Google

Type:	Publicly Held
Industry:	Internet & Technology
Founded:	1998
Founder(s):	Larry Page Sergey Brin
Headquarters:	1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043
Country:	USA
Employees:	20,000
Revenue:	$ 29, 321 million as of 2009
Website:	www.google.com
Blog:	Google Blogspot
Facebook:	Google Facebook
LinkedIn:	Google
Twitter:	@google
Key People
Larry Page, CEO Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman Sergey Brin, Co-Founder Nikesh Arora, Senior VP and Chief Business Officer Shona L. Brown, Senior VP Business Operations David C. Drummond, Senior VP, Corporate Devt. & Chief Legal Officer Alan Eustace, Senior VP, Engineering and Research Patrick Pichette, Senior VP & Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior VP Product Management Vinton Cerf, Internet Evangelist

Google is a multi-national company providing search, advertising, cloud computing services and many other business solutions. The company's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. The company ranked 4th on Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2011.

Company Background

In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both Stanford University graduate students, partnered in building BackRub, a search engine that determined the importance of individual web pages. This search engine operated for more than a year at Stanford servers until it took too much bandwith to suit the university.

In 1997, Page and Brin decided to change the name of the BackRub search engine, the two brainstormed and came up with Google -- a term derived from the mathematical term googol, which means the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The name reflects the founders objective, which is to organize an infinite amount of information on the web.

On September 4, 1998, Google was incorporated in California. The company started its business operations in a garage at Menlo Park. Craig Silverstein, was the first employee hired by Page and Brin, a fellow computer science graduate from Stanford. PC Magazine recognized Google as one of the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.

First Investors

Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, was Google's first investor in 1998, followed by Ram Shriram, former President of Junglee and current Managing Director at Sherpalo Ventures. On June 7, 1999, Google received a major equity funding of $25 million from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; John Doerr and Michael Moritz joined the company's board of directors.

Vinton Cerf Joins Google

Renowned DARPA scientist, Vinton Cerf, joined Google in September, 2005 as Vice-president and Chief Internet Evangelist; Cerf co-designed the TCP/IP protocols that were used to develop the architecture of the internet and he is considered as one of the Fathers of Internet.

As Google's VP and Chief Internet Evangelist, Cerf helped the company in building standards for next generation applications, network infrastructure, architectures, and systems. He also served as one of Google's public figures in the Internet community worldwide. While working with Google, Cerf also continued his position as chairman of the board of ICANN, which lasted until 2007.

Company Growth and Expansion

In 2000, Google was already available in different languages, including French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Google Adwords and the Google toolbar were launched with 350 customers. On June 11, 2000, the Google home page became the largest search engine, with 1 billion items.

In 2001, Google was available in 26 languages. Eric Schmidt was appointed Chairman and Wayne Rosing was hired as VP for Engineering. The following year, Schmidt was elected CEO while Page assumed the position of president for products and Brin became president for technology.

The company also launched the Google Search Appliance, a new device that allowed corporations to use its search technology to scan their own networks; Adwords Select, an enhanced version of Adwords was released, a self-service advertising system with the Cost-Per Click (CPC)feature, the First Google API which enables developers to query more than 2 billion web documents and programs in their favorite environments, and the Google Labs. The Google News and Froogle were also launched. Since then Google has released numerous products and services for Internet users and businesses worldwide.

Initial Public Offering

Google's Initial Public Offering (IPO) was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 29, 2004. and offered 19.6 million shares at a price of $85 per share.

International Offices

The company also opened international offices in Australia, India, Japan, Korea, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Belgium, Denmark, Copehagen, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and many other countries around the world.

Google China

Dr. Kaifu Lee joined Google as head of the Chinese R&D Center. Microsoft filed a suit against Dr. Lee and Google, arguing that they violated the one year non-compete agreement on his contract with the company. Microsoft and Google arrived at a settlement agreement over Dr. Lee's hiring in December of the same year.

Google.cn, a local domain version of Google in China was launched in 2006 with some government restrictions. There, Google.com is down 10% most of the time, and Google news is never available. The Chinese government has been blocking and re-directing users searches to other websites.

Partnerships

Google and AOL have been search partners since 2002. The partnership of the two companies has been reportedly extended until 2015; and their new advertising, content and search agreements have been expanded to include mobile searches and the placement of AOL's content on YouTube.

In 2007, Google and China Mobile inked a partnership to provide mobile and internet search services in China as well as with Sales Force combining the company's on-demand CRM applications with the Google AdWords to provide a more successful integrated sales and marketing for businesses. They have also joined with IBM on an Academic Cluster Computing Initiative to inspire future computer scientists to think big and help them to learn to work on a global Internet scale, and on contemporary computing challenges.

Community Services

On August 16, 2006, Google launched the free city wide WiFi in Mountainview, as its way to give back to the community.

In 2008, Google.org announced its five key initiatives, Google Flu Trends, Google Powermeter, RE<C, Google Earth Engine and Google Crisis Response as part of the company's objective to help combat the many challenges in the world using the company's strength in information and technology.

Acquisitions

Google acquired numerous companies since since its establishment to present which include Deja Usenet, Blooger.com, Urchin, Writely, Android, JotSpot,which was later launched as Google Sites, Doubleclick, Aardvark, YouTube, Picnik, Admob, reCaptcha, Slide, ITA Software, and many others.

ICANN and Google

Google is an ICANN accredited registrar of seven top level domain names which include .com, .net, .org, .biz, info, .name and .pro.

One of the significant policies implemented by Google in 2008 is the introduction of a Domain Kiting Detection System, to stop the domain name registration abuses by profiteers known as domain tasting and domain kiting. The modus operandi of profiteers is taking advantage of the five-day Add Grace Period for domain tasting by checking and calculating how much a particular domain generates revenue from ads while parked at a monetization page. With regards to domain kiting, a registrant deletes a newly registered domain name before the grace period ends and immediately registers it again, to reset the grace period and postpone the registration payment.

Google's announcement stirred concerns and debate within the internet community, prompting ICANN to immediately act; although the organization had been preparing a policy to deter the practices of domain tasting and domain kiting prior to Google's move . ICANN conducted a debate in the Spring of 2008 regarding the elimination of the AGP. Meanwhile, ICANN's At-Large Advisory Committee requested the board to investigate the practices to formulate a relevant policy to prevent the abusive practices of domain tasters and kiters.

In June 2008, ICANN implemented a provisional policy (from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009) as a short-term solution in response to the internet community's concern regarding domain tasting. Under the policy, registrars will not be entitled to receive a $0.20 refund, for administration fees, if more than 10 percent of their registered domains were deleted. The policy was successful in dropping the number of deleted domains from 18 million to 2 million. After the provisional period ICANN adopted a tougher policy which required registrars to pay $6.75 for every excessive delete.

Google Apps For Your Domain

In 2006, Google partnered with eNom, Inc., one of the largest ICANN accredited wholesale domain registrars, to the new domain registration services featured in "Google Apps for Your Domain", a platform which enables any type of organization to offer powerful communication and collaboration tools with their users while being hosted by Google without maintenance, as well as hardware or software installation. Meanwhile, eNom will power private domain registration and identity protection for a $10 annual fee.

Other

Google has been using its .co, g.co, as an internal link shortener. It apparently paid 7 figures for the domain, which it acquired in July, 2011. The first reported uses of the g.co shortener was for internal links within its Google Maps features; they hope the new space will assure customers of the safety and security of their links.