By Content/Topic

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Different search engines

This is a list of Wikipedia articles about search engines, including web search engines, selection-based search engines, metasearch engines, desktop search tools, and web portals and vertical market websites that have a search facility for online databases.

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By content/topic

General

 Baidu (Chinese, Japanese)  Bing  Blekko  Google  Sogou (Chinese)  Soso.com (Chinese)  Volunia  Yahoo!  Yandex (Russian)  Yebol  Yodao (Chinese)  WireDoo

P2P search engines

 FAROO  Seeks (Open Source)  YaCy (Free and fully decentralized)

Metasearch engines

See also: Multimedia search

 Bing Videos  blinkx  FindSounds  Google Video  Munax's PlayAudioVideo  Picsearch  Pixsta  Podscope  ScienceStage  SeeqPod  Songza  TinEye  TV Genius  Veveo  Yahoo! Video  YouTube

Source code

 Google Code Search  JExamples  Koders  Krugle

BitTorrent

These search engines work across the BitTorrent protocol.

 FlixFlux  Isohunt  Mininova  The Pirate Bay  TorrentSpy  Torrentz

Email  Lookeen  TEK

Maps

 Bing Maps  Géoportail  Google Maps  MapQuest  OpenStreetMap  WikiMapia  Yahoo! Maps

Price

 Bing Shopping  Google Product Search (formerly Froogle)  Kelkoo  MySimon  PriceGrabber  PriceRunner  PriceSCAN  Pronto.com  Shopping.com  ShopWiki  Shopzilla (also operates Bizrate)  SwoopThat.com  TheFind.com  Wishabi

Question and answer

Human answers

 Answers.com  Ask Me Help Desk  DeeperWeb  eHow  Quora  Stack Overflow/Stack Exchange Network  Uclue  wikiHow  Yahoo! Answers

Automatic answers See also: Question answering

 AskMeNow  BrainBoost  True Knowledge  Wolfram Alpha

Natural language

See also: Natural language search engine and Semantic search

 Ask.com  Bing (Semantic ability is powered by Powerset)  BrainBoost  hakia  Lexxe  Powerset By model

Privacy search engines

 DuckDuckGo  Scroogle Scraper

Open source search engines

 DataparkSearch  Egothor  Grub  ht://Dig  Isearch  Lemur Toolkit & Indri Search Engine  Lucene  mnoGoSearch  MozDex  Namazu  Nutch  OpenFTS  Recoll  Sciencenet (for scientific knowledge, based on YaCy technology)  Seeks  Sphinx  SWISH-E  Terrier Search Engine  Wikia Search  Xapian  YaCy  Zettair

Semantic browsing engines

 Hakia  Yebol

Social search engines

See also: Social search, Relevance feedback, and Human search engine

 ChaCha Search  Delver  Eurekster  Mahalo.com  OneRiot  Rollyo  SearchTeam  Sproose  Trexy  Wink provides web search by analyzing user contributions such as bookmarks and feedback

Visual search engines

 ChunkIt!  Grokker  Pixsta  PubGene  TinEye  Viewzi  Macroglossa

Search appliances

 Google: Google Search Appliance

Desktop search engines

See also: Desktop search Name Platform Remarks License Proprietary,

Autonomy Windows IDOL Enterprise Desktop Search. commercial A mix of the X11/MIT Open source desktop search tool for Linux based on

Beagle Linux License and Lucene the Apache License Copernic Considered best overall search engine in 2005 UW Free for home

Desktop Windows benchmark study.[1] use

Search Eclipse Cross- Open source desktop search tool for Windows and

Docfetcher Public platform Linux, based on Apache Lucene

License dtSearch Proprietary

Windows

Desktop (30 day trial)

Easyfind Mac OS Freeware

Find files and folders by name instantly on NTFS

Everything Windows Freeware volumes Integrates with the main Google search engine page. Google Linux, Mac 5.9 Release now supports x64 systems. As of Freeware

Desktop OS, Windows September 14, 2011, Google has discontinued this product. GNOME

Linux Open Source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux GPL

Storage

Linux, Mac [2] imgSeek Desktop content-based image search GPL v2 OS, Windows InSight

Desktop Windows Metadata-based search utility Freeware

Search ISYS Search Proprietary

Windows ISYS:desktop search software.

