: he turned from a Soviet citizen into an American.

The beginning of the life of the Brins in the USA

After the move, the father of the family settled at the University of Maryland in the small town of College Park. His wife got a job as a scientist at the National Agency for Aeronautics and Space Research.

Sergey Brin, the future creator of Google, during his studies began to amaze teachers with the completed homework assignments, which he printed out on a home printer. Indeed, at that time, even in the United States, not all families had computers - it was a rare luxury. Sergey Brin, on the other hand, owned a real Commodore 64 computer, which his father had given him for his nineth birthday.

Years of doctoral studies

After leaving school, Sergei Brin is educated at the University of Maryland, where his father worked. With a bachelor's degree in his pocket, the future Google founder moves to Silicon Valley, the home of the nation's most powerful minds. The myriad technical institutions and high-tech companies in Silicon Valley provide a wide range of choices for those wishing to improve their knowledge. Sergey Brin chooses a super-prestigious computer university among the whole mass of proposals - such was Stanford University.

Anyone who did not know Brin well could be mistaken, believing that the future founder of Google was a "nerd" - Sergei, like most young students, preferred fun classes to boring doctoral studies. The main disciplines, which Sergey Brin devoted the lion's share of his time, were gymnastics, dancing, swimming. But, despite this, a sharp idea began to swarm in the inquiring brain, the name of which was “the Google search engine.

After all, the lover of the fascinating site "Playboy" was sorry for his time and effort to "comb" it in order to look for something new. And, as they say, laziness is the very first reason for progress - and Sergey Brin created a program, independently and personally for his needs, which automatically found everything fresh on the site and downloaded this material to the PC of a resourceful young man.

The meeting of two geniuses that changed the whole world of the Internet

It was here at Stanford University that the future founders of Google met. Larry Page and Sergey Brin have formed a wonderful intellectual tandem, which brought a unique innovation to the Internet - the original Google search engine.

However, the first meeting did not bode well at all: both Sergey Brin and Larry Page were a match for each other - both are proud, ambitious, uncompromising. However, at some point in their arguments and screams, two magic words flashed - "search engines" - and the young men realized that this was their common interest.

We can say that this meeting became an important milestone in the destinies of both young people. And who knows, Sergey's biography would have been replenished with the discovery of Google, had he not met Larry? Although today it is generally accepted that it is Sergey Brin who is the founder of Google, undeservedly forgetting to mention Larry Page.

First search page

Meanwhile, Sergei Brin, along with Larry Page, now, having abandoned all their youthful fun, pored over their "brainchild" for days. And so in 1996, a page appeared on the computer of Stanford University, where both young men studied, - the predecessor of the now well-known Google search engine. The search page was called BackRub, which translated as "you to me, and I to you." It was the scientific work of graduate students whose names were Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Later the search page became known as PageRank.

BackRub founder Sergey Brin kept a hard drive server in his dorm room. Its volume was equal to one terabyte or 1024 "gigs" if translated into the modern language of computer scientists. The principle of operation of BackRub was based on not only finding pages on the Internet by request, but ranking them depending on how often other pages link to them, how often Internet users refer to them. Actually, this principle was subsequently developed in the Google system.

The future founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, became even more confident in their decision to continue working on improving the search system, because even this imperfect program began to be used by a huge number of people. For example, in 1998 about ten thousand users came here every day.

However, the proverb that the initiative must always be punished, at this time, very inopportunely came true. Sergey Brin recalls that the Stanford professors were outraged that the service began to consume most of the university Internet traffic. But the worst thing for the teachers was not even that - the future founders of Google were accused of hooliganism!

The reason for this was the imperfection of the system. And she exhibited to everyone "on display" even university "closed" documents, access to which was strictly limited. At this time, the biography of the future founders of Google could well have received such a negative fact as expulsion from the university.

Turning Googol into Google

Young people have already developed their grandiose discovery, they even came up with the name of the company - Googol, which meant one followed by one hundred zeros. The meaning of this name boiled down to the fact that the company will have a huge base, a huge number of users! But it became impossible to work further on the university computer, so it was necessary to urgently look for investors.

