Google

. Travelocity has been a sponsor of the TV series The Amazing Race since its 7th Season. Clicking on the "More" tab at the top directs the user to even more Google Services such as Blogger, University Searches, Google products in their Labs section, Help and Alerts. As of early 2005, many members of Peluso’s former management team at Site59 now hold senior management positions at Travelocity, namely Jeffrey Glueck (Chief Marketing Officer), Damon Tassone (President, Travelocity Europe), Tracey Weber (Senior Vice President Air, Car and Last Minute Deals), Richard Harris (Vice President, Strategy and Business Development), Josh Feuerstein (Vice President, Hotels), Josh Hartmann (Vice President, Software Development) and Jonathan Perkel (Vice President & Deputy General Counsel). For users searching for more specific results, at the top of Google pages are additional tabs to more narrowly define a user's search results. Under Peluso’s tenure, Travelocity developed and launched a merchant hotel business, dynamic packaging functionality, and a private-label (ASP) distribution network. See also List of Google services and tools. Hannigan departed from that post to become President of AT&T.

The design of the system also has minor privacy implications that Google does not make explicit on their Video site; namely, Google learns who purchases each movie and what computers they watch it on [40]. Peluso became Travelocity’s COO in April 2003 and was then named president and chief executive officer of Travelocity in December 2003 when former CEO Sam Gilliland ascended to become the CEO of Sabre Holdings after William J. The fact by itself that Google was using DRM was enough to cause criticism by some bloggers, even before Google Video was launched. Site59’s CEO and founder, Michelle Peluso joined Travelocity with the acquisition as senior vice president, product strategy and distribution. To protect the copyright of these popular shows such as MacGyver and The Twilight Zone, Google created a Google DRM (Digital Rights Management) lock for certain paid content. Site59, which launched in May 2000, was developed and backed by iFormation Group, a partnership between the Boston Consulting Group, Goldman Sachs, and General Atlantic Partners. Initially this service is restricted to the United States and certain other countries. In March 2002, Travelocity acquired Site59.com, a New York based travel website specializing in last-minute travel packages, for $43 million in cash.

Announced on January 6, 2006 at the CES in Las Vegas, the Google Video Store sells copyrighted content at the Google Video website. Jones left the company shortly afterward. See Google bomb and Spamdexing. In 2002, with Travelocity's fortunes suffering from competition including Expedia and Orbitz, Sabre consummated a tender offer for the remainder of the outstanding shares in Travelocity and remerged the business into Sabre as a subsidiary. The system is also susceptible to manipulation and fraud through the use of dummy sites, an issue which does, however, plague all search engines. The resulting company was independently quoted on the NASDAQ exchange, with Sabre continuing to own around 30% of the combined company's stock, but around 70% of the voting rights. It remains unclear whether any process could assert the importance of a page in a way that would draw less criticism than the current PageRank system. In 2000, Sabre negotiated a merger of Travelocity with another early web travel company, Preview Travel.

However, it must also be stated that Google's system relies on human oversight, and use of company names on Adwords, or deletion of critical sites from Google results (for example, sites critical of Scientology), is decided by individual human beings according to company policy. In addition to airfares, the site also permits consumers to book hotel rooms, rental cars, cruises, and packaged vacations. It must be stated in Google's defense that PageRank is a fully automated system which is impartial insofar as it knows no personal bias. As one of the pioneers of web-based disintermediation, Travelocity.com was the first website that allowed consumers themselves (acting without the help of a travel agent or broker) not only to access Sabre's fare and schedule information, but also to reserve, book, and purchase tickets. Common arguments are that the system is unfairly biased towards large web sites, and that the criteria for a page's importance are not subject to peer review. "Terry" Jones. Some, such as Daniel Brandt, call it "undemocratic". executive Terrell B.

