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Google is one of the biggest and most famous website for finding things (Search Engine) on the World Wide Web (WWW). They also do things apart from searching. Other search engines (for example, AOL) use its software and information (database) too. That makes it the most-used search engine on the web. Every day, 200 million people use it. That is 200 000 000 people. Google's main office ("Googleplex") is in Mountain View, California, USA.
With Google, people can also search for pictures, Usenet newsgroups, news, and things to buy online. By June 2004, Google indexed (or put in its database) 4.28 billion webpages, 880 million (880 000 000) pictures and 845 million (845 000 000) Usenet messages — six billion things.
"To google," as a doing word (verb) means "to search for something on Google"; because Google is so popular (maybe 80 percent of all web users use it) today it also means "to search the web". Google officials do not like this use of the company name, because really, "Google" is a trademark.
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[change] History
Google began as a project in early 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Leland Stanford University, USA. They made it into a company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. In February 1999, the company went to 165 University Ave., Palo Alto, California. Then, later that year, it went to another place, now called the "Googleplex".
In September 2001, Google's rating system ("PageRank", for saying which information is more helpful) got a U.S. Patent. The patent was to Leland Stanford University, with Lawrence Page as the inventor (the person who first had the idea).
Google makes a significant, though getting less (declining), percentage of it's money through its friends like America Online and InterActiveCorp. It has a special group known as the Partner Solutions Organization (PSO) which helps make contracts, help making accounts better, and give engineering help.
[change] The name "Google"
The name "Google" is a misspelling on the word googol. Milton Sirotta, nephew of U.S. mathematician Edward Kasner, made this word in 1938, for the number 1 and one hundred 0's. It is said that the word "googol" was chosen as a name for this number because it sounded like baby talk. Google uses this word because the company wants to make lots of stuff on the Web easy to find and use. Andy Bechtolsheim first thought of the name.( 1 googol= 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000)
The name for Google's main office, the "Googleplex," (Very big Number) is a play on a different, even bigger number, "googolplex", which is 1 with 1 googol of 0's.
[change] Other Google services
- Froogle (Now renamed as Google Product Search) allows the user to find out about products for sale on the Internet. Its name is a combination of "Google" and "frugal", which means smart with money.
- Google Calendar is an online calendar to organise upcoming events.
- Google Checkout is an online payment method, where users can send money using their credit cards or bank accounts to other users.
- Google Earth is the 3D version of Google Maps with a digital globe.
- Google Groups is a discussion portal where users discuss topics.
- Google Images is an image search utility.
- Google Local is a search engine to find local businesses and services.
- Google Language Tools is an online translation service, which can translate websites and text into other languages.
- Gmail is an e-mail service that Google started in 2004. It is called Google Mail in the United Kingdom and Germany. Users get 5.7 gigabytes of free space to store e-mails.
- Google Local and Google Maps is an online map program with satellite pictures and road maps.
- Google News is a facility which shows news stories from over 4,500 news sources.
- Google Talk is an instant messenger.
- Google Video is an online collection of videos which have been uploaded by users from around the world.
After Google bought YouTube, YouTube is now the only site which can host millions of videos each day.
