Google

Updated: 02/01/2021 by Computer Hope

Originally known as BackRub. Google is

a search engine that started development
in 1996 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page as a
research project at Stanford University to find
files on the Internet. Larry and Sergey later
decided the name of their search engine needed
to change and chose Google, which is inspired
from the term googol. The company is
headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Google beginnings
The domain google.com was registered on
September 15, 1997, and the company
incorporated on September 4, 1998. The
picture below is a capture of the site
from The Internet Archive of what Google
looked like in 1998.

What helps Google stand out from its

competition, helps it continue to grow, and
be the number one search engine is
its PageRank technique that sorts search
results. While being one of the best search
engines on the Internet, Google also
incorporates many of its other services, like
Google Maps and Google Local, to provide
more relevant search results.

What helps Google stand out from its

competition, helps it continue to grow, and
be the number one search engine is
its PageRank technique that sorts search
results. While being one of the best search
engines on the Internet, Google also
incorporates many of its other services, like
Google Maps and Google Local, to provide
more relevant search results.

How to open Google

To use Google search, open the
address google.com in your web browser. In
the search box, type a word or phrase, and
press Enter or click the Google
Search button.

Other Google products and services

 Android - The most widely used operating

system for smartphones.

 Blogger - View and create a personal blog.

 Chromebook - Laptop using the Google

Chrome OS.

 Chrome OS - Operating system developed by

Google for laptop and portable computers.

 G Suite - A suite of cloud software for

businesses.

 Gmail - Free online e-mail service with over 1

GB of storage and the best spam protection

available.

 Google Ads - Formerly known as Google

AdWords, Google Ads is a service that

enables users to pay to advertise on the

Google search engine and other websites

using Google AdSense.

 Google AdSense - A service that pays website

publishers or blog developers to show

advertisements on their site.

 Google AdWords - Service that enables users

to pay to advertise on the Google search

engine and other websites using Google

AdSense.

 Google Alerts - Create alert text messages

sent to an e-mail address each day or as it

happens of web searches, news searches, etc.

 Google Allo - A mobile instant messaging app

developed for Android and iOS to exchange

messages, images, files, and videos.

 Google Analytics - Google Analytics allows

users to monitor and create reports of visitors

to their website.

 Google App Engine - A service that provides

users the ability to create scalable web

services that use Google's resources.

 Google Assistant - Digital assistant service

by Google that uses artificial intelligence to

respond to voice requests.

 Google Blog - A blog maintained by Google

that helps give an insight into the company.

 Google Books - Another fantastic service from

Google containing hundreds of thousands of

books that can be searched.

 Google Calendar - A way to organize your

schedule, synchronize, and share events with

your friends.

 Google Chrome - The most popular desktop

Internet browser.

 Google Classroom - Google service that

allows students and teachers to participate in

a digital class.

 Google Cloud - Service for businesses to

store data and run applications in the cloud,

and backup and disaster recovery.

 Google CSE (Custom Search Engine) -

Service that allows you to create a custom

Google Search engine.

 Google Daydream View - VR headset.

 Google Developer - A place to find all Google

developer documentation, resources, events,

and products.

 Google Docs - A fantastic free solution from

Google that allows you to create documents,

open Microsoft Word documents, and share

your documents with other users that have

Internet access.
 Google Drive - A cloud storage service from

Google introduced on April 24, 2012, that

allows users to view, edit, and store their

documents and files in the Google cloud.

 Google Duo - A cross-platform video calling

application for Android smartphones, and

other Google and third-party operating

systems.

 Google Earth - A fantastic software program

that allows a person to view almost

everywhere on earth, get directions, find

close shops and places of interest, and much

more.

 Google Express - A delivery service available

in most states.

 Google Fiber - A limited service available in

some places in the United States that offers

a fiber connection to the Internet.

 Google Fonts - A collection of thousands of

fonts for use on your web page.

 Google Fuchsia - An open source operating

system.

 Google Glass - AR (augmented reality)

glasses.
 Google Groups - Google's bulletin board with

millions of users and postings.

 Google Hangouts - Communication platform

for messaging, SMS, video chat, and VoIP.

 Google Home - Voice activated virtual digital

assistant that assists users with questions.

 Google Homepage - Google's main page and

search engine.

 Google Images - Google search that allows

you to search for images instead of text.

 Google Keep - Fantastic service that allows

you to keep and store notes.