Software (14 day trial) BSD

Locate32 Windows Graphical port of Unix's locate & updatedb [3]

License [4]

Meta Tracker Linux, Unix Open Source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux GPL v2 [5]

Recoll Linux, Unix Open Source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux GPL Found in Apple Mac OS X "Tiger" and later OS X

Spotlight Mac OS Proprietary releases. Linux, Unix, Solaris, Mac [6]

Strigi Cross-platform open source desktop search engine LGPL v2 OS X and Windows Name Platform Remarks License Terrier Linux, Mac Desktop search for Windows, Mac OS X (Tiger),

Search MPL OS, Unix Unix/Linux.

Engine Freeware and

Tropes Zoom Windows Semantic Search Engine. commercial Part of Windows Vista and later OSs. Available as Windows Windows Desktop Search for Windows XP and Proprietary,

Windows

Search Server 2003. Does not support indexing UNC paths freeware on x64 systems.

Usenet

 Google Groups (formerly Deja News) Based on

Google

 AOL Search  CompuServe Search  Groovle  MySpace Search  Netscape  Ripple

Yahoo!

 AltaVista  Ecocho  Everyclick (formerly based on Ask.com)  Forestle (an ecologically motivated site supporting sustainable rain forests - formerly based on Google)  GoodSearch  Rectifi

Bing

 A9.com  Alexa Internet  Ciao!  Ecosia  Facebook  Ms. Dewey  Yahoo! Search

Ask.com

 Hakia (semantic search)  iWon  Lycos  Teoma Acquired or defunct search engines

 AlltheWeb  BRS/Search (now OpenText Livelink ECM Discovery Server)  Btjunkie  Cuil  Direct Hit Technologies (acquired by Ask Jeeves in January, 2000)  Google Answers  Infoseek  Inktomi  Kartoo  Lotus Magellan  Overture.com (formerly GoTo.com, now Yahoo! Search Marketing)  PubSub  RetrievalWare (acquired by Fast Search & Transfer and now owned by Microsoft)  Scroogle  Singingfish  Sphere  Tafiti  Wikia Search  WiseNut  World Wide Web Worm

DIFFERNCE BETWEEN GOOGLE EARTH AND GOOGLE MAPS

Difference Between Google Maps & Google Earth Google Earth and Google Maps both provide new ways to look at the world.

Google provides two similar products, Google Earth and Google Maps, that use satellite imagery to give Internet users a bird's-eye view of the world around them. These free applications are powerful tools for those seeking to visualize the Earth. However, some basic differences exist between the two.

1. Platform o The most basic difference between Google Earth and Google Maps is that while Google Maps may be accessed via a web browser, Google Earth is a program that must be downloaded and installed on the user's hard drive. Both require Internet access. 3-D View

o One of the features that distinguishes Google Earth from other visualization software, including Google Maps, is the 3D visualization of certain cities, buildings and natural landmarks. Except for "street view," which allows users to scan certain areas as if they were at street level, Google Maps is limited to a two- dimensional visual experience.

Extraterrestrial Maps

o Google Earth allows users to go beyond the planet and explore the surface of the moon and Mars. Google Maps lacks this feature. Flyovers

o Google Earth is designed to give users a majestic flyover visual experience as they navigate from point to point. Google Maps does not have this feature and is oriented more toward conveying information than depicting the world in a visually stimulating manner. Usage

o Because of its unique visual aspects, Google Earth is often used for entertainment. Google Maps is more often used for utilitarian purposes such as locating buildings or obtaining driving directions.

BASIC DIFFERNCE BETWEEN OS AND BROWSERS

So an operating system and a browser walk into a bar…

It's time that I performed my moral obligation and provided very basic information to those who are yet to understand what is what on their computers and what is what when they navigate the Internet.

One of the things that I find is that because I perform my job duties on a computer people tend to think that I'm a computer expert. This isn't the case. I'm about as much of a computer expert as the secretary who uses a computer during the day. It's just that I use different programs on the computer than a secretary. With that being said, let me explain a few common elements of computers and the Internet.

Operation System or OS i.e. Windows or Mac

This is what controls the files and programs on your computer. Windows or Mac is the type of Operating System that your computer uses. However, right out of the box, Apple produces the only computer for the Mac operating system. Other companies that produce PC's (Personal Computers) utilize the Windows Operating System (Windows XP, Windows '98, Windows Vista, Windows 7, etc). These companies are companies like Dell, HP, Acer, and even newer types of computers such as Alien Ware. These are run the Windows Operating System. When you turn on your computer the thing that makes your computer work is the Operating System.