As it turned out, it is not enough to come up with a bright name for your company, you also need to be able to convince the possessing people to believe in your genius, to decide to invest your capital. And here Sergey Brin and Larry Page could not find their vein in any way - the bulk of potential investors did not even want to talk about the company.

And suddenly the young people were surprisingly lucky: businessman Andy Bechtolsheim, who was one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, decided to help them. However, he did not even listen to the confused speech of the young men, but somehow immediately believed in their genius and success.

Andy, two minutes into the conversation, took out his checkbook and began writing a check for one hundred thousand dollars, inquiring about the name of the company. And only after going out on the street, young people discovered a "mistake": their investor casually, because of his carelessness, renamed their brainchild, replacing "Googol" with the name of the company "Google Inc".

Now the partners faced a new problem: in order to receive money on the check, they had to urgently register Google. Sergey Brin, together with Larry Page, took an academic leave from the university and began urgently calling friends and family in order to get some finances to achieve this goal. It took a whole week, and on September 7, 1998, the birth of Google was officially registered with a millionth capital in its account.

Search engine success - success of its creators

At first, the staff of Google was four people. Sergey Brin was the leading founder of Google. Most of the finance went to business development - there was practically nothing left for advertising. However, in 1999, all major media rang about a successful Internet search engine, the number of Google users increased many times over. Sergey Brin and Larry Page noted that Google searches are not limited to just a few powerful servers - Google was supported by several thousand simple personal computers.

In the summer of 2004, the company's shares on the stock exchange received the highest value. Sergei and Larry were at the peak of their success.

From that moment on, Sergei Brin underwent a drastic revolution in his biography: he and his companion friend turned into billionaires. The state of each today is estimated at over $ 18 billion.

Work in a company

Today, the company has a headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley. The comfort of the employees here is shaking the most democratically organized companies and corporations.

For example, employees can play ice hockey rollerblades on Saturdays right in their company parking lot, and renowned, skilled chefs prepare breakfasts and lunches in the employee café. Hot coffee and a variety of soft drinks are provided to employees absolutely free of charge. Also during the working day they can use the services of masseurs.

The following fact may seem surprising: the staff are allowed to bring their pets to the workplace. Therefore, in the offices of the company you can see cats, dogs, rats with hamsters, and even iguanas and other reptiles.

History of Google Inc. begins its existence from the end of the 20th century. It was then, in September 1998, that Sergey Brin and Larry Page registered a new company in the state of California, which was destined to change the way people think about search engines and their capabilities.

However, the "official" creation of Google Inc. preceded by three eventful years, during which two founding friends invented and polished their brainchild. They met and met in 1995 at Stanford University, when Bryn was studying there and Paige was just about to start his studies. Both agreed that existing search engines are ineffective, to put it mildly, although they disagreed on many other things.

At that time Sergey Brin was looking for a topic for his scientific work, and among other things, he was interested in the problems of data collection. In late 1995, he, along with Larry, began work on a project that resulted in the BackRub search engine. In her work, a completely new approach to evaluating sites on the Internet was used: if other search engines that existed at that time took into account how many times the search word was found on the page, BackRub “looked” how many times and which sites link to each of the available ones.

According to the developers' logic, the more a site is mentioned, the more useful and interesting the information on it is. This has significantly improved the quality of the search. The brainchild of Sergey and Larry started working on servers allowing all students of this educational institution to use it for internal search.

The system worked really well and users were delighted with it. In 1997, the creators decided to give their development a new name, and, in the end, settled on "Google" (here the sound of "googol" is played here - a word that means 10100).

However, around the same year, Sergey and Larry had to look for another room and opportunities for the system to work, since, becoming popular, it increasingly loaded the Stanford server. Having patented the new search technology, the creators tried to sell it - however, none of the companies they offered it to agreed to buy. Perhaps it was one of those fortunate events that did not end the history of Google's creation ignominiously - it was the refusal of potential buyers that forced Brin and Page to found their own company, which is now one of the most successful in the world.