 Google Lens - An image recognition

technology that identifies objects and displays

information about them using Google Search.

 Google Mail - More well-known as Gmail, the

most popular e-mail host.

 Google Maps - A great feature that enables

users to search for directions from one

location to another, search for local

businesses, and more.

 Google Moon - In celebration of the first

Moon landing, Google created this page with

 a map of our Moon and each of the moon

landings.

 Google Nest - Google home automation and

security products, including the Nest

thermostat.

 Google News - Great news site automatically

generated using the results of news sites

queried by Google.

 Google Ngram Viewer - Great tool that

allows you to search many books and other

printed materials for the frequency of words

or phrases.

 Google Now - Service primarily used by

mobile users that gives the most relevant

information relating to you based of your

searching and driving habits.

 Google Photos - Online, cloud-based photo

storage system.

 Google Pixel - Google smartphone.

 Google Play - A service that allows users to

search and download apps, books, movies,

and music for Android devices.

 Google Play Music- A service that allows

users to stream, download, and upload music

 to a person library, and create and listen to

radio stations. It is usable across multiple

devices. Additionally, Google Play Music

unlimited song streaming for a monthly fee.

 Google Scholar - Allows users to search for

scholarly literature.

 Google Sheets - A fantastic free solution from

Google that allows you to create

spreadsheets, open Microsoft

Excel spreadsheets, and share your

spreadsheets with other users that have

Internet access.

 Google Shopping - Formerly known as

Froogle, Google Shopping is a search service

for finding products based on prices, location,

type, etc.

 Google Sites - A service that enables users to

create and share websites.

 Google Slides - A presentation program

similar to Microsoft PowerPoint.

 Google Street View - A great service that

allows anyone to drive down the streets

around the world.

 Google Patents - Allows users to search over

7 million patents.

 Google Photos - Online cloud storage for

photos and videos, allowing users to upload,

organize, and share with other users.

 Google SMS - Enables users to send text

messages over their mobile using SMS to get

quick answers, such as driving directions,

movie show times, local business listing, etc.

 Google Toolbar - For Microsoft Windows

Internet Explorer and Firefox users. Google

Toolbar add-on enables users using these

browsers to have access to Google search and

other Google features any time the browser is

open.

 Google Translate - Translate a foreign

language web page or text into your

language.

 Google Trends - List of the 100 most active

search queries and comparison of what

people are searching for on Google.

 Google URL Shortener - Service to shorten

long URLs.
  Google Video - Search for online videos

hosted by Google, and transcript text of

videos and TV shows.

 Google Voice - Use Google search over the

phone using your voice.

 Google Wallet - A payment service developed

by Google that allows people to send and

receive money from other people.

 Google WebMaster tools - Another great

service provided by Google that enables

webmasters to view, maintain, and control

how Google indexes their web page.

 Google.org - The philanthropic arm of Google.

 My Activity - Utility that tracks your history

when you use Google's services.

 Quick, Draw! - Drawing game to help test

artificial intelligence.

 Waze - A GPS navigation application for

mobile devices.

 Wing - A drone delivery service that delivers

light-weight items over short distances.

 YouTube - Video service that allows users to

freely upload videos and view others videos.

Tip
We also suggest you visit our Google tips page for additional tips on
using all Google services.

Google Easter eggs

Google also has several well-known
hidden Easter eggs throughout its services.
Below is a list of these hidden gems.

 Google H4x0r - Display Google's search page

and results in leet speak.

 Google Klingon - Display Google's search

page and results in Klingon.

 Google Pig Latin - Display Google's search

page and results in Pig Latin.

Discontinued Google services

Below is a listing of many discontinued
Google services that are no longer
supported, deprecated, merged into other
products, or sold off to other companies.

 Google+ - Google social networking site that

shut down, April 2, 2019.

 Google Answers - Discontinued in

December 2006. The site is still online, but

can only be read and not edited or have new

questions be asked.
 Google Base - A database service provided by

Google the service and API was deprecated

on December 17, 2010.

 Google Buzz - Discontinued on December

15, 2011, Google Buzz was a social

networking site replaced by Google+.

 Google Checkout - Service that provided

users and sellers with an easy and secure

method of paying each other. The service was

discontinued on November 20, 2013, and

replaced with Google Wallet.

 Google Code - Allowed users to view source

code on websites that was discontinued on

March 12, 2015. Thousands of the Google

open source products were moved to GitHub.