Different between Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Word, Excel, and the Office Suite

Whenever I ask someone what word processor they use I often get "Windows, I think". Microsoft became famous because primarily because they created the Windows Operating System (See above), however, they also created other programs and a browser (see below) that helped them achieve certain heights of success. As I have already mentioned, Windows is the operating system but Microsoft Office are different PROGRAMS that can be run using Windows, the operating system. There are different programs within the MSFT Office Suite such as Word (word processor where aver 90% of people do their typing), Excel (the spreadsheet), and various other programs like Power Point and so on. Microsoft packages a very watered down version of Word Processors and Spreadsheets with their operating systems called Microsoft Word Processor and other generic names used for the spreadsheet program. This may very well cause the confusion. For those people who own Apple products and run the Mac operating system Microsoft has created a Office Suite specifically for Mac that functions like like the Windows Version.

Browsers: Its how we view the Internet –> Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Chrome, Opera

So how do we view the Internet? Most of the time the individual who is viewing the Internet doesn't know how he or she is viewing it. They just click the little icon on their desktop (the screen on your computer that is the default screen you look at when you turn your computer on that has little icons on it or at the bottom of it depending on the OS) and they are surfing the net. Some time ago Microsoft was in Anti-Trust Monopoly court because they were packaging their Browser (Internet Explorer) with their Windows OS software. This was confusing many people and gave Microsoft and unfair advantage (this is an incredibility simplistic view). So when ever you click on certain icons on your screen and it takes you to the Internet you are using a Browser. Its what shows you the different websites on the Internet. So what is Google, Yahoo, and Bing?

Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing As years went on there have been more and more and more and more and more websites popping up. There was an incredible need for a way that would allow people to find the things that they were interested in. As such, early search engines such as Netscape allowed people to put words of what they were looking for into little boxes and these search engines scoured the web looking for websites they thought were what people where searching for. Search engines themselves are programs that originate from WEBSITES. So Google and Yahoo and Bing are companies that have search engine programs on their website. Although most search engine companies are expanding into different areas of the online life they are most know for their search engines.

And now for websites

Websites are numerous different files that when put together using the right tools a page is created that has pictures, designs, and words on it. Building a website from the ground up is very complicated work. First, it starts by using a program such as Photoshop to "draw" a diagram of what the website will look like. Then an individual has to break that picture or drawing down into complex code called HTML and CSS. Along with other important programming languages these different files are put onto a bigger computer called a server. But the problem is that these websites are broken down into many different files and folders that when looking at naked means nothing to the average person. That is why the average person will turn on his/her computer, click on the icon that is their browser, go the Google ( a website), and in the search results from an interesting websites. After clicking on that link from the search engine results your browser takes all of the websites files and folders and puts them together like a puzzle so you can make sense of what all of the files mean when working together. So your browser is the tool that pieces together the puzzle that is websites.

These are very simplistic answers to very complex technological "things". While I like to thank of myself as an expert in general website production (the art of producing the entire development of a website) I'm by no means an expert at hardware, or the actual plastic and metal that runs the programs and operating systems. So when I show up to your office to discuss your website I won't necessarily know right away why your printer isn't working or why your computer keeps crashing. Much as the guy who washes cars for a living doesn't automatically know why your car is making a noise neither do I automatically know why your computer is broken.

GOOGLE PRODUCTS Web

 Web Search

Search billions of web pages

 Chrome

A browser built for speed, simplicity and security Mobile

 Mobile

Get Google products on your mobile phone Media

 Image Search

Search for images on the web

 News

Search thousands of news stories Home & Office

 Docs

Create and share your online documents, presentations and spreadsheets

 Translate

Instantly translate text, web pages, and files between over 50 languages Social

 Groups

Create mailing lists and discussion groups Specialized Search

 Blog Search

Find blogs on your favorite topics  Scholar

Search scholarly papers

 Alerts

Get email updates on the topics of your choice Innovation

LIST OF GOOGLE PRODUCTS Web-based products

These products must be accessed via a web browser:

Search tools

 Google search – web search engine, which is Google's core product. It was the company's first creation, coming out of beta on September 21, 1999, and remains their most popular and famous service. It receives 1 billion requests a day and is the most used search engine on the Internet. Google also offers regional search by its regional level domains, it has 189 different regional domains, see List of Google domains o PageRank – link analysis algorithm. o Snapshots – mechanism that indexes PDFs, Word documents, and more. o Search engine optimization – process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines. o Google Search Functionality – o Languages –  Accessible Search – search engine for the blind and visually impaired. It prioritises usable and accessible web sites in the search results, so users incur minimal distractions when browsing.  Google Alerts – email notification service, which sends alerts based on chosen search terms, whenever there are new results. Alerts include web results, Groups results news, and video.  Blog search – weblog search engine, with a continuously-updated search index. Results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger. Results can be viewed and filtered by date.  Google Books (was Print) – search engine for the full text of printed books. Google scans and stores in its digital database. The content that is displayed depends on the arrangement with the publishers, ranging from short extracts to entire books.  Google Custom Search – allows a user to create a customized search experience for his/her own website. Renamed from Google Co-op, which in turn replaced Google Free Search.  Directory – navigation directory, specifically for Chinese users.  Experimental Search – options for testing new interfaces whilst searching with Google, including Timeline views and keyboard shortcuts.  Google Finance – searchable US business news, opinion, and financial data. Features include company-specific pages, blog search, interactive charts, executives information, discussion groups and a portfolio.  Google Groups – web and email discussion service and Usenet archive. Users can join a group, make a group, publish posts, track their favorite topics, write a set of group web pages updatable by members and share group files. In January, 2007, version 3 of Google Groups was released. New features include the ability to create customised pages and share files.  Hotpot – is a search that allows people to rate restaurants, hotels etc. and share them with friends.  Google Image Search – image search engine, with results based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image and text adjacent to the image. When searching, a thumbnail of each matching image is displayed.  Language Tools – Collection of linguistic applications, including one that allows users to translate text or web pages from one language to another, and another that allows searching in web pages located in a specific country or written in a specific language.  Life Search (Google China) – Search engine tailored towards everyday needs, such as train times, recipes and housing.  Movies – specialised search engine that obtains show times of films near a user-entered location and provides reviews of films compiled from several different websites.  Google News – automated news compilation service and search engine for news. There are versions of the aggregator for more than 20 languages. While the selection of news stories is fully automated, the sites included are selected by human editors.  Google News archive – feature within Google News, that allows users to browse articles from over 200 years ago.  Google Patent Search – search engine to search through millions of patents, each result with its own page, including drawings, claims and citations.  Product Search (was Froogle): price engine that searches online stores, including auctions, for products.  Google Scholar – search engine for the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and scholarly fields. Today, the index includes virtually all peer-reviewed journals available online.  SMS – mobile phone short message service offered by Google in several countries, including the USA, Japan, Canada, India, Pakistan and China and formerly the UK, Germany and Spain. It allows search queries to be sent as a text message. The results are sent as a reply, with no premium charge for the service.  Suggest : auto-completion in search results while typing to give popular searches.  Google Video – video search engine and online store for clips internally submitted by companies and the general public. Google's main video partnerships include agreements with CBS, NHL and the NBA. Also searches videos posted on YouTube, Metacafe, Daily Motion, and other popular video hosting sites.  Voice Local Search – non-premium phone service for searching and contacting local businesses  Web History (was Google Search History, Personalized Search) – web page tracking, which records Google searches, Web pages, images, videos, music and more. It also includes Bookmarks, search trends and item recommendations. Google released Search History in April 2005, when it began to record browsing history,[1] later expanding and renaming the service to Web History in April 2007.[2]  Knowledge Graph – a knowledge base used to enhance search results with semantic information gathered from several sources. ABOUT GOOGLE COMPANY History

Main article: History of Google

Google's original homepage had a simple design, since its founders were not experienced in HTML, the language for designing web pages.[22]

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California.[23]

While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites.[24] They called this new technology PageRank, where a website's relevance was determined by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site.[25][26]

A small search engine called "RankDex" from IDD Information Services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking.[27] The technology in RankDex would be patented[28] and used later when Li founded Baidu in China.[29][30]

Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site.[31][32][33]

Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word "googol",[34][35] the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine wants to provide large quantities of information for people.[36] Originally, Google ran under the Stanford University website, with the domain google.stanford.edu.[37]

The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997,[38] and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in a friend's (Susan Wojcicki[23]) garage in Menlo Park, California. Craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee.[23][39][40] In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed 1 billion for the first time, an 8.4 percent increase from May 2010 (931 million).[41]

Financing and initial public offering

Google's first production server. The first iteration of Google production servers was built with inexpensive hardware.[42]