Google's central PageRank system has been criticized. Travelocity was created in 1996 as a subsidiary of Sabre Holdings, and was run by long-time Sabre I.T. becoming a serious privacy threat.". Other brands include Site59.com, a last-minute travel technology and content provider, World Choice Travel, a travel affiliate marketing program, and Showtickets.com, a tour and ticket broker in Las Vegas. Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC warned that "As courts become more frequent integrators of electronic records, there is a greater risk of Google .. In addition to its primary US consumer site, Travelocity operates a full-service business agency, Travelocity Business, and comparable websites in Canada, Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries, and the United Kingdom, and is a partner in Asian travel hubs Tabini and Zuji. Other popular email services such as Hotmail also scan incoming email to try to determine whether it is unsolicited spam email (which Gmail also does). According to Sabre Holdings, Travelocity is the sixth-largest travel agency in the United States.

Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder, and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements. Travelocity is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sabre Holdings Corporation, a publicly traded company NYSE: TSG. The point is often made that people without Gmail accounts, who have not agreed to the Gmail terms of service, but send email to Gmail users have their correspondence analyzed without permission. Travelocity is an online travel agency operated by Travelocity.com LP. Some users believe the processing of email message content by Google's Gmail service goes beyond proper use. The use of cookies with such distant expiration dates is common.

In response Google claims cookies are necessary to maintain user preferences between sessions and offer other search features. The cookies possess notably distant expiration dates and it is claimed users' searches are recorded without permission for advertising purposes. It has been claimed that Google infringes the privacy of visitors by uniquely identifying them using cookies which are used to track Web users' search history. government, or any other government of a country which Google serves.

law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. Some have pointed out the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users' searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. The Wikipedia article and Jew Watch are consistently the top two hits, but they often switch positions. As a reaction, some webloggers launched a Google bomb to put the corresponding Wikipedia article at the top of the search results.

[39]. Google responded that this was due to the content-neutrality of the PageRank algorithm, and the fact that anti-semites used the specific word "Jew" (as opposed to "Jewish" or "Judaism") more often than others. In April 2004, Google received complaints that a search for "Jew" on its site listed the anti-Semitic website Jew Watch at or near the top of the list. Google Somewhat Lifts Oceana Ad Ban.

Google claimed that their editorial policy states, "that Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations." In 2004 this ban was partially lifted, allowing more positive ads from Oceana to be displayed, however there remains some confusion concerning banning criteria. In February 2003, Google banned the ads of Oceana, a two-and-a-half-year-old non-profit organization, which was protesting the environmental effects of a major cruise ship operation's sewage treatment practices. She also refused an offer from Shona Brown, Google Vice President of Business Operations, to reinstate her to a "low-level operations position". After the loss of 3 of her quadruplets, which she claimed was due to the stressful circumstances created by Google, Elwell sued the company.

On August 18, 2005, former Google sales executive Christina Elwell, promoted to national sales director at Google in late 2003, accused her supervisor of discrimination against her when he terminated her employment after she informed him of her pregnancy [38]. [37]. The text of the Justice Department's motion is accessible at FindLaw A court date of Feburary 27th has been set, where a federal court in San Jose, California will hear the case. It has since bounced back somewhat.

to turn over "a multi-stage random sample of one million URL’s" from Google’s database, and a computer file with "the text of each search string entered onto Google’s search engine over a one-week period (absent any information identifying the person who entered such query)." Noticeably, on January 20, when both the DOW and NYSE fell around a percent, Google stock fell close to 10%. District Court in San Jose seeking a court order that would compel search engine company Google Inc. Justice Department filed a motion to compel in U.S. On Wednesday, January 18, 2006, the U.S.

The settlement cost Google around $275 million which resulted in the company posting a net loss in the third quarter of 2004. Yahoo! had earlier alleged that Google's AdSense program violated a patent held by Yahoo!'s Overture unit. Google recently settled a patent infringement lawsuit with Yahoo! by issuing 2.7 million shares. In May 2004, the Baltimore Sun interviewed Peri Fleisher, a great-niece of Edward Kasner, the mathematician whose nephew coined the word googol, who said Kasner's descendants were "exploring" legal action against Google due to its name.