The first Google investor was Andy Bechtolsheim, the first employee was a Stanford student Craig Silverstein, and the first office was Susan Wojcicki's garage. However, already in February 1999, the office moved to a new location in Palo Alto - the garage became cramped for a team of eight people. A couple more moves followed, until finally the company settled in a town called Mountain View.

Meanwhile, the history of Google continued: innovation and development appeared as if from In May 2000, the company introduces versions in French, Spanish, German, Swedish and 6 more languages, enters into an agreement with Yahoo !, launches Google AdWords, buys a Usenet discussion service, creates and provides users with image searches, opens an office in Tokyo ... The organization grows, the number of employees increases, new applications, developments and opportunities continue to emerge at a fantastic rate.

In 2002, Google already supports 72 languages, including Klingon, the fictional language of the alien race from the Star Trek series. In the same year, Google history records the emergence of Froogle, which would later be renamed to Google Shopping.

The next year, the growing company acquires Pyra Labs, the creator of the Blogger platform, and Applied Semantics, which is using the technology to build AdSense. Google Print appears, which later evolved into Google Books.

In 2004, the company moved again - this time to the Googleplex, also to Mountain View. She establishes the Anita Borg Fellowship, goes public, Google Academy beta appears.

In the meantime, serious business is being done, the guys do not forget about the fun - on April 1, they come up with more and more jokes. For example, 2002 was marked by the fact that within the framework of the April Fools' novelty, they "revealed a secret" - their algorithm is so good because it uses ordinary pigeons.

Meanwhile, the story continues - the News application is launched, AdWords develops, users get the opportunity to personalize the Google home page, logo contests, competitions between programmers, and the opening of new offices are held. Investments in the development of alternative energy, charitable projects - they want to make the world a better place, and they are good at it.

Although more than a decade since its inception, the company is still growing at an explosive rate - creating hope that Google's story will continue, which means more amazing opportunities and discoveries await us from the most beloved search engine of web users.

1996-2001

Search creation

Google emerged in March 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Ph.D. Stanford students worked on the Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP). SDLP was the goal of "Developing Advanced Technologies for a Single, Integrated and Universal Digital Library" and was funded by the National Science Foundation among other federal agencies. While looking for a topic for his dissertation, Page considered, among other things, the study of the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, representing the structure of links in the form of a huge graph. His supervisor, Terry Winograda, recommended that he pick this idea (which Page later recalled as "the best advice I ever got"), and Page focused on the problem of figuring out which web pages link to a given page by considering the number and the nature of such backlinks in terms of the value of information on the page (by analogy with the role of citations in scientific publications). In this scientific project, called "BackRub", he was soon joined by Sergei Brin, Ph.D. Stanford University, supported by the National Science Foundation Alumni Fellowship. Breen was already a close friend of Page, whom he first met in the summer of 1995 in a freshman group whom Bryn volunteered to show on campus. The crawler began indexing Internet pages in March 1996, customized from Page's Stanford home page. To transform the collected data into the importance level of a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm. After analyzing the BackRub results, which consisted of a list of URLs ranked by the number of backlinks to a given URL, they realized that a search engine based on PageRank would yield better results than existing search algorithms (existing search engines at this time ranked pages by the number of times the search word appears on the page).

A small search engine named "RankDex" from IDD Information Services (a Dow Jones affiliate) developed by Robin Lee since 1996 has already explored a similar strategy for page ranking and ranking. RankDex technology was patented and used later when Li founded Baidu in China.

Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly ranked pages should be the most relevant when searched, Page and Brin tried their dissertation research and laid the foundation for their search. By early 1997, the Backrub description page was revised as follows:

The search engine was originally located on Stanford's site google.stanford.edu. Domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997.

Brin and Page were against the use of pop-up advertisements in search results, or the funded search results model, and they wrote a research paper on the topic in 1998 while still students. However, they soon changed their minds and early on allowed the inclusion of simple text ads, which are Google's main source of income at the moment.