The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of US$100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was even incorporated.[43] Early in 1999, while still graduate students, Brin and Page decided that the search engine they had developed was taking up too much of their time from academic pursuits. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer, and later criticized Vinod Khosla, one of Excite's venture capitalists, after he had negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. On June 7, 1999, a $25 million round of funding was announced,[44] with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.[43]

Google's initial public offering (IPO) took place five years later on August 19, 2004. At that time Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024.[45] The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share.[46][47] Shares were sold in a unique online auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal.[48][49] The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.[50] The vast majority of the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google, and many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited because it owned 8.4 million shares of Google before the IPO took place.[51] Some people speculated that Google's IPO would inevitably lead to changes in company culture. Reasons ranged from shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions to the fact that many company executives would become instant paper millionaires.[52] As a reply to this concern, co- founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised in a report to potential investors that the IPO would not change the company's culture.[53] In 2005, however, articles in The New York Times and other sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy.[54][55][56] In an effort to maintain the company's unique culture, Google designated a Chief Culture Officer, who also serves as the Director of Human Resources. The purpose of the Chief Culture Officer is to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on: a flat organization with a collaborative environment.[57] Google has also faced allegations of sexism and ageism from former employees.[58][59]

The stock's performance after the IPO went well, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on October 31, 2007,[60] primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market.[61] The surge in stock price was fueled mainly by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds.[61] The company is now listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG and under the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GGQ1.

Growth

In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[62] The next year, against Page and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine,[63] Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.[23] In order to maintain an uncluttered page design and increase speed, advertisements were solely text-based. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bids and click-throughs, with bidding starting at five cents per click.[23] This model of selling keyword advertising was first pioneered by Goto.com, an Idealab spin-off created by Bill Gross.[64][65] When the company changed names to Overture Services, it sued Google over alleged infringements of the company's pay-per-click and bidding patents. Overture Services would later be bought by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing. The case was then settled out of court, with Google agreeing to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license.[66]

During this time, Google was granted a patent describing its PageRank mechanism.[67] The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased its current office complex from Silicon Graphics at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.[68] The complex has since come to be known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol zeroes. The Googleplex interiors were designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects. Three years later, Google would buy the property from SGI for $319 million.[69] By that time, the name "Google" had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb "google" to be added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."[70][71] Acquisitions and partnerships

See also: List of acquisitions by Google

Since 2001, Google has acquired many companies, mainly focusing on small venture capital companies. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc.[72] The start-up company developed a product called Earth Viewer that gave a three-dimensional view of the Earth. Google renamed the service to Google Earth in 2005. Two years later, Google bought the online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.[73] On April 13, 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, giving Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies.[74] Later that same year, Google purchased GrandCentral for $50 million.[75] The site would later be changed over to Google Voice. On August 5, 2009, Google bought out its first public company, purchasing video software maker On2 Technologies for $106.5 million.[76] Google also acquired Aardvark, a social network search engine, for $50 million, and commented on its internal blog, "we're looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it".[77] In April 2010, Google announced it had acquired a hardware startup, Agnilux.[78]

In addition to the many companies Google has purchased, the company has partnered with other organizations for everything from research to advertising. In 2005, Google partnered with NASA Ames Research Center to build 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m²) of offices.[79] The offices would be used for research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing, and the entrepreneurial space industry. Google entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems in October 2005 to help share and distribute each other's technologies.[80] The company also partnered with AOL of Time Warner,[81] to enhance each other's video search services. Google's 2005 partnerships also included financing the new .mobi top-level domain for mobile devices, along with other companies including Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson.[82] Google would later launch "Adsense for Mobile", taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market.[83] Increasing its advertising reach even further, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corporation entered into a $900 million agreement to provide search and advertising on popular social networking site MySpace.[84]

In October 2006, Google announced that it had acquired the video-sharing site YouTube for US$1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006.[85] Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube's running costs, and YouTube's revenues in 2007 were noted as "not material" in a regulatory filing.[86] In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 YouTube revenue at US$200 million, noting progress in advertising sales.[87] In 2007, Google began sponsoring NORAD Tracks Santa, a service that follows Santa Claus' progress on Christmas Eve,[88] using Google Earth to "track Santa" in 3-D for the first time,[89] and displacing former sponsor AOL. Google-owned YouTube gave NORAD Tracks Santa its own channel.[90]

In 2008, Google developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing Google with high-resolution (0.41 m monochrome, 1.65 m color) imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 6, 2008.[91] Google also announced in 2008 that it was hosting an archive of Life Magazine's photographs as part of its latest partnership. Some of the images in the archive were never published in the magazine.[92] The photos were watermarked and originally had copyright notices posted on all photos, regardless of public domain status.[93]

