Difference between revisions of "Google"

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*[[Stop Online Piracy Act]]
 
*[[Stop Online Piracy Act]]
 
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*[[Google Street View]]
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*[[Google Books]]
  
 
==References==
 
==References==

Revision as of 04:20, 19 December 2011

Google is a worldwide search, advertising, and service-based corporation. Google has distinguished itself from other companies by adopting the catch-all mantra "don't be evil", and by avoiding the "corporate" feel that tech start-ups tend to fall into after experiencing massive growth.

Google Logo

Mantra

"Don't be evil." [1]


History

Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The two Standford graduates founded the company on September 4th, 1998 in Menlo park[2], California and have since moved their headquarters to 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View, California in 2004[3].

Their intention was to create a product to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful[4]". Since then the company has rapidly expanded and produced a suite of products far beyond the traditional search engine. The company now acquires companies on a regular basis and has entered into many different markets[5]. It leads the production of the Android operating system, the Chrome browser, Google+, among many others.

Google began as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Standford University where both were pursuing their PhDs in Human Computer Interaction. Google quickly became a project worth pursuing and the two decided to to run it full time[6].

After some Initial Financing, Google's initial public offering occurred on August 19, 2004 for $85 at 18,605,052 shares[2]. With a starting market cap of $23 billion, the world started to realize that Google had some real potential. Today the company has 31,353 employees and total assets of $57.851 billion as of 2010.

Acquisitions

Since 2001, Google has acquired companies like Keyhole, Inc (later renamed to Google Earth), Youtube, DoubleClick, and GrandCentral. It has also formed partnerships with companies like NASA Ames Research Center, Sun Microsystems, AOL of Time Warner, Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson.

Data Centers

As of 2011, Google owns and operates six data centers in the United States, another in Finland, and another in Belgium. Additionally, Google plans on building another three data centers in Asia in the next two years.

Advertising

Advertising is the number one revenue source for Google, from which it derives 99% of its total revenue. Google helped engineer a brand new type of competitive advertising that ensures the highest bidder pays only 1 cent above the second place bidder. Additionally, it helped popularize the Pay Per Click (ppm) model now used by virtual every type of online advertiser.

Adwords

Adwords is the Google campaign that allows advertisers to rent out space and pay on a cost per click (CPC) basis. Before Adwords came along, sites were allowed to choose their own "keywords" - the words used by Google to determine the appropriate search results. But Larry Page, in developing his famous "Page Rank", decided that advertisers should have to do less work and developed an algorithm that mitigated users gaming the system.

Working at the Googleplex

Employment at Google is considered to be one of the most enjoyable jobs available. It has won numerous awards for its unique work environment and continuous to be a vibrant and exciting environment to work in. The work environment has exercise balls, bicycles, workout rooms, video games, table tennis, billiards, and even massage dollars.

Google Products

Web

  • Google Chrome: Google Chrome is Google's web browser. It has built in malware and phishing protection, and autoupdates to ensure the latest security fixes.[7] It also has Google search embedded in the navigation bar, making searching fast and easy.
  • Web Search: Google is the most-used search engine in the entire web.[8] Google created its PageRank algorithm, named after Google founder Larry Page, to rank pages that show up in Google's results. Its main function is to search for text, which appears in webpages and allows it to be easily found by the searcher. There are a whole variety of other applications for search, though, including Google's Image Search.

Mobile

  • Android: Android is Google's mobile platform.

Media

  • Google Books
  • Google Music
  • Images
  • News
  • Picasa
  • Picnik
  • Videos
  • YouTube

Geo

Home & Office

  • Calendar
  • Docs
  • Gmail
  • Google Health
  • Google Wallet
  • Sites
  • Talk
  • Translate
  • Voice

Social

Innovation

  • Fusion Tables
  • Code

Search engine

Google controls 65.5% of the search engine market. Google Watch has accused Google of creating algorithms that favor well established sites over newer sites [9]. By using Google's product, their search engine, billions of users are providing Google with data about their personal preferences. Google claims this data is used to more accurately cater ads to its users. Google has many privacy features that allow user to search/use their products anonymously, such as Google's anonymous browsing page known as "Incognito". [10]

Ethical Implications

As previously mentioned, there has been concern over the algorithms Google uses that favor certain sites over others. If one company were to pay Google, should their site or product show up sooner than another companies product? Essentially it depends on whether you think it would be fair and/or advantageous for Google to participate in these business practices. Those who oppose this idea may see Google as a place to reference information and not a place where certain information is more commonly presented to you because of economic or political reasons.