Company establishment

Google received its first funding in August 1998 in the form of $ 100,000 from Andy Bechtolstein, one of the founders of the late Sun Microsystems. Google was officially incorporated on September 4, 1998 in a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California.

The name "Google" comes from the word "googol", which means the number 1 with one hundred zeros. (Although Enid Blyton used the phrase "Google Bun" in The Magic Faraway Tree (published 1943). Increasingly used in everyday language, the verb "to google" was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006 as meaning “using Google to search the Internet”.

By the end of 1998, Google had indexed about 60 million pages. The homepage was still labeled "BETA", but an article in Salon.com already claimed that Google's search results were better than other search engines like Hotbot or Excite.com and praised google for great technological innovation than had overloaded portal sites (eg Yahoo!, Excite.com, Lycos, Netscap's Netcenter, AOL .com, Go.com, and MSN .com) that, during the burgeoning dot-com bubble, were seen as the “future of the web,” especially by investors stock market.

In March 1999, the company moved to offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to other Silicon Valley tech startups. Following rapid growth, the company leased the Mountain View complex at 1600 Amphitheater Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1999. The company has stayed in this place ever since and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex (Googleplex play on words, a number equal to 1 with a googol of zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for $ 319 million.

Google Search has attracted a loyal following among a growing number of Internet users who have loved its simple interface. In 2000, Google began selling advertising related to search keywords. Advertising was text-based, without cluttering the page design and not slowing down its loading speed. Keywords were sold based on a combination of bid price and number of clicks, with prices starting at $ 0.05 per click. This keyword advertising model was first proposed by Goto.com (later renamed Overture Services before being acquired by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing). While many of its competitors have failed to enter the new Internet market, Google has been quietly climbing.

Since 2002

December 10, 2012 Google, as well as Facebook, and 6 other companies, spoke out against the patents, which describe "abstract ideas".

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what "Google History" is in other dictionaries:

Google Academy URL: scholar.google.com Site type: bibliographic database ... Wikipedia

Google ™ Groups URL: https://groups.google.com/ Registration: No ... Wikipedia

Google ™ Groups URL: http://groups.google.ru/ Registration: No Language (s): English, Russian Ow ... Wikipedia

This article is about the company. For the search engine see Google. This term has other meanings, see Google (disambiguation). Coordinates: 37 ° 25'20 ″ s. NS. 122 ° 05′04 ″ W d ... Wikipedia

Google- (Google) The largest Google search engine, Google services and tools History of Google search, owners and management Google, Google Apps, Google Maps, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Picasa, Google Video, Google Images Google +, ... ... Investor encyclopedia

This term has other meanings, see Google (disambiguation). Google ... Wikipedia

This term has other meanings, see Google. Google (pronounced / ˈguːgl /, ​​"Google") is the first most popular (77.04%) search engine in the world, processing 41 billion 345 million queries per month (market share ... ... Wikipedia

Google+ ... Wikipedia

Today, many of us simply cannot imagine a world without such giants of the technology industry as Google, Facebook, Twitter and others. Although, of course, there were times when these companies did not exist, and their founders were ordinary people, like you and me.

Of course, how they achieved success can be an interesting story with a happy ending that will teach each of us something. It is not for nothing that many ordinary Internet users are so interested in the biographies of famous companies, and at the same time - of the people who stand behind them. For such, in fact, this article will be published.

In it, we will tell the story of the formation of one of the most famous brands in the world - a search engine whose name is spelled with two "o" (in English). And no, this is not Yahoo. Our story will be dedicated to those who are called "the founders of Google" - two business partners, one of whom has Russian roots.

How it all started

Surprisingly, the development of the modern Internet giant began back in 1996. Then two graduates of Stanford University - Larry Page and Sergey Brin - worked on a common project. The purpose of the latter was to systematize information in the form of a catalog and its further processing. At the time of the creation of such a product, the founders of "Google", of course, did not know what all this could result in. They were, in fact, simple graduate students who came up with an original approach. That, in turn, justified himself many times.