In 2010, Google Energy made its first investment in a renewable energy project, putting $38.8 million into two wind farms in North Dakota. The company announced the two locations will generate 169.5 megawatts of power, or enough to supply 55,000 homes. The farms, which were developed by NextEra Energy Resources, will reduce fossil fuel use in the region and return profits. NextEra Energy Resources sold Google a twenty percent stake in the project to get funding for its development.[94] Also in 2010, Google purchased Global IP Solutions, a Norway- based company that provides web-based teleconferencing and other related services. This acquisition will enable Google to add telephone-style services to its list of products.[95] On May 27, 2010, Google announced it had also closed the acquisition of the mobile ad network AdMob. This purchase occurred days after the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation into the purchase.[96] Google acquired the company for an undisclosed amount.[97] In July 2010, Google signed an agreement with an Iowa wind farm to buy 114 megawatts of energy for 20 years.[98]

On April 4, 2011, The Globe and Mail reported that Google bid $900 million for six thousand Nortel Networks patents.[99]

On August 15, 2011, Google announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion[100][101] subject to approval from regulators in the United States and Europe. In a post on Google's blog, Google Chief Executive and co-founder Larry Page revealed that Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility is a strategic move to strengthen Google's patent portfolio. The company's Android operating system has come under fire in an industry-wide patent battle, as Apple and Microsoft have taken to court Android device makers such as HTC, Samsung and Motorola.[102] The merger was completed on the 22 May 2012, after the approval of People's Republic of China.[103] This purchase was made in part to help Google gain Motorola's considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies to help protect it in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies,[104] mainly Apple and Microsoft[102] and to allow it to continue to freely offer Android.[105]

Google Data Centers

Google Inc. currently owns and operates 6 data centers across the U.S., plus one in Finland and another in Belgium. On September 28, 2011 the company has announced to build three data centers at a cost of more than $200 million in Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan) and has already purchased the land for them. Google said they will be operational in one to two years.[106] Products and services

See also: List of Google products

Advertising Ninety-nine percent of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs.[107] For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues.[108] Google has implemented various innovations in the online advertising market that helped make it one of the biggest brokers in the market. Using technology from the company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they are relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them.[109][110] Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page.[111] Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google's AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website, and earn money every time ads are clicked.[112]

One of the disadvantages and criticisms of this program is Google's inability to combat click fraud, when a person or automated script "clicks" on advertisements without being interested in the product, which causes that advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claim that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were in fact fraudulent or invalid.[113] Furthermore, there has been controversy over Google's "search within a search", where a secondary search box enables the user to find what they are looking for within a particular website. It was soon reported that when performing a search within a search for a specific company, advertisements from competing and rival companies often showed up along with those results, drawing users away from the site they were originally searching.[114] Another complaint against Google's advertising is its censorship of advertisers, though many cases concern compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. For example, in February 2003, Google stopped showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ship's sewage treatment practices. Google cited its editorial policy at the time, stating "Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations."[115] The policy was later changed.[116] In June 2008, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on its web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized due to antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2008.[117][118]

In an attempt to advertise its own products, Google launched a website called Demo Slam, developed to demonstrate technology demos of Google Products.[119] Each week, two teams compete at putting Google's technology into new contexts. Search Engine Journal said Demo Slam is "a place where creative and tech-savvy people can create videos to help the rest of the world understand all the newest and greatest technology out there."[120]

Search engine

Main article: Google Search

On February 14, 2012, Google updated its homepage with a minor twist. There are no red lines above the options in the black bar, and there is a tab space before the "+You". The sign-in button has also changed, it is no longer in the black bar, instead under it as a button.

Google Search, a web search engine, is the company's most popular service. According to market research published by comScore in November 2009, Google is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%.[121] Google indexes billions[122] of web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators. Despite its popularity, it has received criticism from a number of organizations. In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google's indexing, claiming that Google's caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content.[123] In this case, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google.[124][125] Furthermore, the publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly has compiled a list of words that the web giant's new instant search feature will not search.[126] Google Watch has also criticized Google's PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor established sites,[127] and has made allegations about connections between Google and the NSA and the CIA.[128] Despite criticism, the basic search engine has spread to specific services as well, including an image search engine, the Google News search site, Google Maps, and more. In early 2006, the company launched Google Video, which allowed users to upload, search, and watch videos from the Internet.[129] In 2009, however, uploads to Google Video were discontinued so that Google could focus more on the search aspect of the service.[130] The company even developed Google Desktop, a desktop search application used to search for files local to one's computer. Google's most recent development in search is its partnership with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to create Google Patents, which enables free access to information about patents and trademarks.