 Google Code Search - A search tool that

allowed developers to search for open source

code.

 Google Deskbar and Google Desktop -

Small software utility that adds a Google

search to the Microsoft

Windows Taskbar allowing users to search

without even opening a browser.

 Google Dictionary - An online dictionary

search service that was discontinued as it

became integrated into the Google search.

 Google Directory - Browse the open directory

of web pages modified to list the directory

listings by Google's PageRank technology.

 Google Fast Flip - An online news aggregator

from Google that was discontinued in

September 2011.

 Google Helpouts - Originally launched in

November 2013, Google Helpouts was a

service that allowed users to share their

knowledge and experience with other users

with live help and video. The service officially

closed on April 20, 2015.

 Google Labs - A section of Google that once

displayed upcoming features. This section

was later discontinued.

 Google Market - The original location to find

apps for Android. Google Market was

rebranded into Google Play in 2012.

 Google Moderator - A tool from Google that

allowed anyone to collect the best input from

 an audience of any size. The service was

discontinued on June 30, 2015.

 Google Reader - An RSS/Atom reader that

was discontinued on July 1, 2013.

 Google Sets - Type in a few keywords that

are similar to pull up a listing of more words

that relate to the words you typed.

 Google SketchUp - A tool for creating and

sharing 3-D models that is now owned by

Trimble on June 1, 2012.

 Google Talk - Instant Messenger program

that used XMPP. In May 2013, Google

announced plans to drop XMPP support for its

own proprietary standard used with Google

Hangouts.

 Google Tango - Augmented reality computing

platform that was discontinued on December

15, 2017.

 Google Web Accelerator -

For broadband users, Google Web Accelerator

was used to help speed up browsing.

 iGoogle - Personalized Google page that

allowed you to add links, RSS feeds, games,

and much more.

  Orkut - A social networking site that provided

a location to socialize with your friends and

family, and meet new acquaintances from all

around the world. Google stopped the Orkut

service on September 30, 2014.

 Picasa - Was a free Microsoft Windows

software program to view images, manage

images, and much more. The program was

retired and replaced with Google Photos on

March 15, 2016.

 YouTube Video Editor - Was a free feature of

YouTube that gave users the ability to edit

videos. As of September 20, 2017, Google

discontinued the service, but kept the ability

to allow users to add enhancements to their

videos.

Google
American company

Google, in full Google LLC formerly Google Inc. (1998–2017),

American search engine company, founded in 1998 by Sergey
Brin and Larry Page, that is a subsidiary of the holding
company Alphabet Inc. More than 70 percent of worldwide online
search requests are handled by Google, placing it at the heart of
most Internet users’ experience. Its headquarters are in Mountain
View, California.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Larry Page (left) and Sergey Brin.

© Google Inc. Used with permission

Google began as an online search firm, but it now offers more than 50
Internet services and products, from e-mail and online document
creation to software for mobile phones and tablet computers. In
addition, its 2012 acquisition of Motorola Mobility put it in the
position to sell hardware in the form of mobile phones. Google’s broad
product portfolio and size make it one of the top four influential
companies in the high-tech marketplace, along with Apple, IBM,
and Microsoft. Despite this myriad of products, its original search tool
remains the core of its success. In 2016 Alphabet earned nearly all of
its revenue from Google advertising based on users’ search requests.

Searching For Business

Brin and Page, who met as graduate students at Stanford University,

were intrigued with the idea of extracting meaning from the mass of
data accumulating on the Internet. They began working from Page’s
dormitory room at Stanford to devise a new type of search technology,
which they dubbed BackRub. The key was to leverage Web users’ own
ranking abilities by tracking each Web site’s “backing links”—that is,
the number of other pages linked to them. Most search engines simply
returned a list of Web sites ranked by how often a search phrase
appeared on them. Brin and Page incorporated into the search
function the number of links each Web site had; i.e., a Web site with
thousands of links would logically be more valuable than one with just
a few links, and the search engine thus would place the heavily linked
site higher on a list of possibilities. Further, a link from a heavily
linked Web site would be a more valuable “vote” than one from a more
obscure Web site.

