Google – The World’s Most Popular Search Engine
Google is the world’s most popular search engine, a tool people use billions of times a day to find information. It searches the internet, sorts web pages using its PageRank technique and serves results in descending order starting with what it deems is the best page for the user. The whole process takes less than a second. Google also offers other tools to make finding and organizing information easier including Gmail for email, Google Maps to get directions, and Google Earth for satellite images of the planet.
Google’s technology was created by two students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were earning doctorate degrees at Stanford University. Their search tool was different than others at the time because it looked at what was on the pages of a website and how many other pages linked to them. This helped to give pages a ranking based on their relevance to keywords. The result was a better way to search the web, which helped Google become the most popular method of searching on the internet.
In 1998, Page and Brin founded Google Inc. with $100,000 in startup capital they raised from Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim. The company incorporated on September 4 and the name Google was inspired by the word googol, which means one followed by 100 zeros. The company’s first headquarters was in a garage, and employees were working for minimum wages. The company later moved into a bigger office in Mountain View, California.
Today, Google has offices around the world and a large team of quality control experts that ensures search results are as relevant as possible. Its products include the Android operating system used by millions of smartphones and tablets, the Google Chrome browser, the Google Calendar app to organize schedules, synchronize events and share them with friends, and the Google Drive cloud storage solution. It also provides Google Docs, which allows you to create and open Microsoft Word documents and share them with other users across multiple platforms. The company has also created its own virtual reality headset, the Google Daydream View.
Other Google services and products include the Google Home voice-activated digital assistant, Google Lens, an image recognition service that can tell you more about a photo or object, and the Google Translate service that translates words and phrases into other languages. The Google Play store offers apps and games for smartphones and tablets. Google also has a blog for news and updates.
The company is constantly tweaking its technology to improve search relevance and performance. It is always changing how it decides what to rank and why. For example, Google has added Instant Answers that provide you with a brief paragraph of text and links to the best web pages based on your query without even clicking on a link. This makes the search engine more helpful and intuitive. It also tries to predict what you may be looking for by analyzing previous search terms you have entered.