One of the more controversial search services Google hosts is Google Books. The company began scanning books and uploading limited previews, and full books where allowed, into its new book search engine. The Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, filed a class action suit in a New York City federal court against Google in 2005 over this new service. Google replied that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books.[131] Google eventually reached a revised settlement in 2009 to limit its scans to books from the U.S., the UK, Australia and Canada.[132] Furthermore, the Paris Civil Court ruled against Google in late 2009, asking it to remove the works of La Martinière (Éditions du Seuil) from its database.[133] In competition with Amazon.com, Google plans to sell digital versions of new books.[134] On July 21, 2010, in response to newcomer Bing, Google updated its image search to display a streaming sequence of thumbnails that enlarge when pointed at. Though web searches still appear in a batch per page format, on July 23, 2010, dictionary definitions for certain English words began appearing above the linked results for web searches.[135] Google's algorithm was changed in March 2011, giving more weight to high- quality content[136] possibly by the use of n-grams to remove spun content.[137]

Productivity tools

In addition to its standard web search services, Google has released over the years a number of online productivity tools. Gmail, a free webmail service provided by Google, was launched as an invitation-only beta program on April 1, 2004,[138] and became available to the general public on February 7, 2007.[139] The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009,[140] at which time it had 146 million users monthly.[141] The service would be the first online email service with one gigabyte of storage, and the first to keep emails from the same conversation together in one thread, similar to an Internet forum.[138] The service currently offers over 7600 MB of free storage with additional storage ranging from 20 GB to 16 TB available for US$0.25 per 1 GB per year.[142] Furthermore, software developers know Gmail for its pioneering use of AJAX, a programming technique that allows web pages to be interactive without refreshing the browser.[143] One criticism of Gmail has been the potential for data disclosure, a risk associated with many online web applications. Steve Ballmer (Microsoft's CEO),[144] Liz Figueroa,[145] Mark Rasch,[146] and the editors of Google Watch[147] believe the processing of email message content goes beyond proper use, but 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.[148]

Google Docs, another part of Google's productivity suite, allows users to create, edit, and collaborate on documents in an online environment, not dissimilar to Microsoft Word. The service was originally called Writely, but was obtained by Google on March 9, 2006, where it was released as an invitation-only preview.[149] On June 6 after the acquisition, Google created an experimental spreadsheet editing program,[150] which would be combined with Google Docs on October 10.[151] A program to edit presentations would complete the set on September 17, 2007,[152] before all three services were taken out of beta along with Gmail, Google Calendar and all products from the Google Apps Suite on July 7, 2009.[140]

Enterprise products

Google's search appliance at the 2008 RSA Conference

Google entered the enterprise market in February 2002 with the launch of its Google Search Appliance, targeted toward providing search technology for larger organizations.[23] Google launched the Mini three years later, which was targeted at smaller organizations. Late in 2006, Google began to sell Custom Search Business Edition, providing customers with an advertising- free window into Google.com's index. The service was renamed Google Site Search in 2008.[153]

Another one of Google's enterprise products is Google Apps Premier Edition. The service, and its accompanying Google Apps Education Edition and Standard Edition, allow companies, schools, and other organizations to bring Google's online applications, such as Gmail and Google Documents, into its own domain. The Premier Edition specifically includes extras over the Standard Edition such as more disk space, API access, and premium support, and it costs $50 per user per year. A large implementation of Google Apps with 38,000 users is at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. In the same year Google Apps was launched, Google acquired Postini[154] and proceeded to integrate the company's security technologies into Google Apps[155] under the name Google Postini Services.[156]

Other products

Galaxy Nexus, the latest "Google phone"

Google Translate is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate between 35 different languages. Browser extensions allow for easy access to Google Translate from the browser. The software uses corpus linguistics techniques, where the program "learns" from professionally translated documents, specifically UN and European Parliament proceedings.[157] Furthermore, a "suggest a better translation" feature accompanies the translated text, allowing users to indicate where the current translation is incorrect or otherwise inferior to another translation.