In mid-1998 Brin and Page began receiving outside financing (one of

their first investors was Andy Bechtolsheim, a cofounder of Sun
Microsystems, Inc.). They ultimately raised about $1 million from
investors, family, and friends and set up shop in Menlo Park,
California, under the name Google, which was derived from a
misspelling of Page’s original planned name, googol (a mathematical
term for the number one followed by 100 zeroes). By mid-1999, when
Google received a $25 million round of venture capital funding, it was
processing 500,000 queries per day. Activity began to explode in
2000, when Google became the client search engine for one of the
Web’s most popular sites, Yahoo!. By 2004, when Yahoo! dispensed
with Google’s services, users were searching on Google 200 million
times a day. That growth only continued: by the end of 2011 Google
was handling some three billion searches per day. The company’s
name became so ubiquitous that it entered the lexicon as a verb: to
google became a common expression for searching the Internet.
To accommodate this unprecedented mass of data, Google built 11
data centres around the world, each of them containing several
hundred thousand servers (basically, multiprocessor personal
computers and hard drives mounted in specially constructed racks).
Google’s interlinked computers probably number several million. The
heart of Google’s operation, however, is built around
three proprietary pieces of computer code: Google File System
(GFS), Bigtable, and MapReduce. GFS handles the storage of data in
“chunks” across several machines; Bigtable is the company’s database
program; and MapReduce is used by Google to generate higher-level
data (e.g., putting together an index of Web pages that contain the
words “Chicago,” “theatre,” and “participatory”).

The extraordinary growth of Google led to internal management

problems. Almost from the beginning, investors felt that Brin and
Page needed an experienced manager at the helm, and in 2001 they
agreed to hire Eric Schmidt as chairman and chief executive officer
(CEO) of the company. Schmidt, who previously had held the same
positions at the software company Novell Inc., had a doctorate
in computer science and melded well with the technocratic impulses of
the founders. During Schmidt’s reign as CEO, Page served as president
of products, and Brin was president of technology. The trio ran the
company as a “triumvirate” until Page took on the CEO role in 2011,
Schmidt became executive chairman, and Brin adopted the title of
director of special projects.

The company’s initial public offering (IPO) in 2004 raised $1.66

billion for the company and made Brin and Page instant billionaires.
In fact, the IPO created 7 billionaires and 900 millionaires from the
early stockholders. The stock offering also made news because of the
unusual way it was handled. Shares were sold in a public auction
intended to put the average investor on an equal footing with financial
industry professionals. Google was added to Standard and Poor’s 500
(S&P 500) stock index in 2006. In 2012 Google’s market capitalization
made it one of the largest American companies not in the Dow Jones
Industrial Average.

Google reorganized itself in August 2015 to become a subsidiary of the

holding company Alphabet Inc. Internet search, advertising, apps, and
maps, as well as the mobile operating system Android and the video-
sharing site YouTube, remained under Google. Separate Google
ventures—such as longevity research company Calico, home-products
company Nest, and research lab Google X—became separate firms
under Alphabet. Page became CEO of Alphabet, Brin its president, and
Schmidt its executive chairman. Sundar Pichai, senior vice president
of products, became Google’s new CEO. Alphabet again reorganized in
2017 to create an intermediate holding company, XXVI Holdings, and
to convert Google into a limited liability company (LLC). In 2018
Schmidt stepped down as executive chairman. More changes followed
in 2019 as both Brin and Page left their posts as president and CEO,
respectively. However, they both remained on Alphabet’s board of
directors. Pichai became CEO of the holding company while retaining
that position at Google.

Sundar Pichai
Sundar Pichai, 2015.
© Enriquecalvoal/Dreamstime.com

Advertising Growth

Google’s strong financial results reflected the rapid growth of Internet

advertising in general and Google’s popularity in particular. Analysts
attributed part of that success to a shift in advertising spending toward
the Internet and away from traditional media, including newspapers,
magazines, and television. For example, American newspaper
advertising fell from a peak of $64 billion in 2000 to $20.7 billion in
2011, while global online advertising grew from approximately $6
billion in 2000 to more than $72 billion in 2011.

Since its founding, Google has spent large sums to secure what it has
calculated to be significant Internet marketing advantages. For
example, in 2003 Google spent $102 million to acquire Applied
Semantics, the makers of AdSense, a service that signed up owners of
Web sites to run various types of ads on their Web pages. In 2006
Google again paid $102 million for another Web advertisement
business, dMarc Broadcasting, and that same year it announced that it
would pay $900 million over three and a half years for the right to sell
ads on MySpace.com. In 2007 Google made its largest acquisition to
date, buying online advertising firm DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Two
years later the company responded to the explosive growth of the
mobile applications market with a $750 million deal to acquire the
mobile advertising network AdMob. All of these purchases were part
of Google’s effort to expand from its search engine business into
advertising by combining the various firms’ databases of information
in order to tailor ads to consumers’ individual preferences.

