History of Google
Google was a project started by two students from Standford University, Larry Page and Sergey Bin in March 1996. The name "Google" was derived from a mathematical term "googol" which perfectly represent their mission to provide infinite amount of information online for the society. The original domain was called google.stanford.edu and was only changed to google.com in September 15 1997. By December 1998, Google was already one of the Top 100 Search Engine of Choice. It was later announced that Larry Page was named as President of Products and later became the CEO in 2011, Sergey Bin as President of Technology while Eric Schmidt, who used to hold the title of chairman of the board of directors, CEO and now, executive chairman.
In the year 1999, Google expanded their office from a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California to Palo Alto and later on to complex buildings in Mountain View, which has since been known as Googleplex. It originally started with only 8 employees and it now has over 800 employees in the building. GBikes were introduced to Googlers in the office in 2007 as a more convenient, efficient and healthy way to move around to and from meetings. Solar panels were installed and it now powers at least 30% of the buildings. Electric vehicles are also used as part of the employee's car sharing scheme. In order to give an opportunity for Googlers to give back to the community, GoogleServe is an event held annually where Googlers take a break from their work for a week to work on charitable activities and projects.
Google had been coming up with an array of doodles to celebrate various events happening around the world since 2000 until today. The first international Google office was opened in Tokyo, Japan while the first office to ever open in the Greater China region was located in Hong Kong. Google started the Google Anita Borg Scholarship, a scholarship to female students who excel in computer science as well as BOLD internship to allow students to contribute to Google through various sales and engineering projects. Google then proceed to buy Youtube and Motoroala in 2006 and 2010 respectively. In July last year, Google worked together with Starbucks to provide free Wi-Fi Connections to every single Starbucks stores in the United States.
Google also came up with the following:
Reference List:
Our History In Depth. Retrieved April 24, 2014 from http://www.google.com.au/about/company/history/
- Google AdWords - an advertising network
- Google Toolbar - a browser plug-in
- Google Groups - a discussion group based on common interests
- Google Zeitgeist - to reveal popular search at the end of every year
- Google Search Appliance - a search box for personal documents
- Google News
- Google Shopping
- Blogger - a site for blogging
- Google Books
- Orkut - a social network
- Gmail
- Picasa - an image organiser and editor
- Google Earth
- Google Scholar - a search engine for literature
- Google.org - a charity by google
- Google Maps (on web and on mobile)
- Google Talk - an instant message for gmail users
- Google Analytics
- Google Transit
- Hangouts
- Google Finance
- Google Calendar
- Google Translate
- Google Trends
- Google Wallet
- Docs & Sheets
- Google Safe Browsing
- Google Docs - for slide presentations
- Android - a platform for mobile phones
- Google Chrome
- Google Voice
- Google Ventures
- Google Crisis Response
- Google TV
- Google Instant
- Google+
- Google Play
- Google Drive
- Google Fiber - a high speed internet
- Samsung Chromebook
- Chromebook Pixel - a laptop designed by Google
- Google Now for iPhone and iPad
- Chromecast - a portable TV
Reference List:
Our History In Depth. Retrieved April 24, 2014 from http://www.google.com.au/about/company/history/