Google

History

Launching of the search engine: Google was born

In 1996, Google, then baptized BackRub , are the name of a research project on which work two students of the Université Stanford: Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Their project relates to the Search engines. They imagine that an search engine which would analyze the relations between the Web sites could give better results that those given by the search engines of the time, AltaVista in particular.

The Domain name google.com is recorded the September 15th 1997.

The two students seek funds to create their company. Google, this name was proposed as a joke about the quantity of information that Google can propose. This name comes from the word Gogol which is in fact a number being written with 1 and 100 zeros behind. Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, offers 100.000 dollars to them, after having seen that of which their search engine was able. Grace in particular to their families and friends, they will manage to join together a million dollars and will be able to launch the company Google Inc. the September 7th 1998. Their first office will be a garage with Menlo Park, as it is often the tradition in the Silicon Valley. In the middle of the year 2001, Google resembles that.

In February 1999, they is 500.000 requests per day which Google must manage, then in August 3 million. In March, the company moves with Palo Alto. The search engine which was up to that point in beta release, completes its phase of test on September 10th.

The engine assoit its fame

In June 2000, Google is the first Search engine to have referred one half-milliard of Web pages. Google signs this year a partnership with Yahoo!, starts to propose the publicity targeted according to the key words. With the end of the year, the Google Toolbar is proposed in remote loading.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin appeal in March 2001, with Eric Schmidt, the president of Novell, to take the management of the firm. The September 4th 2001, Google obtains the validation of its patent relating to PageRank.

Repurchase and creation of new services

The company specializes in the detection of small firms considered to be promising and likely to be developed by a synergy with its activities.

In 2001, Google launches the service Google Catalogs.

Already News : USENET files created in 1995. Bought in February 2001 and renamed Google Groups.
Outride : spin-off of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) . Purchase of industrial property in September 2001 and incorporation in the Google search engine.

In May 2002: Google launches Google Labs, the laboratory of the services and applications of the company. June 12th, 2002, Sergey Brin officially announces with Paris the opening of the French subsidiary company. In December, launching of Froogle, a service of online shopping.

In February 2003 Google repurchases Pyra Labs, the owner of Blogger, a service of creation of blogs. Google manages with the daily newspaper 200 million requests per day is 56% of the world requests. In May, Google News is declined in French-speaking version.

Applied Semantics : Purchase of this company of contextual publicity in April 2003 and use in the service Adwords .
Kaltix (3 employees): company of acquired research in September 2003.

The year 2004 mark for Google the apogee of its domination as regards research: 84,9% of the requests on the Web are made at Google. One can explain that grace in particular to his partnerships with Yahoo, AOL and CNN. Indeed, these companies signed agreements so that Google is the search engine of their sites. It is precisely in February 2004 that Yahoo separates from Google to develop its own search engine. This Google year launches Gmail and Google Desktop Search.

Blogger (Pyra Labs): Purchase in May 2004, reconception supplements by the specialists in Google, become today (2005) one of the principal shelterers of Blog S.
Picasa : Creators of a control program of photographs with 30$ launched in October 2001. Integrated into Blogger in July 2004. Picasa became a free product then incorporating the famous button Google " I have chance! ". This software remains regularly preceded by various magazines of microprocessing in the USA.
Keyhole : Company of cartography founded in 2001. Bought in October 2004 within the framework of the project Google Maps . Immediate reduction of its price of 69,95 $ to 29,95 $, and integration of its photographs satellite in Google Maps.
Zipdash : Company of management of traffic acquired in 2004 and incorporated discreetly in Google Maps. The name of Zipdash appeared only in annual report 2004 of Google.
Where2 : Company of Australian cartography also mentioned in the report/ratio 2004, but without precise details. Probably related to the development of Google Maps.

In August 2005, Google repurchases Android, a start-up specialized in the development of applications of Mobile telephony.

Urchin : Company of statistical analysis of the Web, acquired in March 2005.
Dodgeball (2 employees): Company of analysis of click (see Graph theory) as regards mobile telephony. The company spontaneously came to seek Google to support its financial development. Bound today to the project Google Mobile.

In 2006, Google, just like the others Search engines, agrees to attach its Search engine in order to be better established in China. Thus from on January 28th 2006, a research images on “Tiananmen” posts in Google.fr the famous photograph of a student barring the road of the tanks, symbol of the Manifestations of the place Tian' anmen, while on Google.cn the results post portraits of merry families or photographs of monuments. It should however be noted that such a censure also applies to racist, islamist sites or revisionists in the versions Frenchwoman and allemande of Google.

In May 2006 Google launches GWT (Google Web Toolkit) a tool which makes it possible to develop applications in Ajax. This tool passed in open source in December 2006. It is in the middle of the strategy Web of Google.

October 9th 2006, Google repurchases YouTube for an amount of 1,65 billion dollar in actions, which hitherto constitutes the largest operation of acquisition of Google.