A judge subsequently threw out SearchKing's lawsuit in mid-2003 on precisely these grounds. In its defense, Google stated that its rankings are its constitutionally protected opinions of the web sites that it indexes. Google's efforts to refine its database have led to some legal controversy, notably a lawsuit in October 2002 from the company SearchKing which sought to sell advertisements on pages with inflated Google rankings. On February 5, 2006, google.com was banned by China Telecom, only use google.cn can be visited, but unfortuntely, the blocking released after several hours.

Most Chinese Internet users did not express much concern about Google's choice, with one blogger saying that censorship is a fact of life in China and Google could not have done any better.[36]. [35] Google states on its help pages that it does not censor content, but it does block pages as demanded for in certain jurisdictions, such as DMCA requests in the United States. The company does not plan to give the government information about the users who search for blocked content, and will inform users of restricted categories. Google was heavily criticized for the move, yet it claims it is necessary to keep the Chinese government from blocking Google entirely.

The restrictions will apply to thousands of terms and websites.[34] The censored content will appear on a website called google.cn. In January 2006 Google affirmed its intent to filter certain keywords given to it by the Chinese government. In October 2005, Blogger and access to the Google Cache were made available in China; however, in December 2005, some Chinese users of Blogger reported that their access to the site was once again restricted. However, the government remains active in filtering Internet content.

This complete ban is currently lifted. The mirror search site elgooG has been used by Chinese citizens to get around blocked content. The People's Republic of China, whose human rights record has been widely criticized by the international community, has in the past restricted citizen access to popular search engines such as Altavista, Yahoo!, and Google. Any data stored on Google is therefore subject to being turned over to any country, including China.

Google's Terms of Service allow it to comply with the laws of any one country, providing information that was originated (or that Google stores) in another country. Google complies with these laws by banning keyword searches related to these terms. According to American law, any copyright owner can require material to be removed via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whereas under French and German law, for example, hate speech and Holocaust denial are illegal. In order to comply with the varying laws of these countries, several versions of Google restrict very specific keyword searches.

Google is a multinational corporation, having offices in over a dozen countries [33]. In a concession to general concerns about the nature of their project, Google had announced plans back in August that they would respect the wishes of copyright holders who contacted the company to inform them that they did not want their works included in this digitization project. Many commentators in the world of copyright law and technology were not surprised by this development as the Authors Guild has also been involved in attempting to make online publishers pay royalties to writers whose stories appear in any number of online databases without their express consent. Arguments in the case will hinge around the interpretation of the four factors of Fair Use.

The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction that will prevent the company from continuing their very ambitious digitization project. authors, including a former Poet Laureate of the United States, filed a class action suit in federal court in Manhattan against Google over its unauthorized scanning and copying of books through its Google Library program. On September 20, 2005, the Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. Google could even argue that it "adds value" to AFP's news without harming the French news wholesaler.[32].

The lawsuit's outcome will likely depend on whether Google can successfully argue that its use of AFP's material constitutes "fair use" under copyright law. AFP's lawsuit, if successful, is bound to have a major impact on how news is delivered on the Internet.". It seems that the basis of the lawsuit is just the abstract notion of copyright without any real damages to justify the action." The article concluded "It would be a sad day for those who look to the Internet for news if AFP is successful in limiting what Google can display.. is now attempting to remove all postings of Agence France-Presse material from its site, although AFP spokesmen say that even if this is done, the lawsuit will continue..

According to the Canada Free Press, "Google Inc. [31] Still, AFP argues that the headline and first sentence of an article constitutes the "heart" of the work and that reproducing it is copyright infringement. Additionally, "in 2002, a federal appeals court ruled that Web sites may reproduce and post 'thumbnail' or downsized versions of copyrighted photographs," so Google News' thumbnails are likely legal. It was argued that had AFP wanted to prevent free use of its articles, it should have asked its providers to require subscriptions rather than suing Google.