At the initial stage, as is known from many sources, the developers of the Backrub project experienced a significant financial shortage. For this reason, they often had to literally assemble functional solutions from parts of outdated computers that had fallen into disrepair. Despite this, the founders of "Google" Sergey Brin and Larry Page were able to show good results already in 1997. More and more people at the university began to learn about their system of searching for information on the Internet.

Buyer search

Few people know, but in 1998, shortly after the start of the development of their technology, the founders of "Google" intended to sell all the results of their labor. There were several reasons for this - the guys did not want to continue working on the project; they realized that they could just make good money on this innovation and start something new, more interesting. In order to find an interested buyer, they even set up a special office. The founders of Google were able to establish some connections (in particular, with the founder of Yahoo - the largest search engine at that time). True, David Philo was not interested in the system at the level to invest in it. He gave advice to the guys that they should be engaged in further refinement of their search project (even then it was called Google), and if they succeed, they should sell it ready-made.

First office

It is noteworthy that the first office space, which housed three employees of the company, was a garage. His guys rented in Menlo Parenny (California). At this point, the service was already available on the Internet; every day it was visited by about 10 thousand people who were looking for information of one kind or another.

The success that every Google founder has achieved, even at that time, can be called unlikely. This is evidenced by the fact that some authoritative publications in the United States have placed the site in the Top-100 rating of technological portals in the world.

The dizzying growth continued. In 1999, the company processed about 500 thousand requests a day on its portal. The founders of Google, whose photos you see below, were able to attract several investments from advanced funds totaling $ 25 million. The money went to buy servers and expand search engine capabilities.

Larry Page

If we talk about this figure at Google, then, after reading Page's biography, you will not be surprised at his choice of profession. Larry's parents are a professor of computer science and a programming teacher. He was born in 1973, and today, at 42, Page is a dollar billionaire. This founder of "Google" is deservedly included in the first "twenty" rating of Forbes.com with his fortune.

According to media reports, he is married, lives in the United States and has his own Boeing 767.

Sergey Brin

For us, Brin's biography is more interesting, if only for the reason that this founder of "Google" is Russian. According to publicly available data, at the age of 6 he left Moscow, where he lived with his parents - teachers of Moscow State University (Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics). Later, Brin's father began working at Stanford, and his mother went to NASA. While studying for a master's degree at the same university, Sergey became interested in search engines, as a result of which he began the first steps to create Google back then.

Bryn is currently married and has a son. Like Page, he is in one of the top 20 positions in the Forbes rankings for his wealth.

The basis of success

As we can see, the success in the field of Internet search and development of online services, the founders of "Google" Sergey Brin (photo below) and Larry Page found it not by chance. In fact, such a sharp rise was preceded by long work. Both were from an intelligent family of specialists in the mathematical and technical direction. Both grew up in the United States, a country of technological opportunity at the time. Every Google founder worked to improve search technology, with the task of starting a company and making money was only the last in line of goals. This is evidenced by the fact that a private company based on this technology was created after its repeated testing. Moreover, the guys wanted to sell their developments and "disperse" in their own interests. There are even rumors that at first they could not even tolerate each other because of their too different characters. However, as we can see, fate decided differently.

Increasing positions

Google's growth in the Internet search market has been colossal. At that time, the undisputed leaders were Yahoo, WebAlta, AltaVista. As you know, today none of them can compete with Google in terms of its capitalization. In a very short time, a little-known university project was able to bypass the "business sharks".

Experts believe that the explanation for why Google founder Sergey Brin and his partner Larry Page were able to consolidate their efforts so successfully lies in the idea. It was about developing the perfect search technology. At the same time, companies like Yahoo at the time paid attention to profits and income from other types of business. The direction of Internet search as of 98-99 years was considered unprofitable and unpromising. Perhaps Paige and Bryn simply didn’t know about it.

Creation of new businesses

But today, when the search engine "Google" is the absolute and undisputed leader in search all over the world, the development team is running completely different types of business. We can say that after a successful start in the field of searching and organizing information, the founders of the system began to work in other areas.