Google launched its Google News service in 2002. The site proclaimed that the company had created a "highly unusual" site that "offers a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without human intervention. Google employs no editors, managing editors, or executive editors."[158] The site hosted less licensed news content than Yahoo! News, and instead presented topically selected links to news and opinion pieces along with reproductions of their headlines, story leads, and photographs.[159] The photographs are typically reduced to thumbnail size and placed next to headlines from other news sources on the same topic in order to minimize copyright infringement claims. Nevertheless, Agence France Presse sued Google for copyright infringement in federal court in the District of Columbia, a case which Google settled for an undisclosed amount in a pact that included a license of the full text of AFP articles for use on Google News.[160]

In 2006, Google made a bid to offer free wireless broadband access throughout the city of San Francisco along with Internet service provider EarthLink. Large telecommunications companies such as Comcast and Verizon opposed such efforts, claiming it was "unfair competition" and that cities would be violating their commitments to offer local monopolies to these companies. In his testimony before Congress on network neutrality in 2006, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf blamed such tactics on the fact that nearly half of all consumers lack meaningful choice in broadband providers.[161] Google currently offers free wi-fi access in its hometown of Mountain View, California.[162]

One year later, reports surfaced that Google was planning the release of its own mobile phone, possibly a competitor to Apple's iPhone.[163][164][165] The project, called Android, turned out not to be a phone but an operating system for mobile devices, which Google acquired and then released as an open source project under the Apache 2.0 license.[166] Google provides a software development kit for developers so applications can be created to be run on Android-based phones. In September 2008, T-Mobile released the G1, the first Android-based phone.[167] More than a year later on January 5, 2010, Google released an Android phone under its own company name called the Nexus One.[168]

Other projects Google has worked on include a new collaborative communication service, a web browser, and even a mobile operating system. The first of these was first announced on May 27, 2009. Google Wave was described as a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. The service is Google's "email redesigned", with realtime editing, the ability to embed audio, video, and other media, and extensions that further enhance the communication experience. Google Wave was previously in a developer's preview, where interested users had to be invited to test the service, but was released to the general public on May 19, 2010, at Google's I/O keynote. On September 1, 2008, Google pre-announced the upcoming availability of Google Chrome, an open source web browser,[169] which was then released on September 2, 2008. The next year, on July 7, 2009, Google announced Google Chrome OS, an open source Linux-based operating system that includes only a web browser and is designed to log users into their Google account.[170][171]

In 2011, Google announced that it will unveil Google Wallet, a mobile application for wireless payments.[172]

In late June 2011, Google soft-launched a social networking service called Google+.[173] On July 14, 2011, Google announced that Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after it was launched in this "limited" trial phase.[174] After four weeks in operation, it had reached 25 million users.[175] Corporate affairs and culture

Then-CEO, now Chairman of Google Eric Schmidt with Sergey Brin and Larry Page (left to right) in 2008.

New employees are called "Nooglers," and are given a propeller beanie cap to wear on their first Friday.[176]

Google is known for having an informal corporate culture. On Fortune magazine's list of best companies to work for, Google ranked first in 2007, 2008 and 2012[177][178][179] and fourth in 2009 and 2010.[180][181] Google was also nominated in 2010 to be the world’s most attractive employer to graduating students in the Universum Communications talent attraction index.[182] Google's corporate philosophy embodies such casual principles as "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."[183]

Employees

Google's stock performance following its initial public offering has enabled many early employees to be competitively compensated.[184] After the company's IPO, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt requested that their base salary be cut to $1. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because their main compensation continues to come from owning stock in Google. Before 2004, Schmidt was making $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each earned a salary of $150,000.[185]

In 2007 and through early 2008, several top executives left Google. In October 2007, former chief financial officer of YouTube Gideon Yu joined Facebook[186] along with Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer.[187] In March 2008, Sheryl Sandberg, then vice-president of global online sales and operations, began her position as chief operating officer of Facebook[188] while Ash ElDifrawi, formerly head of brand advertising, left to become chief marketing officer of Netshops, an online retail company that was renamed Hayneedle in 2009.[189] On April 4, 2011 Larry Page became CEO and Eric Schmidt became Executive Chairman of Google.[190]

As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy often called Innovation Time Off, where Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors.[191] In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, showed that half of all new product launches at the time had originated from the Innovation Time Off.[192]

In March 2011, consulting firm Universum released data that Google ranks the first on list of ideal employers by nearly 25 percent chosen from more than 10,000 young professionals asked.[193] Fortune magazine ranked Google as number one on its 100 Best Companies To Work For list for 2012.[194]