Google
QUICK FACTS

DATE

 1998 - present

HEADQUARTERS
 Mountain View

RELATED PEOPLE
 Sheryl Sandberg
 Eric Schmidt
 Susan Wojcicki
 Marissa Mayer
 Sergey Brin
 Sundar Pichai
 Larry Page

AREAS OF INVOLVEMENT
 BackRub
 Blog
  Search engine
 Browser
 E-mail

DID YOU KNOW?

 The name of Google is derived from the number googol, which is equal to the
number 1 followed by 100 zeros (1 x 10^100).

 Backrub was the original name for the search engine until Sergey Brin and Larry
Page rebranded the company as Google, Inc.

 Misspellings of Google's URL, such as www.gooogle.com, www.gogle.com, and

www.googlr.com, are all owned by Google, Inc.

 Google prohibits any part of any of their offices being more than 150 feet away
from food.

 According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, a majority of Internet users

(approximately 56%) have used Google to search for information about
themselves.

Other Services

Google Video and YouTube

Google’s expansion, fueled largely by keyword-based Web

advertising, provided it with a sound footing to compete for
dominance in new Web services. One of these was the delivery of
video content. In January 2005 Google launched Google Video,
which enabled individuals to search the close-captioned text from
television broadcasts. A few months later Google began accepting
user-submitted videos, with submitters setting the prices for others
to download and view the videos. In January 2006 Google Video
Store opened, featuring premium content from traditional media
companies such as CBS Corporation (television shows) and Sony
Corporation (movies). In June 2006 Google began offering
premium content for free but with ads.

For all of its marketing advantages, however, Google was unable to

overtake the upstart leader in online videos, YouTube. Following its
introduction in 2005, YouTube quickly became the favourite site for
users to upload small video files, some of which attracted millions
of viewers. Unable to generate anything close to the same number
of uploads and viewers, Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65
billion in stock. Rather than merge the Web sites, however, Google
continued YouTube’s operation as a separate entity. In 2012 Google
shut down Google Video and moved videos from there to YouTube.
That same year, despite estimated revenues of more than $1 billion,
Google said that YouTube remained an “investment” and has not
said whether the division was profitable.

Gmail

In 2004 Google began offering a free Web-based e-mail account to

select “beta” testers (a beta product being a product not yet in its
final form). The service, known as Gmail, was opened to the general
public in 2007 while still officially in its beta stage. One of the main
appeals of Gmail was that it gave users an e-mail address that was
independent of any particular Internet service provider (ISP), thus
making it easier to maintain a permanent address. In addition, the
service offered an unprecedented one gigabyte (one billion bytes) of
free e-mail storage space, though users were also presented with
advertisements based on keywords that the Google search
engine found in their messages. Google later expanded the amount
of free storage space given to users to seven gigabytes and allowed
users to rent additional space. In 2007 the company
acquired Postini, an e-mail services firm, for $625 million in order
to improve Gmail’s security, especially in Google’s efforts to sign up
businesses. In 2009 Google removed the beta status of Gmail,
increasing its appeal to business users.

In January 2010 Google announced that it had detected a series of

sophisticated hacking attacks, originating in China, that were
directed at the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists
and foreign journalists working in China. In some cases the
accounts had been reconfigured to forward all incoming and
outgoing e-mail to unfamiliar addresses. Google’s immediate
response was to change Gmail’s protocol from the Web standard
HTTP to the encrypted HTTPS, which increased security at the
expense of speed. The attacks also led Google to threaten to reverse
its stance, which allowed the Chinese government to censor its
Google.cn site and allow Chinese users to receive unfiltered search
results. This brought the company into conflict with the Chinese
government and raised the possibility of Google’s exiting the
Chinese market altogether. In March, Google avoided direct conflict
by automatically redirecting Chinese users of Google.cn to its
unfiltered Hong Kong site, Google.com.hk. This arrangement
continued until Google’s government-issued license to operate in
China came up for annual renewal at the end of June. At that time
Google changed Google.cn so that users could either use the
censored Chinese site for services such as music search or manually
click on a link to Google.com.hk for Web search. This move
conciliated the Chinese government, which renewed Google’s
license in July 2010.