In particular, this is the video blogging service Youtube (which is the leader in terms of the volume of videos posted on it); popular blogging platform Blogger.com, social networking site Google Plus, Google Drive hosting, Google Adsense advertising and more. We will tell you a little more about each of these types of businesses from the search giant in separate parts of the article.

Social media

The most popular projects, as time has shown, are social networks. This is explained by the fact that people, by their nature, are inclined to communicate, establish connections with each other, make acquaintances, and so on. One of the most famous in the world is a service launched by a search engine - it is called Google Plus. This is an identification platform that not only allows the user to find his friends and communicate with them, but also makes it possible to express his opinion about this or that resource on the Internet, leaving a corresponding "label" - the so-called "plus". This, in turn, is helping to improve the mechanisms Google has developed for evaluating sites. Those who get more "pluses" deserve a higher position in the search results. As of 2013, the social network had over 500 million registered users.

For the company, thanks to the merger of various services together, a single image is created, positions in different niches are strengthened solely due to the name. For the user, which is important, this increases the convenience and comfort in work. A person, as already mentioned, does not need to switch from one account to another - there is a unified authorization system for all this. With it, there is no need to use third-party services - all tasks can be completed quickly and easily on one site, and this is Google.

Mobile platforms

Speaking about the achievements of the search giant, one cannot fail to mention the world's most popular mobile operating system. To be more precise, the history of Android began as another startup that served as a platform for mobile devices. In 2005, it was bought by Google. For many IT industry professionals, this was a real surprise - few could say why the search engine needed to develop a mobile OS. Today, years after that transaction, everyone can say that this step was very successful. According to the platform distribution statistics, in 2014 there were more than 1.6 billion devices with this operating system in the world, which was about 75% of the total market. With such indicators, even the leader in the production of mobile devices Apple, which has its own operating system iOS, which is often opposed by Android, cannot compete for the market in this situation.

Although the site is open-sourced (some device manufacturers can create their own modifications of this OS), Google's earnings on it are significant due to, for example, the same Google Play - a content store. In addition, manufacturers using the platform must pay licensing fees.

Perspectives

It is difficult to assess the full breadth of prospects that are open to such a strong player in the IT market as Google. The company is growing every day by expanding its catalog of businesses, constantly buying up the most promising startups. It's hard to imagine any other brand now beating Google in the internet search arena. We can safely say that while the positions of this giant remain unshakable for any of the competitors, including the popular search engines Bing, Yahoo, Aol, Yandex, Baidu, and others, due to various circumstances. All over the world, the Google brand is known as a leader, and this will not soon be able to change.

In general, you know who the founders of Google are and how they managed to create this empire. For each of us, this story can be a good lesson that everything in this life is possible. The main thing is to strive to achieve your goals and constantly work on yourself.

Google LLC.
A type	Public company
Listing on the exchange	NASDAQ: GOOG
Base	4 September
The founders	Sergey Brin and Larry Page
Location	USA USA: Mountain View, California
Key figures	Larry Page - founder Sergey Brin - founder Sundar Pichai - CEO
Industry	Internet
Products and services	see list of Google services and tools
Equity	▲ 92.137 billion dollars (2017)
Turnover	▼ $ 59.097 billion (2017)
Operating profit	▼ $ 14.242 billion (2017)
Net profit	▲ $ 14.842 billion (2017)
Assets	▲ 131.133 billion dollars (2014)
Number of employees	▲ 85,050 (I quarter 2018)
Parent company	Alphabet Inc.
Affiliated companies	YouTube, DoubleClick, On2 Technologies, Google Voice, Picnik, Aardvark, AdMob
Website	google.com(English)
Google at Wikimedia Commons

Google operates over a million servers in data centers around the world and processes over one billion searches and 24 petabytes of user data every day. Google's rapid growth since its inception has resulted in a large number of products not directly related to the company's main product - the search engine. Google has online products such as Gmail, the social network Google+. The company also has desktop products such as the Google Chrome browser, Picasa photo software and Hangouts instant messaging software. In addition, Google is developing the Android mobile operating system, which is used on a large number of smartphones, as well as the Google Chrome OS and Google Glass devices. According to Alexa, Google's main site - google.com - is the most visited site on the Internet, and numerous international Google sites (google.co.in, google.co.uk, etc.) are in the top 100 most visited, as well as several other Google service sites are YouTube, Blogger, and Orkut. In May 2011, the number of unique visitors to Google sites in a month for the first time exceeded 1 billion people.