At the end of November 2006, Google closes Google Answers.

dMarc Broadcasting : Specialist company in the diffusion of advertisements to the radio. Bought in January 2006.
Writely : editor of word processing, in line, asset in March 2006.
@Last Software : security company of the software SketchUp acquired in March 2006.
Neven Vision : Specialist company in the development of software of acquired photographic recognition in August 2006.
YouTube : Web site of acquired video diffusion in October 2006 for 1,65 billion dollar.
JotSpot : Site shelterer of Wiki S intelligent (comprising pages of spreadsheves and diaries collaboratifs, etc) for the private individuals and the companies, asset at the end of October 2006 for an amount not yet revealed on this date.
IRows Spreadsheet on line of the type Google Spreadsheets.
Endoxon Company of cartography Internet and services Swiss mobile. Bought in December 2006.
Adscape Media : Canadian company specialized in the insertion of publicities in the video games. Bought in March 2007 for 23 million dollars.
Trendalyzer : software of visualization of data developed by the GapMinder foundation. Repurchased in March 2007 for an amount not communicated.
DoubleClick : advertizing agency Internet. Repurchased in April 2007 for 3,1 billion dollars in cash.
FeedBurner : platform of management of RSS/Atom flows. Bought in May 2007 for 100 million dollars.
Panoramio : Spanish company proposing of the million photographs related to geographical sites. The service corresponding comes to supplement Google Earth. Bought in May 2007.
GrandCentral : start-up specialized in telephony. Repurchased in July 2007.
Zingku : in September 2007, Platform of mobile services.
Jaiku : in October 2007, Service of sending and reception of short messages via the Web, the Instant messaging of AOL and Yahoo and the mobile phones.

Origin of the name

One day of 1938, the American mathematician Edward Kasner wondered which name to give to the number formed of figure 1 follow-up of 100 zeros. Edward turned then to its nephew (9 years) visits some at the house and the question posed to him. This one answered a childish word: “a gogol”, whose orthography became googol .

It is this word which Kasner accurately deferred in its treaty Mathematics and the imagination , which took as a starting point in 1998 Larry Page and Sergey Brin, when they created Google. By this spelling error, Google in the place of googol , simple and easy to retain will become famous in the whole world.

One can also note the similarity with the English word " " meaning " lunettes" , both O of the mark point out the form.

Currency

The currency of the company is Don' T Be evil (“would not be the evil/would not be bad”).

Financial sources

The AdWords

Google sells key words with the biddings. If a person makes a research with this word, the bonds of the sites of those which took part in the biddings register in the part of the commercial links. Each time a person selects one of these bonds, the company concerned must pay a certain sum at Google.

99% of the incomes of Google come from Adwords . Paradoxically, more the editors of sites estimate that they are badly classified, more they buy presence via the system of Adwords. The question of the relevance of the results of Google and the real motivation arises then to provide relevant bonds.

The system AdSense

A Web site can accommodate AdWords on its pages thanks to the system AdSense, Google transfers part of its profits to this site.

Online services

See also: List of the online services of Google

Financial data

Google is one of the Start-up S which crossed without encumbers the Krach NASDAQ in 2001, in particular owing to the fact that it was not with dimensions. The company was introduced in purse by a not very used system of bidding in May 2004 which compressed from 5,5 to 1,5% the commissions perceived by the investment banks; introduced to 80 $, the action dimensioned 250 $ later one year, which developed the company with nearly 74 billion dollars. Beginning 2006, the action dimensions 460 approximately $, it reaches the bar of the 600 $ (609,62 $) on October 8th 2007 and crosses the bar of the 700 $ on October 31st 2007 what places it at the 4th rank in term of capitalization at New York Stock Exchange. The code of the action with the NASDAQ is GOOG.

December 20th, 2005, Time Warner announced that Google was going to take 5% of participation in the capital of its subsidiary company AOL.

Controversies

For a more complete list of the controversies around Google , cf the English page, ''' Criticism off Google '''.

Respect of the private life and personal informations

The multiplication of the proposed services by Google garners an increased request for information on the users: follow-up of the navigation and storage of the key words, scan of the emails in Gmail, the information delivered in the forms, inter alia. That raises with each innovation the question of the respect of their private life, as notes it the philosopher and philologist Barbara Cassin in her work on Google. Google crosses these data to refine the profile of the users, and to improve the targeting of publicities on Internet.

Such a concentration of information on the individuals and their conservation worry the defense organizations of the private life on Internet, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the " Work group of the article 29" European commission, a new form of very sophisticated monitoring and a potential danger for the freedom of the people. Recently, Google was placed all in bottom of the classification worked out by the ONG Privacy International, which says of Google that it is " enemy of the respect of the confidentiality because of the total monitoring of the users ".

In 2004, Google, associated with AOL, Amazon.com, Hundred, EBay, Microsoft and Yahoo!, practiced with the the United States lobbying against the Spyware Control Act in Utah obliging to require the explicit agreement of the user to activate options of tracing of its choices or before the installation of a software spy. The reasons of their opposition, according to them, were of technical order and nonethical: in the letter sent to the senator Valentine and to the Urquhart representative, they recognize the " very good intentions " law.

