What is Google?
Google is a multibillion-dollar company that has revolutionized the Internet as we know it. Its search engine is used billions of times a day, and its influence extends far beyond the Web itself to commerce and culture. Its cofounders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed a search algorithm first known as backrub while students at Stanford University in California. Today, Google is one of the most powerful companies in the world, with operations in hardware, cloud computing, advertising and software.
When people enter a search term into Google, it searches for that query across the entire Internet and displays results in less than a second. That means Google must process 3.5 billion search requests every day. In addition to determining the quality of each Web page, it must also figure out what information people are actually looking for and how to present it to them.
It also must be able to scale, meaning that as the number of users grows, Google must provide the same level of service to everyone while keeping the same speed and quality of results. That’s a monumental task, and it’s why Google is constantly evolving its algorithms.
Google also uses its enormous resources to acquire other companies that it believes can help the company achieve its goals. In 2003, for example, it spent $102 million to buy Applied Semantics, which had developed an ad-selling system that placed ads on Web pages. In 2007 it paid $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, which offered an online advertising management system. Google also has invested in Internet infrastructure, such as fiber-optic connections, and in mobile devices like the Chromebook laptop and Pixel phone.
While Google Search is the company’s most recognizable product, it has expanded beyond search to include other products and services, such as YouTube, Android smartphone operating systems, email, photo storage, productivity software (Google Docs), Chrome browsers, and even the social networking site Google+. It is now the crown jewel of its parent company, Alphabet Inc., and its stock trades under the tickers GOOG and GOOGL.
The company’s name is a portmanteau of the words “googol” and “google.” The former refers to the number 10100, which was calculated by Milton Sirotta as a way to describe a very large number. The latter is a verb that’s been around since at least the 19th century. It’s a bit of a mystery how the verb came to be, although it may have something to do with the popularity of the name Google.