According to BrandZ, Google is the most powerful brand in the world, and according to Brand-Finance, the most valuable brand in the world in 2011. In 2011, Google was recognized as the best reputable company in the United States, ahead of Microsoft, Sony and others. The dominant position of Google services in the market leads to criticism of the company on issues of privacy, copyright and censorship.

On April 23, 2018, 118 out of 1002 known IP addresses used by Google services were blocked in Russia. The domains google.com, google.ru, YouTube services, reCAPTCHA and AdSense have become unavailable to users in different parts of Russia.

History

Management

In July 2001, at the invitation of the founders of the company, Eric Schmidt took over as chairman of the board of directors and chief executive officer of Google.

Larry Page became CEO on April 4, 2011. Eric Schmidt remained the chairman of the board of directors of Google.

As of June 20, 2010, Page, Brin and Eric Schmidt owned approximately 91% of Class B shares, which together provide their holders with 68% of the voting power. The Triumvirate has a decisive influence in resolving all issues related to the competence of shareholders.

In 2015, as a result of the reorganization of Google and the creation of the Alphabet holding, Sundar Pichai became the CEO of the company.

Shareholders

Corporate culture

In 2013, Google topped Fortune's list of the 100 best employers in the United States for the fourth time.

Google had a "20 percent" program, in which engineers can spend 20% of their time on projects that are not part of their job responsibilities, however, since 2011, the company embarked on the path of becoming maximum efficiency, and abandoned this program.

Hiring

When hiring new employees, among other things, their ability to work in the existing corporate culture, in particular in a flat organizational structure and a rapidly changing environment, is assessed. A successful candidate must be talented, creative and passionate, ethical, open-minded and able to impress without a business suit.

Millions of online resumes submitted online are first processed automatically, identifying potential candidates for the company.

In an effort to attract talent, the company is hosting a Google Code Jam tournament for college students. In this tournament, programmers compete in solving problems against time. 15 finalists are invited to google headquarters for the final round.

In January 2018, former tech specialist James Daymore filed a lawsuit in court, accusing Google of discriminating against employees on the basis of skin color and political views. James Daymore himself was fired after reporting gender inequality.

Oxygen project

Google has been conducting a large-scale study for two years, dubbed Project Oxygen, to develop its own model of a good leader. As a result, the following key qualities of a good leader according to Google were published in March 2011:

Services and tools

Charity

In 2004, Google created a non-profit charitable offshoot - Google.org (Google Foundation), with a start-up capital of about $ 1 billion. The main activities of this organization are to inform society and contribute to solving problems in the areas of climate change, global health and poverty. One of his first projects was in the field of hybrid and electric vehicles.

In 2007, Google became a sponsor and active participant in several gay pride parades in San Francisco, New York, Dublin and Madrid.

In 2008, Google introduced the 10 ^ 100 Project, in which everyone can come up with ideas, and then jointly choose the one that will change the world and help as many people as possible. At the time of the start of voting, more than 150 thousand ideas were proposed from people from 170 countries. 16 groups of ideas took part in the voting, of which up to 5 were selected, to help in the implementation of which Google allocated 10 million dollars.

Google and society

Violation of the right to privacy

For the first time, problems in connection with human rights violations at Google began in 2005. Images of the roof of the American White House were used to create Google Earth maps, which poses a threat to the national security of the United States. The American public was deeply outraged that would-be terrorists were given the chance to take a closer look at the White House's rooftop defenses.