About the possible techniques of tracing employed by Google, '' Google Watch '', site of the American activist Daniel Brandt, tries to show the faults and the lack of neutrality of Google and proposes a proxy, Scroogle, making it possible to subject a Google research without being épié of any way. He denounces inter alia his directed censure, in other countries like the China, or the the United States, concerning the invasion of the Iraq and the Prison of Abu Ghraib.

On this subject, Google initially refused to yield with the injunctions of the US government at the end of 2006 by not giving him access to the lists of research and URL which were required of him to contribute to a law on the repression of the pedophilia. Nevertheless, they then gave 50.000 URL to the government, but the judge in charge of of the business decided that Google did not have to give the lists of key words requested by the government.

In France, the guarantees of respect of the private life brought by CNIL are not applicable to services whose waiters are located out of the national territory. The refusal of Google to subject itself to the local laws thus creates an extension in fact of the American jurisdiction.

Business Google Books

Google Books (in French Google Books ), in the past Google Print, is often perceived, in Europe, like a monopolization and a privatization of the knowledge. Indeed, by accumulating the majority of the books world in the same point, the users could not have not an other choice to only pass by Google, which would control the literature thus. If the system had suddenly spread, the censure of such or such book could be defined only by only one company: Google. It is above all at some book publishers that the project raises the most disputes, for reasons touching with their rights. French and Belgian editors criticize thus the idea of the opt-out advanced by Google, according to which would be to the editors to ask for the withdrawal of such work of Google Books, rather than with the company of digitalization to ask the prior agreement of the editors.

Another criticism, partly contradictory with the preceding one, worries about the cultural Biais which the company would constitute, because of its limitation in the United States. In April 2005, Jean-Christmas Jeanneney, president of the National library of France, in its book When Google defies Europe tackles this project of digitalization and request the mobilization of Europeans on this subject. This call is heard by the France and the Europe which decide to counteract with the project of European Numeric library like with, in another field, the search engine Quaero. Nevertheless, some (small) editors are shown more favorable to the project Google Livres - without to be made illusion on its objectives - and reproach Jean-Christmas Jeanneney:

to hold up the spectrum of a “Americanization” and a “confusion” of the knowledge, whereas Google at all did not restrict its project of digitalization to the libraries of the anglophone world and that the associated libraries define themselves the books of their funds which they wish to digitize (and that it is paradoxical to reproach a library for proposing with the consultation a maximum of documents, more especially as the Google project at all does not prohibit the installation of tools of discrimination between various sources or classification of the results according to other criteria but the number of quotations whose book is the object);

to suggest that the texts which do not raise of the public domain will be completely and free available, whereas the quantity of text accessible to the Net surfer for a given book is limited (according to Google, in accordance with the right of quotation) and amounts making it possible to the Net surfers to divide into sheets a book as it would do it in bookstore;

to confuse the project of digitalization of the funds of the libraries (program " Bibliothèque"), whose good portion is difficult to reach and inalienable in the trade, and the possibility offered to the editors (program " Partenaire") to put on line their catalogs and their innovations according to methods defined by themselves;

to show Google to prepare the death of the small independent bookstore, whereas the editors have the leisure to propose bonds towards bookstores on line of their choice, in particular the platforms of independent editors, and that an search engine will make it possible soon to the visitors of Google Livres to find the coordinates of the bookstores closest to their place of residence;

to affirm that the project of numeric library of Google amounts for the traditional libraries yielding without counterpart their inheritance, whereas Google places at the disposal of the libraries the files of the digitized books;

to be unaware of all the advantages (in particular in terms of visibility) which offers Google Livres and projects equivalent to (small) the editors and the independent booksellers, at one time when the edition of philosophy, social sciences and history sees its increasingly weakened economy.

On the independent edition, the numerical book and Google, one will be able to read: of Jerome Vidal, To read and think together - On the future of the edition independent and publicity of the thought criticizes (Paris, Éditions Amsterdam, 2006, text published under license Creative Commons and from which the points quoted are extracted above); of Lucien Polastron, Great Digitalization: Is there a thought after paper? (Paris, Denoël, 2006); of Michel Valensi (editions of the Glare), " Does one need a large spoon to sign with Google? " ; of Alexandre Laumonier (Kargo editions), " The small editors vote Google" ('' Libération '' of June 6th, 2006) and " The not-business Google Livres" ; and of Joel Faucilhon (lekti-ecriture.com and Contre-feux), " When the European Numeric library thinks of the books without the libraires".

The emission of France-Culture " Grain with moudre" (December 28th, 2006) put in presence for a debate on the project Google Jean-Christmas Jeanneney, Michel Valensi, Jerome Vidal, Alban Cerisier. It is available here until July 1st, 2007.

See too

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