In addition there are increasing concerns over the data collection that Google has been accused of. If users search for a particular pair of jeans, sports team, or any other item should there search be logged and noted? Of course anonymity online is a growing and prevalent concern in today's online world, but the collection of a user's search information could easily lead to a detailed picture of their personal preferences, likes, dislikes, etc. As a result targeted advertisements might begin appearing. The wide range of effects data mining can have while using Google's search engine is far reaching. Because Google is viewed as a service and is certainly not something online user's are forced to use, it is mostly to the user's discretion whether or not to use Google. Despite this individuals who are unaware of some of the actions (or lack of action) that Google is accused of engaging in, might be not agree with the data mining that is rumored to be occurring.

Copyright

Google has also been accused numerous times of breaching copyright law (see Google Books)

Google in China

Initial Censorship of Search Results

In 2006, Google made the decision to censor search results for the Chinese version of their search service, located at Google China. Multiple groups spoke out about the company's decision. Julian Pain, internet spokesman for campaign group Reporters Without Borders, described the decision as a "real shame." Google refuted the negative response by stating that they felt that they could make a more positive contribution in China by maintaining operations. They also stated that it fit better with their company mission to provide some information to Chinese citizens with some results instead of none.[11]

Cyberattack and Removal of Censorship

Google was a target of a cyberattack on January 12, 2010. The company reported that it was one of multiple targets, across multiple industries (technology, media, biology, and more) and that the attack had originated in China. Human rights activists interested in the well-being of those in China seemed to be some of the primary targets, according to Google. These attacks resulted in theft of intellectual property.[12] Shortly after this event, Google threatened to leave China if the cyberattacks and intrusions did not stop.[13]

In March of 2010, Google announced that they were going to redirect all Google.cn traffic to Google.hk, the domain for Google in Hong Kong. Doing so essentially removed all censorship that Chinese users were affected by prior to this change.[14] This seems to have been in response to continued cyberattacks after Google's warning.

Ethical implications

“This has become a war of ideas between the American company moralizing about Internet censorship and the Chinese government having its own views on the matter.”

-Emily Parker[13]

The Chinese government has the ability to decide what its citizens can and cannot have access to. Similarly, Google has the ability to decide what content it wants to provide to its users. This is a case where these two groups disagreed based upon bureaucratic reasons or moral reasons, respectively. Some may argue that Google is "in the right" in this situation because some of the things that the Chinese government wants blocked relate to previous actions that it has taken, which may be interpreted negatively. An example is The Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. By prohibiting this information to be accessed by its citizens, China is inhibiting Information Transparency, which is a pro-ethical action or condition. Google, after putting business growth ahead of ethics in 2006, made the decision to support more information transparency in China, but only after they personally felt the affects of harmful Chinese cyberattacks.

Nymwars

Main article: Nymwars

There has been a lot of controversy due to Google's policy of requiring real names in Google+.

See Also

References

  1. ↑ http://www.telecomcircle.com/2010/08/google-dont-be-evil/
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/history.html#1998
  3. ↑ http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/history.html#2004
  4. ↑ http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/
  5. ↑ http://www.scores.org/graphics/google/
  6. ↑ http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/history.html#1995-1997
  7. ↑ https://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/more/index.html
  8. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search
  9. ↑ Farhad Manjoo (August 30, 2002). "Conspiracy Researcher Says Google's No Good". AlterNet. Retrieved December 16, 2011
  10. ↑ Google on Wikipedia
  11. ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4645596.stm
  12. ↑ http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/google-china-attacks/
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.html
  14. ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8581393.stm

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