The next high-profile scandal associated with Google was a lawsuit against this company by the American Boring family from Pennsylvania. In 2008, the Boring couple accused Google of violating their privacy. Images of a married couple's home and swimming pool were used to create global urban virtual Google Street View maps. Borings immediately sued and demanded from Google $ 25,000 in compensation for moral damages. However, their first claim was not satisfied. However, the litigation continued, and the Borings received compensation in the amount of $ 1 from the company by a court decision in 2010. However, representatives of Google said: "Unfortunately, absolute privacy does not exist in the modern world, because there are images from satellites that shoot everything, regardless of the signs" private territory "." However, the company's specialists can remove images from their server if asked to do so privately.

The American National Law and Policy Center (NLPC) also opposed Google. As evidence of the violation of private rights by the service, the members of the center provided information about one of the leaders of Google, collected using the company's services in less than half an hour - images of his house, the numbers of cars parked next to it, the name of the company engaged in the improvement of its territory and even the name of the security company whose clients are his neighbors.

In connection with the large number of claims against the company, Eric Schmidt stated in 2009: “If you do not want someone to find out unnecessary information about you, then first of all, do not do anything reprehensible. [...] In fact, search engines, including Google, retain this information for a while We are all subject to the authorities of the United States, so it is possible that we may have to disclose information to the authorities.

In 2010, a new scandal related to Google received a great public outcry. It became known that while working on the Street View service, the company scanned the IP addresses and passwords of citizens. While filming the streets and squares of different cities from special vehicles equipped with video cameras, Google specialists also scanned the signal of wireless Wi-Fi networks. As a result, the company received passwords and other confidential information necessary to log into the e-mail of individuals and legal entities. Google representatives agreed that they made a big mistake, thus violating the right to privacy, and apologized. However, they stated that they were not aware of the problem until the German authorities approached them with claims in this regard. Google experts assured that the information received of a private nature was not used in the search engine.

In the summer of 2013, thanks to former US intelligence officer Edward Snowden, it became known that the US government was paying Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook millions of dollars to disclose information about Internet users (as part of the PRISM program). The costs, according to the documents, were covered by a division of the National Security Agency known as the Special Sources Division. In response, Google's chief attorney David Drummond posted on the company's blog an open letter to the US attorney general and the FBI director asking for permission to release detailed information about government requests, including those based on the Oversight Act, in a regular transparency report. for the activities of foreign intelligence services (FISA). According to Drummond, the responses to these requests did not provide the US government with direct access to user data.

Google is now being heavily criticized for human rights violations related to the Google Glass project. Wearing Google glasses is already banned in American cinemas, casinos and strip clubs. Their owners are afraid that visitors wearing such glasses will record what is happening on video. In addition, the decision to ban glasses may soon be made by American banks and parks directors. Google representatives have not yet commented on this situation.

On August 5, 2014, Google reported to US law enforcement agencies that one of the users of its subsidiary Gmail mail service had photos of children with pornographic content, after which the user was arrested.

Participation in the affairs of foreign states

Several Google experts took part in the Arab Spring, advocating for democratic values ​​and the protection of human rights. For example, Vail Ghonim, the director of marketing for Google in the Middle East and North Africa, advocated the overthrow of the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt during the riots in the country in 2011. He created a page on the social network Facebook, which condemned the violence against Egyptian citizens by the ruling authorities and coordinated the actions of the demonstrators. Ghonim described the Egyptian protest movement as a "Facebook revolution" and noted that the Internet played an extremely important role in it.

In addition, shortly after the Arab Spring, Google officials said they are working to facilitate access to the company's information and products in the Middle East and North Africa. In this regard, the goal of the American company is to provide access to even more of its products in Arabic. In 2011, the company launched an Arabic version of Google Voice and Google+ and introduced two museums in Qatar to the + Art Project (the Museum of Islamic Art and the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art Mathaf), and in 2012 invited the President of Tunisia to speak through the Google+ Hangout On video broadcasting service. Air. Google also has serious complaints against the Chinese leadership in connection with attempts to limit the access of Chinese citizens to information on the Internet.

To google

Due to the popularity of the search engine, a neologism appeared in the English language to google or to google(analogue in Russian computer slang - google), used to refer to the search for information on the Internet by Google. It is with this definition that the verb is listed in the most authoritative dictionaries of the English language -