Google is an American technology company that focuses on search engine technology and cloud computing. It is the world's most popular search engine that processes over 3 billion searches a day. Because it handles over 90% of all search queries worldwide, it has a search engine market share of over 90%. Google started to be developed in 1996 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page who were two PhD students at Stanford University to find files on the internet. Google is headquartered in Mountain View, California.
Google Search
Google Search is the search engine provided by Google, accessible at google.com. It is the most visited website in the world and the order of the search results returned by Google is based on a ranking algorithm called PageRank. In addition, Google Search provides a lot of different options for customised searches (e.g. using symbols to include, exclude, specify or require certain words) and it offers specialised interactive experiences, including flight status and package tracking, weather forecasts, currency, unit and time conversions, word definitions, etc.
Google Search works by indexing information from webpages. For websites that are currently down or unavailable, Google provides links to cached versions of the site, which allows users to see what the page looked like the last time Google crawled it. In addition, Google indexes a range of file types, including PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, certain Flash multimedia content, and plain text files. Users can also activate "SafeSearch", a filtering technology designed to prevent sexually explicit content from appearing in the search results.
Products and Services
Google products and services include:
Android - The most widely used operating system for smartphones.
Blogger - A blogging platform that allows users to write blogs with time-stamped entries.
Chromebook - A laptop that uses the Chrome OS.
Chrome OS - An operating system developed by Google for laptops and other portable devices.
Gmail - Free online email service provided by Google.
Google Ad Manager - A service that allows publishers to manage their ad inventory.
Google Ads - Originally known as Google AdWords, Google Ads is an online advertising platform that allows advertisers to bid to display short ads.
Google AdSense - A service provided by Google that provides website owners with a way of making money from their website by publishing ads from Google Ads.
Google Alerts - Allows users to create alert messages sent to an email address as something happens of web searches, news searches, etc.
Google Analytics - A free web analytics service provided by Google used to track and display website traffic along with other data, such as bounce rate, referral URL, average time on page, and demographic data in a report.
Google App Engine - Allows users to create scalable web services using Google's resources.
Google Assistant - A virtual assistant developed by Google that uses artificial intelligence to respond to voice commands.
Google Blog - A blog maintained by Google that gives information about the company.
Google Books - A service operated by Google providing hundreds of thousands of free and paid ebooks and magazines.
Google Calendar - A service provided by Google that allows users to organise their schedule, synchronise it across other devices, and share it with other users.
Google Chrome - The most popular web browser provided by Google.
Google Classroom - A service that allows students and teachers to participate in an online class (VLE).
Google Cloud - A service for businesses to store data and run applications in the cloud.
Google CSE (Custom Search Engine) - A service that allows users to create a custom search engine.
Google Developer - A place to find all Google developer documentation.
Google Docs - A free service provided by Google that allows users to create and edit documents, upload Microsoft Word documents, and share documents with other users.
Google Domains - A domain registration service operated by Google.
Google Drive - A cloud storage service operated by Google that allows users to upload, view, and share their files in the cloud.
Google Earth - A computer program that displays a 3D representation of Earth based mostly on satellite images.
Google Fiber - A service available in some places that offers a fibre connection to the internet.
Google Fonts - A collection of thousands of fonts that anyone can use on a webpage.
Google Forms - A service that allows users to create, edit, and share forms with other people that collect data for personal or business use.
Google Groups - Google's bulletin board with millions of users and posts.
Google Images - A search that allows users to search for images instead of text.
Google Keep - A service that allows users to store notes and tasks.
Google Lens - A service with an image recognition technology that identifies objects and displays information about them using Google Search.
Google Maps - Provides information about geographical regions and places worldwide and offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, realtime traffic conditions, and route planning for travelling.
Google Meet - A video communication service developed by Google. It replaced Google Hangouts and Google Chat.
Google News - A news service that organises what is happening in the world.
Google Patents - A search engine operated by Google that indexes patents and patent applications.
Google Pay - A mobile payment service developed by Google to power in-app, online, and contactless purchases on mobile devices.
Google Search Console - A free web service provided by Google that allows website owners to monitor the presence of their website in the Google search results.
Google Sheets - A service that allows users to create and edit spreadsheets, upload Microsoft Excel documents, and share spreadsheets with other users.
Google Sites - A service that allows users to create, edit, and publish websites.
Google Slides - A service that allows users to create and edit slides, upload Microsoft PowerPoint documents, and share presentations with other users.
Google Tag Manager - A tag management system that allows users to add and remove tags using a web-based interface.
Google Takeout - A service that allows users to download their Google data from apps, programs, and services.
Google Translate - A service that allows users to translate text from one language into another.
Google Trends - Lists the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across multiple regions and languages and uses graphs to compare the search volume of different queries over time.
Google Wallet - A payment service that allows people to send and receive money from other people.
Google Workspace - A collection of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google.
YouTube - A free service owned by Google that allows users to view other user's videos and upload videos of their own.
Name
In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin called their search engine "BackRub". This was because of the analysis of the backlinks of the web. Later, Larey and Sergey decided to change the name of their search engine and chose "Google", which comes from the word "googol". They named it Google because the word Googol means the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, indicating that the search engine was designed to provide large amounts of information.
History
Google was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to market Google Search, which has become the most widely used search engine. They then developed a search engine algorithm that ranked webpages based on how many other webpages that linked to each page. Later, the Google ranking algorithm was called PageRank and was patented in September 2001.
The domain name "google.com" was registered on 15th September 1997. They officially incorporated their company on 4th September 1998. The company launched Google News in 2002, Gmail in 2004, Google Maps in 2005, Google Chrome in 2008, and Google+ in 2011 (discontinued in April 2019).
Google has become so popular that there is even a verb "Google", which means to look something up using the search engine Google. For example, to look up a recipe, someone might Google that recipe using Google's search engine.
