What is Google?
Google, founded in 1998, is the world's most widely used search engine. Its stated mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. It is a multinational technology company that focuses on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce and consumer electronics. Its flagship products include the Google Search web-based search engine, Gmail email service, Google Maps navigational and mapping software, Google Earth virtual globe, Android mobile operating system, and Chrome browser for desktop computers.
In 1998, graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed a new type of search algorithm to extract meaning from the huge volume of data that had been accumulating on the Internet. The program, which they called BackRub, was a significant advance over previous search methods, which had been limited by the number of links to a website. They launched their search engine in May of that year, with a few servers housed in Page's dorm room at Stanford University in Menlo Park, California.
The popularity of the Google search engine grew quickly, and by 2011 it was handling an estimated three billion searches per day. Its name is so widespread that it's even entered the lexicon as a verb: "to google" means to search for something on the Internet.
In addition to its search engine, Google offers a variety of other web-based services and applications. These include Google News, which provides automatically generated news articles based on results from many different sources; Google Books, which allows users to access scanned versions of printed books; and Google Ngram Viewer, which analyzes patterns in the use of particular words over time. Google Drive, a cloud storage solution; and Google Duo, a video-conferencing program for Android phones, are also popular Google services.
Other Google products and projects include the Google Play app store, which offers apps for all major platforms; Google Fiber, a limited service available in some areas that provides a fiber connection to the Internet; Google Fonts, a collection of thousands of fonts for use on websites; and the Google Glass AR (augmented reality) glasses. Google's YouTube video-sharing service and Picasa photo-management software are other well-known offerings.
Several of these early innovations helped establish Google as a leading tech company, and others, such as the company's initial public offering in August 2004 and its expansion into diversified technologies, contributed to its current prominence. The company's most valuable assets are its proprietary search algorithm and the vast amount of user data that it collects, which enable it to provide highly targeted and relevant advertisements to its customers. Its corporate headquarters are located in Mountain View, California. Google is an American corporation and is a subsidiary of the holding company Alphabet, Inc. As of March 2019, it is one of the most valuable publicly-held companies in the world. Its market value exceeds $800 billion. In 2016, it was the most valued company in the United States by Forbes magazine.