What is Google?
Google is an American multinational corporation and technology company specializing in online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence. It is one of the world’s most influential companies and its broad range of Internet services and products has made it a dominant force in the high-tech industry. Google’s market dominance has caused concern about its ability to manipulate information and to influence public opinion.
Founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, google was originally known as BackRub. It was designed to use the Internet to find and rank files based on their popularity. BackRub was a precursor to the modern search engine, and it pioneered the concept of ranking Web pages based on their link popularity rather than on the content or keywords in those pages.
The name Google was inspired by the mathematical term googol, which refers to the number 10100. The word is also a verb, meaning to search the Internet, which has led to its use in the popular culture and language.
Since its inception, google has expanded into an enormous global organization that is now responsible for many different online and mobile services. Google’s flagship product, the search engine, is still its most important service and accounts for more than 70% of all online searches worldwide. The word “Google” has even become a part of our vocabulary as a verb, to the point that we now say things like, “I googled it.”
In addition to the world-famous search engine, Google offers many other popular online services and programs, such as Gmail, the most popular e-mail service; Google Calendar, a calendar program that allows users to keep track of their schedules; Google Docs, a suite of office-type applications that can be used on computers and mobile devices; and Google Maps, which provides satellite views and street level images of locations worldwide.
In recent years, Google has made several major acquisitions in the computer hardware and software industries to further expand its product line. These include the 2012 purchase of Motorola Mobility, which gave it a foothold in the growing smartphone market; and its 2015 acquisition of DeepMind Technologies, which brought it significant advancements in artificial intelligence. Other newer services include Google Fiber, which offers fiber optic internet to a limited number of people in the United States; and Waymo, a division that is focused on developing self-driving cars.