(Google, Mountain View, CA) The largest Web search engine and one of the most influential tech companies on the planet. Introduced in 1999, half the world looks up information on Google every day.
Android, YouTube, Chrome browser and Maps navigation are also Google products that are each used by more than a billion people. In addition, Google is involved in advertising, publishing, software development, security, statistics, language translation and self-driving cars. Naturally, it is heavily into AI (see
DeepMind).
Android is the leading mobile platform worldwide, and highly secretive Google Labs is exploring the future. In 2015, Google formed Alphabet, a holding company that includes Google and all of its projects and acquisitions. See
Alphabet,
Android and
Google applications.
It All Started with BackRub Search
In 1996, Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed their "BackRub" search engine with its unique page ranking (explained below). With investments from Sun founder Andy Bechtolsheim and others, Google was founded in September 1998, and BackRub was launched as the Google search engine in 1999.
Why the Name?
Google came from "googol," a number so large no one can fathom it (1 plus 100 zeros). Chosen to represent the immensity of the Web and the huge ambitions of the company, the name choice was remarkably fitting. See
googol.
The Clean Screen Search Engine
From the start, the Google search engine set itself apart from all others with its almost-empty home page. Instead of loaded with graphics that took forever to download over slow analog modems, the Google page came in fast. Users got an immediate response even before they started searching. Today, the home page is still ultra sparse and remains a testament to the power of a well-designed user interface (see
user interface). See
Google Doodle.
However, behind the scenes lies an incredibly sophisticated infrastructure. The company streamlines its servers to provide the most search engine power for the least amount of energy. Using its own self-healing software, Google's indexes are mirrored around the globe, and servers can fail without disruption.
The Popularity Approach
Called "PageRank," Google introduced the popularity concept for ranking pages in the search results. The pages with the most links pointing to them from other sites ("backlinks") are placed higher in the list. The websites' popularity is analyzed going back several levels, which is why a site ranks higher if 25 popular sites link to it rather than 100 non-popular sites. Today, Google analyzes Web pages not just for popularity, but for myriad attributes (see
Google algorithm).
Lots of Acquisitions
Starting with the Usenet discussion groups in 2001 and YouTube video in 2006, Google has acquired numerous companies that have contributed value (see
Usenet and
YouTube). See
Google bomb and
Googleplex.