What is Google?

Google is most well known for its search engine, but it also offers a wide range of other software and services. Its wildly popular web browser, Chrome, is one example. It also offers cloud storage, online document creation and a number of mobile apps. Google has even branched out into physical products like the Pixel smartphone line and the Chromecast in-home streamer.

The story of google began in 1995 when two Stanford University students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, created a program to rank pages on the internet based on their content. The program, named BackRub, used an algorithm to analyze a webpage’s content and determine how important it was. It ranked pages not only on their own content, but also on how many other websites linked to them. This was a revolutionary concept that changed the way people searched for information on the Internet. The idea was patented and the system became known as PageRank.

In 1998, Page and Brin received outside financing for their company and officially founded Google Inc. Their initial business plan was to create a system that could process a large amount of information. The name was a play on the word googol, a mathematical term that represents a number followed by 100 zeroes. The name sparked the imagination of the public and it quickly caught on.

Over the years, google has grown to become one of the most profitable companies in history. Its initial public offering in 2004 made Page and Brin billionaires. Since then, it has acquired a host of other technology-related firms. These include Google Earth, which uses satellite images to show a map of the world, and Google Maps, which makes it easy to get directions from one place to another. In addition, it has developed many other online tools including Gmail, Google Docs and Google Shopping.

Google has a huge commercial side as well, creating and placing the ads that appear on websites. Its ad management system, called Google Analytics, is widely used by website owners. It has also bought several other companies that help it target ads to specific audiences, such as ad tech firm DoubleClick and another that helps with ad verification.

Google’s many other programs and services include Google Books, which allows users to browse hundreds of thousands of digital books. It also provides Google Calendar, an online way to synchronize and share schedules. Its browser, Chrome, is the most popular on the internet and its word processing software, Google Docs, is a powerful competitor to Microsoft’s Excel. It also has a number of video-based services, including YouTube and Google Videos. It has attempted to enter the social media space with Google+, which did not catch on with the public, and it offers a number of other online tools such as Google Sheets and Google Slides. It has also experimented with augmented reality technology with Project Ara, which was canceled in 2022. Google also owns the data storage and computing service GitHub.