It is possible that AFP will make additional arguments in court that it has not yet made in public, but currently, many pundits are confused by the decision to sue [28][29][30] because Google does not display the full article on its site, provides a link to one of AFP's 600 online clients such as Singapore's Channel NewsAsia (which presumably benefits AFP because more people view the article and advertising), and because the articles are available via the providers' websites regardless of Google's actions. In March 2005, Agence France-Presse (AFP) sued Google for $17.5 million, alleging that Google News infringed on its copyright because "Google includes AFP's photos, stories and news headlines on Google News without permission from Agence France-Presse." [27] It was also alleged that Google ignored a cease and desist order, though Google counters that it has opt-out procedures which AFP could have followed but did not. The contract says that it will comply with "fair use", an exemption in copyright law that allows people to reproduce portions of text of copyrighted material for research purposes. of Michigan does make it clear that Google will provide only excerpts of copyright text in a search.

The contract between Google and the U. Meanwhile, Google claims that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books. Also, Google is setting a new precedent by making digital copies of copyrighted material on a wide scale without explicit permission from copyright holders. There are claims that it is a violation of copyright laws to use copyrighted material for profit by placing search ads beside the search results of these digitized books.

This contract is part of Google Print's effort to digitize millions of books and make the full text searchable. On June 2005, Google Watch revealed the details of a contract between the University of Michigan and Google to create digitized copies of the copyrighted materials stored at the University's library. However, Google provides mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled (which Google respects; it also honors the robots.txt file which is another mechanism that allows operators of a website to request that part or all of their site not be included in search engine results). There have also been complaints that Google's Web cache feature violates copyright.

Google typically handles this by removing the link as requested and including a link to the complaint in the search results. A number of organizations have used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to demand that Google remove references to allegedly copyrighted material on other sites. They also offer a download of Firefox with the Google Toolbar pre-installed. This is confirmed by a job listing posted on Google.

Google is looking for software engineers to join them in collaborative development on the Firefox browser. Google has an unknown partnership with the Mozilla Foundation. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help the open source office program OpenOffice.org. Google also has a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies [26].

[25]. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing for Google engineers. As reported by SearchEnginejournal.com, NASA and Google were said to be planning to work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. On Sept 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a 1-million square foot R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center.

Display advertising throughout the Google network will also increase. This will allow users of Google Video to search for AOL's premium-video services. [24] As part of the collaboration, Google plans to work with AOL on video search and offer AOL's premium-video service within Google Video. 21, including an enhanced global advertising partnership and a $1 billion investment by Google for a 5% stake in AOL.

Time Warner's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership on Dec. The New York Times article was headlined, "Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain" [23]. In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other news sources [22] began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy. Page said, "We think a lot about how to maintain our culture and the fun elements.".

Later Mr. In a report given to potential investors, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised that the IPO would not change the company's culture. Also, it may be more challenging for the company to maintain a collegial atmosphere when approximately 1,000 (30%) of the employees are paper-millionaires. Many people have suggested that after Google's IPO the corporate culture will not be able to stay so "fun" and focused on the future.[20] [21] The company may be required to answer to its new shareholders who may press the company to reduce employee benefits and to focus on short term advances.

Some people thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004 around April Fools Day (as well as the doubling of Gmail's storage space to two gigabytes in 2005) was a joke. They also offer versions in Pig Latin Elmer Fudd, and Klingon. Bork! is the mock Swedish of the Muppet Show's Swedish Chef. In the languages list one can find the Bork! Bork! Bork! version.

One can find other pranks hidden between Google's pages. In 2004 it featured Google Lunar which featured jobs on the moon and in 2005 a fictitious, brain-boosting drink termed Google Gulp was announced. In 2002 they claimed that pigeons were the secret behind their growing search engine. Google has a tradition of creating April Fool's Day jokes such as Google MentalPlex which featured the use of mental power to search the Web.