Google Books

Before Google was even launched as a company, its founders had

worked on digital book projects at Stanford and had
always envisioned the day when Internet users would be able to
search content in books. In 2004 the company announced Google
Print, a project with several major libraries around the world that
would begin to make their holdings freely available on the Internet.
The company began by scanning public-domain books from the
libraries’ collections, using sophisticated equipment. The digital
files were then converted into portable document files (PDFs) that
were fully searchable, downloadable, and printable. Works still in
copyright appeared only in fragmented “snippet” form. In 2005 the
company changed the name of the project to Google Books, and
about one million books per year were scanned in its initial years of
operation. As of 2012, Google had scanned more than 15 million
books.
Meanwhile, groups of authors and publishers filed suit to stop the
company from making passages from their copyrighted books
available over the Internet. In 2008 Google reached a legal
settlement in which the company agreed to pay the groups $125
million for past transgressions, though users could continue to read
for free up to 20 percent of each work scanned by Google. In
exchange for allowing parts of their works to be read online, the
authors and publishers would receive 63 percent of all advertising
revenue generated by page views of their material on Google’s Web
site.

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 Walmart

Google Earth

In 2004 Google bought Keyhole Inc., which was partially funded by

the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel.
Keyhole had developed an online mapping service that Google
rebranded in 2005 as Google Earth. This service let users find
detailed satellite images of most locations on Earth and also create
combinations (known as “mashups”) with various other databases,
incorporating details such as street names, weather patterns, crime
statistics, coffee shop locations, real-estate prices, and population
densities into maps created by Google Earth. While many of these
mashups were created for convenience or simple novelty, others
became critical lifesaving tools. For instance, in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Google Earth provided interactive
satellite overlays of the affected region, enabling rescuers to better
understand the extent of the damage. Subsequently, Google Earth
became a vital tool in many disaster recovery efforts.

Google’s commitment to privacy was questioned, however, after it

introduced a related mapping service, called Street View, that
showed street-level photographs first from around the United
States and later from other countries that were searchable by street
address. Some photographs provided a view through house
windows or showed persons sunbathing. Google defended the
service by saying that the images showed only what a person could
see if walking down the street. In response to privacy concerns in
Germany, in 2010 Google allowed people to opt out of having their
homes and business included in Street View, and 244,000 people (3
percent of the country) did so. However, even though a German
court ruled in 2011 that Street View was legal, Google announced
that it would not add new photographs to the service.
Google Street View tricycle

Google employee Arthur Poirier, on a camera-equipped tricycle, recording images for Google's
Street View mapping service in Paris, August 2009.

Jacques Brinon/AP

Google Apps and Chrome

In 2006, in what many in the industry considered the opening salvo

in a war with Microsoft, Google introduced Google Apps—
application software hosted by Google that runs through users’ Web
browsers. The first free programs included Google Calendar (a
scheduling program), Google Talk (an instant messaging program),
and Google Page Creator (a Web-page-creation program). In order
to use these free programs, users viewed advertisements and stored
their data on Google’s equipment. This type of deployment, in
which both the data and the programs are located somewhere on
the Internet, is often called cloud computing.
Between 2006 and 2007 Google bought or developed various
traditional business programs (word processor, spreadsheet, and
presentation software) that were eventually collectively
named Google Docs. Like Google Apps, Google Docs is used
through a browser that connects to the data on Google’s machines.
In 2007 Google introduced a Premier Edition of its Google Apps
that included 25 gigabytes of e-mail storage, security functions from
the recently acquired Postini software, and no advertisements. As
the components of Google Docs became available, they were added
to both the free ad-supported Google Apps and the Premier Edition.
In particular, Google Docs was marketed as a direct competitor to
Microsoft’s Office Suite (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint).

In 2008 Google released Chrome, a Web browser with an advanced

JavaScript engine better suited for running programs within the
browser. The following year the company announced plans to
develop an open-source operating system, known as Chrome OS.
The first devices to use Chrome OS were released in 2011 and
were netbooks called Chromebooks. Chrome OS, which runs on top
of a Linux kernel, requires fewer system resources than most
operating systems because it uses cloud computing. The only
software running on a Chrome OS device is the Chrome browser, all
other software applications being supplied by Google Apps. In 2012
Chrome surpassed Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) to become the
most popular Web browser and, as of 2020, has maintained its lead
over IE, Microsoft’s Edge (IE’s replacement), Mozilla Corporation’s
Firefox, and Apple Inc.’s Safari.

