What is Google?

Google is the most popular search engine on the Internet. It was created by two students and has become one of the most valuable technology companies in the world. Google offers many different services, including email with Gmail, video sharing on YouTube, and mapping and navigation with Google Maps and Google Earth. It also has a cloud storage service and a mobile phone operating system. The company is based in California and has a large number of employees around the world.

Google was founded in 1995 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The pair met while visiting Stanford University to research graduate programs in computer science. They became friends and worked together in Page’s dormitory room to develop a new type of search engine. Their invention, which they called BackRub, used links between web pages to determine their rank in a search. The better a website was, the higher it would rank. This system allowed it to quickly find information and helped to make the Internet more useful to people.

The search engine BackRub was so successful that the duo started a new business to focus on it. Google was the result, and its success made Page and Brin very rich. Google’s first public offering in 2004 raised over $1.66 billion and made the founders instant millionaires. The way the IPO was conducted was revolutionary and put ordinary investors on equal footing with financial industry professionals.

As the search engine grew in popularity, Google began to offer other services. Its AdWords advertising tool helped businesses promote their products and services online, and it later expanded to include YouTube ads and more advanced ad formats like TrueView, Ad Extensions, and Smart Bidding. The company even tried its hand at social media with Google+, but it never took off as a rival to Facebook or Twitter.

Google is now a multinational technology company with several divisions and subsidiaries. It focuses on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, and e-commerce. It has even ventured into the hardware market with its Google Pixel smartphone and Google Home voice-activated digital assistant.

Google has a wide variety of tools and features that help users stay organized and productive. For example, the company’s Google Alerts send text messages to your email address with information about your selected topics. The Google Calendar app lets you organize and synchronize your schedule, and the Google News site provides automatic updates on current news. Other helpful features include Google Keep, which lets you store notes and to-do lists, and the YouTube Video Editor, which allows you to add enhancements to videos. Other great services offered by Google include Google Docs, Google Photos, and Google Home. Google also has an open-source operating system named Fuchsia that is available for developers.