The building also offers state-of-the-art bathroom facilities featuring digitally controlled toilets [19] which are similar to Japanese toilets. In addition to the rec room, there are snack rooms stocked with various cereals, gummy bears, toffee, licorice, cashews, yogurt, carrots, fresh fruit, and dozens of different drinks including fresh juice, soda, and make-your-own cappuccino. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus, and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, Foosball, a baby grand piano, a pool table, and ping pong. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center.

The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, and a real-time projection of current search queries. Google's headquarters is called the Googleplex. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News and Orkut, are said to originate from this possibility.

The time can be allocated to one day a week, or pooled into a month. Every Google engineer is encouraged to spend 20 percent (20%) of their work time on projects that interest them. Google's relaxed corporate culture can also be seen externally through their holiday variations of the Google logo. Twice a week there is a roller hockey game in the company parking lot.

The company encourages equality within corporate levels. Google's corporate philosophy is based on many casual principles including: "You can make money without doing evil", "You can be serious without a suit" and "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun." A complete list of corporate fundamentals is available on Google's Web site [18]. Google is known for its relaxed corporate culture, reminiscent of the Dot-com boom. Page and Brin, however, had sold $2 billion before some of the largest stock gains.

In late 2005 Google shares were valued at $400. When recorded on the Forbes 400, Google's stock was around $111. But due to the recent surge in stock price (April 2005-June 2005), their net worth is significantly higher. According to the Forbes 400 list (2005), the combined net worth of Larry Page and Sergey Brin is $22 billion US.

As a result, Google Inc.'s (CGQ®) as of January 2006 is better than 31.7% of Russell 3000 companies and 41.4% of Software & Services companies. Also, Google has changed some of its board governance practices, and disclosed its executive compensation policies. However, after that ranking came out, ISS revised its CGQ® ranking methodology. [17] The primary contributor of the low ranking was due to how Google's dual class share capital structure was used by ISS to determine the Corporate Governance Quotient (CGQ®) ranking for Google.

In 2004, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) ranked Google's corporate governance dead last in the list of members of the Standard & Poor's 500, even though Google is not yet a part of the S&P500. [16] Page, Brin, and Schmidt have all declined recent offers of bonuses and increases in compensation by Google's board of directors. The CEO also agreed to accept an annual base salary of $1 for 2006. Founders Brin and Page reportedly earned $1 billion in 2004, but after the IPO in Aug 2004, it became public knowledge via annual SEC filings that their base salary is $1 for 2004, 2005, and now 2006.

Position: name, age, compensation in USD (as of June 2005). (It is estimated that less than one job offer is made per thousand resumes submitted.) Google reportedly employs one in-house legal recruiter just to assist the legal department in evaluating the high volume of resumes from attorneys seeking to join the corporation. Beyond monetary compensation, Google's workplace amenities, culture, global popularity, stellar prospects (relative to most Bay Area companies), and strong brand recognition continues to attract far more applicants than there are positions available. In 2005 Google has implemented other employee incentives such as the Google Founders' Award, as well making higher salary offers to new employees.

Nevertheless, Google's excellent stock performance following the IPO has enabled these early employees to be competitively compensated by participation in the corporation's remarkable equity growth. For instance, some system administrators earned no more than $33,000 — while $40,000 at that time was considered to be low by Bay Area employment market levels. Prior to the IPO offering, typical salaries at Google were considered within the industry to be quite low. We try to see new problems and new markets using the technology that others use and we build.".

We look at markets as they exist and we assume they are pretty well served by their existing players. And so if you try to predict our product strategy by simply saying well so and so has this and Google will do the same thing, it's almost always the wrong answer. During the third quarter 2005 Google Conference Call, Eric Schmidt said, "We don't do the same thing as everyone else does. [12].