Android operating system

Google’s entry into the lucrative mobile operating system market

was based on its acquisition in 2005 of Android Inc., which at that
time had not released any products. Two years later Google
announced the founding of the Open Handset Alliance,
a consortium of dozens of technology and mobile
telephone companies, including Intel Corporation, Motorola,
Inc., NVIDIA Corporation, Texas Instruments Incorporated, LG
Electronics, Inc., Samsung Electronics, Sprint Nextel Corporation,
and T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom). The consortium was created in
order to develop and promote Android, a free open-
source operating system based on Linux. The first phone to feature
the new operating system was the T-Mobile G1, released in October
2008, though Android-based phones really required the more
capable third-generation (3G) wireless networks in order to take
full advantage of all the system’s features, such as one-touch Google
searches, Google Docs, Google Earth, and Google Street View.

G1 smartphone

The G1 smartphone, based on Google's Android operating system, displayed in 2008.

© Michael Oryl (CC BY-SA 2.0)

In 2010 Google entered into direct competition

with Apple’s iPhone by introducing the Nexus One smartphone.
Nicknamed the “Google Phone,” the Nexus One used the latest
version of Android and featured a large, vibrant display screen,
aesthetically pleasing design, and a voice-to-text messaging system
that was based on advanced voice-recognition software. However,
its lack of native support for multi-touch—a typing and navigation
feature pioneered by Apple that allowed users more flexibility in
interacting with touchscreens—was seen as a drawback when
compared with other handsets in its class. Despite Android’s
perceived drawbacks compared with Apple’s smartphone iOS, by
the end of 2011, Android led the mobile phone industry with a 52
percent global market share, more than triple that of iOS.

In 2010 Google’s hardware partners also began releasing tablet

computers based on the Android operating system. The first
product was criticized for poor performance, but by the end of 2011
Android-based tablets had gained ground on the hugely popular
Apple iPad. Of the 68 million tablets estimated to have shipped in
that year, 39 percent ran Android, compared with nearly 60 percent
being iPads.

Google was obliged to battle competitors over Android in the courts

as well as in the marketplace. In 2010, for example, Oracle
Corporation sued Google for $6.1 billion in damages, claiming
Android had violated numerous patents relating to
Oracle’s Java programming language. (After two years in court,
Google eventually won the lawsuit.) Instead of attacking Google
directly, Apple Inc. sued makers of Android smartphones, such as
HTC, Motorola Mobility, and Samsung, over alleged patent
violations. Apple CEO Steve Jobs was said to have claimed, “I’m
going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing
to go to thermonuclear war on this.” The patent wars over mobile
operating systems seemed unresolvable, as suits and countersuits
were filed with each release of a new version.

Social networks and Google+

Google was late to recognize the popularity and advertising

potential of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Its first
attempt to create a social network, Google Buzz, started in 2010 and
closed less than two years later. Among several problems, the
network was limited to users who had Gmail accounts, and it
created privacy issues by featuring a default setting that showed a
user’s profile to anyone. Even before Google Buzz had shut down,
the company launched Google+ in June 2011, at first to a limited
audience and then to anyone. Within a year of its start, the social
network service had attracted more than 170 million users.
Facebook, by contrast, had taken five years to reach 150 million
users.

Nevertheless, Google+ faced a formidable competitor in Facebook,

which by mid-2012 had some 900 million users. Facebook users
spent far more time on their site, clocking six to seven hours per
month, while Google+ users averaged a little more than three
minutes per month. Because Facebook did not permit Google’s Web
indexing software to penetrate its servers, Google was unable to
include the giant social network in its search results, thus losing
potentially valuable data from one of the most-trafficked networks
on the Internet. Still, the company appeared to be fully supportive
of Google+. Seeing the value of games in retaining users on social
networks, it quickly released a games area for the service. It also
developed innovative features that were not available on Facebook.
For example, with Hangouts, users could instantly create free video
conferences for up to 10 people. The company also added Google+
pages for businesses to market their products and brands.
However, Google+ never supplanted Facebook, and the service was
discontinued in 2019.