[11] Google and Microsoft reached a settlement out of court on 22 December 2005, the terms of which are confidential. Microsoft sued to stop his move by citing Lee's non-compete contract (he had access to much sensitive information regarding Microsoft's plans in China). This feud boiled over into the courts when Kai-Fu Lee, a former vice-president of Microsoft, quit Microsoft to work for Google. Many Microsoft employees who worked on Internet Explorer have left to work for Google.

This corporate feud is most directly expressed in hiring offers and defections. Rumors of a Google browser are fueled by the fact that Google is the owner of the domain name "gbrowser.com". Some have even suggested that in addition to an Internet Explorer replacement Google is designing its own Linux based operating system called Google OS to directly compete with Microsoft Windows. Hotmail), search (both online and local desktop searching), and other applications (for example, Microsoft's Virtual Earth competes with Google Earth).

Furthermore, the two companies are increasingly offering overlapping services, such as webmail (Gmail vs. Microsoft has been touting its MSN Search engine to counter Google's competitive position. One such example is the rivalry between Microsoft and Google [10]. With Google's increased size comes more competition from large mainstream technology companies.

On June 7, 2005, Google was valued at nearly $52 billion, making it one of the world's biggest media companies by stock market value. URL accessed on June 1, 2005.) When companies are first listed on the S&P 500 they typically experience a bump in share price due to the rapid accumulation of the stock within index funds that track the S&P. L.A.Times. (Source: Google Shares Rise on New Price Target.

On the same day, rumors circulated in the financial community that Google would soon be included in the S&P 500. On June 1, 2005, Google shares gained nearly 4 percent after Credit Suisse First Boston raised its price target on the stock to $350. Jessie Stricchiola, president of Alchemist Media, called Google "the most stubborn and the least willing to cooperate with advertisers" when it comes to click fraud. Google's CFO George Reyes said in a December 2004 investor conference that "something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because I think, potentially, it threatens our business model."[9] Some have suggested that Google is not doing enough to combat click fraud.

Click fraud is a growing problem for Google's business strategy. Page says in the prospectus that Google has "a dual class structure that is biased toward stability and independence and that requires investors to bet on the team, especially Sergey and me." The company has not reported any treasury stock holdings as of the Q3 2004 report. The actual voting power of the insiders is much higher, however, as Google has a dual class stock structure in which each Class B share gets ten votes compared to each Class A share getting one. The two founders are said to hold almost 30% of the outstanding shares.

In January 2005 the shares outstanding was up 100 million to 273.42 million, 53% of that was held by insiders which made the float 127.70 million (up 110 million shares from the first trading day). On August 19, 2004 the number of shares outstanding was 172.85 million while the "free float" was 19.60 million (which makes 89% held by insiders). Since the IPO, Google's stock market capitalization has risen greatly and the stock price has more than quadrupled. [8].

Google said it would use the money for "acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies or other assets". The move would double Google's cash stockpile to $7 billion. On August 18, 2005 (one year after the initial IPO), Google announced that it would sell 14,159,265 (another mathematical reference as π = 3.14159265...) more shares of its stock to raise money. The company was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG.

Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owns 2.7 million shares of Google. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. The IPO gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. The vast majority of Google's 271 million shares remained under Google's control.

The sale raised $1.67 billion, of which approximately $1.2 billion went to Google. Of that, 14,142,135 (another mathematical reference as √2 = 1.4142135...) were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. After some initial stumbles, Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004.

The SEC (Security & Exchange Commission) forbids giving out information pertaining to a company's specifications before an IPO is launched. Before Google initiated its initial public offering, Larry Page & Sergey Brin faced legal action for giving Playboy an interview about themselves and Google. The public valued it at $100.34 at the close of the first day of trading which saw 22,351,900 shares change hands. The initial offering of shares was sold for $85 a piece.

In the run-up to the IPO the company was forced to slash the price and size of the offering, but the process did not run into any technical difficulties or result in any significant legal challenges. The smallest required account balances at most authorized online brokers that are allowed to participate in an IPO, however, are around $100,000. They chose the unconventional way of allocating the initial offering through an auction (specifically, a "Dutch auction"), so that "anyone" would be able to participate in the offering. In May 2004, Google officially cut Goldman Sachs from the IPO, leaving Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston as the joint underwriters.

The deadline imposed by this requirement accelerated our decision." The SEC filing revealed that Google turned a profit every year since 2001 and earned a profit of $105.6 million on revenues of $961.8 million during 2003. By law, certain private companies must report as if they were public companies. As Google stated in the filing, their "growth has reduced some of the advantages of private ownership. April 29 was the 120th day of 2004, and according to section 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, "a company must file financial and other information with the SEC 120 days after the close of the year in which the company reaches $10 million in assets and/or 500 shareholders, including people with stock options.[7] Google has stated in its Annual filing for 2004 that every one of its 3,021 employees, "except temporary employees and contractors, are also equity holders, with significant collective employee ownership", so Google would have needed to make its financial information public by filing them with the SEC regardless of whether or not they intended to make a public offering.

On April 29, 2004, Google made an S-1 form SEC filing for an IPO to raise as much as USD $2,718,281,828 (with a touch of mathematical humor as e = 2.718281828...). According to a banker involved in the transaction, the deal would yield an estimated $12 billion market capitalization for Google. That IPO (one of the most anticipated in history) was projected to raise as much as $4 billion. In January 2004, Google announced the hiring of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group to arrange an IPO.

In October 2003, while discussing a possible IPO (Initial Public Offering of shares), Microsoft approached the company about a possible partnership or merger; no such deal ever materialized. Around six months later, a much larger round of funding was announced, with the major investors being rival venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital. After a frantic few weeks, this was topped up to give an initial investment of almost $1 million. The first funding for Google as a company was secured in the form of a $100,000 contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given to a corporation which didn't yet exist.

Products and demos Google Labs, the experimental section of Google.com help Google maximize its relationships with its users by including them in the beta development, design and testing stages of new products and enhancements of already existing ones. Frequently, new Google enhancements or products appear in its inventory. Analysts speculate that Google's response to Yahoo! will be to continue to make technical and visual enhancements to personalized searches, using the personal data that is gathering from Orkut, Gmail, and Froogle to produce unique results based on the user. The logo is notorious among web users for April Fool's Day tie-ins and jokes about the company.

Not only may decorative drawings be attached to the logo, but as well the font design may mimic a fictional or humorous language such as the Star Trek Klingon[5] and Leet[6]. The Google site includes humorous features such as cartoon modifications [4] of the Google logo to recognize special occasions and anniversaries, known as "Google Doodles". This is interpreted by some activists as against the "Don't Be Evil" spirit. Google.cn search results are filtered so as not to bring any results up on Tianamen Square, the independence movements of Tibet and Taiwan, the Dalai Lama (any results describe him as a troublemaker), Falun Gong and anti-Communist information.

Some controversy has occurred over Google's decision to participate in the Chinese government's Internet censorship policy, colloquially known as "The Great Firewall of China". Google's declared code of conduct is "Don't Be Evil", a phrase which they went so far as to include in their prospectus (aka "red herring" or "S-1") for their IPO, noting "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.". Yet Yahoo!'s move highlighted Google's own distinctiveness and today the verb "to google" has entered a number of languages first as a slang verb and now as a standard word meaning, "to perform a web search". Google lost user share of the search market.

At its peak in early 2004, Google handled upwards of 84.7 percent of all search requests on the World Wide Web through its Web site and through its partnerships with other Internet clients like Yahoo!, AOL, and CNN.[3] In February 2004 Yahoo! dropped its partnership with Google in order to provide users at its site independent search results and to maintain their loyalty. However, the acquisition secured the company's competitive ability to use information gleaned from blog postings to improve the speed and relevance of articles contained in a companion product to the search engine, Google News. Some analysts considered the acquisition inconsistent with Google's business model. In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of Blogger, a pioneering and leading weblog hosting Web site.

The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. Patent 6,285,999 describing Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on September 4, 2001. U.S. While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.

The model of selling keyword advertising was originally pioneered by Goto.com (renamed Overture, and now Yahoo! Search Marketing)[2]. It also only cost a very small amount per click to the websites that advertised this way. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. This strategy was important for increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of "hits" users make upon ads.

In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with the search keyword to produce enhanced search results for the user. This appearance, while imitating the early AltaVista, had behind it Google's unique search capabilities. 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. The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users.

Silicon Graphics leased these buildings to Google. After outgrowing two subsequent sites, the company settled into a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, in 2003. Google quickly outgrew its University Avenue home. This unexpected change alienated part of AltaVista's user base.

Google received a big break in 1999 when one of the most popular search engines, AltaVista, relaunched itself as a user Web entry point, or portal. In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to a number of other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997.

Originally the search engine used the Stanford website with the domain google.stanford.edu. (A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.) 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. (Contemporary search engines essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page.) It was originally nicknamed BackRub because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance. They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between Web sites would produce better results than existing techniques.

students at Stanford. Google began as a research project in January 1996 ^[1] by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. . See Google platform for more details on their technology.

While the company does not provide detailed information about its hardware, it was estimated in 2005 that they were using over 100,000 Linux machines. Google's services are run on several server farms, each consisting of many thousand low-cost commodity computers running stripped-down versions of Linux. multiplex, cineplex, etc). As a further play on this, Google's headquarters are referred to as "the Googleplex" — a googolplex being 1 followed by a googol of zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf.

The name "Google" is a play on the word "googol," which refers to the number represented by 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Eric Schmidt, formerly chief executive officer of Novell, was named Google's CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down. The company employs approximately 5,700 employees and is based in Mountain View, California. public corporation, first incorporated as a privately held corporation in September 1998, that designed and manages the Internet Google search engine.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is a U.S. Catalogs: Catalog Search allows the user to search and browse mail-order catalogs. Non-peer reviewed material is also included in the index. Scholar: Allows users to search some peer-reviewed, scholarly journals.

Although it allows you to search specific blogs, this feature is currently malfunctioning. Results can be sorted by relevance or by date. Blogs: Blog Search allows the user to only search blogs based on RSS feeds. See Google Video.

Videos: Allows the user to limit a search to videos on the Internet; Use Google to find reviews and showtimes for movies playing somewhere near you. See Google Talk. Talk: Allows users with Gmail accounts to communicate with each other through instant messaging and have online conversations. See Google Desktop.

Desktop: Allows the user to search their computer for files, folders, and emails. See Google Earth. Earth: Allows the user to download a program to have a 3D version of satellite pictures. Currently it provides full service only in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Ireland.

See also Google Maps. Maps include road maps, medium-resolution satellite images, and "hybrid" maps combining both. Local: Searches for places (such as shops or other landmarks) in a geographical area, and displays maps and driving directions. See Froogle.

Froogle: Allows the user to shop online searching websites within a user specified budget. Google.com.au allows selection criteria for Australia. The search page provides the option for twenty countries. News: Brings the user directly to the Google News search page, formatted similar to news websites such as MSNBC or BBC News.

Groups: Allows the user to create, search and browse groups for discussion. Images: Allows the user to limit a search to images on the Internet; the images are identified by Google by the image name saved on the webpage and context information about the page. Washington Post 20 September 2005 "Google library push faces lawsuit by US authors". The Google Print Library Project: A Copyright Analysis - .pdf.

Scout Report "Authors’ group files lawsuit against Google" Sept, 2005. Drummond, 42, $776K. Counsel: David C. Development, Secretary and Gen.

VP of Corp. VP of Worldwide Sales: Omid Kordestani, 41, $572K. Sr. Page, 32, $1 see [15].

President of Products: Larry E. President of Technology: Sergey Brin, 31, $1 see [14]. CFO: George Reyes, 51, $781K. Schmidt, 50, $1 see [13].

CEO: Eric E.