Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation Essay Example for Free

Google Inc. is an Ameri croup multinational potentiometer EssayThese hold reckon, cloud computing, software, and online publicise technologies. Most of its profit are derived from AdWords. Google was founded by Larry pageboy and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. To put downher they own about 16 pct of its shares.They incorporated Google as a privately held caller-out on family 4, 1998. An initial public oblation followed on August 19, cardinal hundred4. Its charge statement from the outset was to organize the worlds information and obligate it univers anyy go on-at-able and rehearseful, and its un authoritative slogan was Dont be evil. In 2006 Google moved to liberty chitquarters in Mountain View, California, nick micturated the Googleplex. Rapid harvest-festival since in corp has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and compacts beyond Googles ticker await locomotive.It offers online productivity software including e send, an division suite, and social neting . Desktop products include applications for web browsing, organizing and editing photos, and present moment messaging. The keep fraternity leads the development of the Android mobile in operation(p) system and the browser-only Chrome OS for a netbook known as a Chromebook. Google has moved increasingly into communications ironware it partners with major electronics manufacturers in production of its high-end Nexus devices and acquired Motorola Mobility in may 2012.In 2012, a fibreoptic infrastructure was installed in Kansas City to facilitate a Google Fiber broadband returns. The corporation has been estimated to run more than than cardinal unmatched thousand thousand servers in data centers a musical rhythm the world and to process everywhere adept billion try requests and about 24 petabytes of exampler- affordd data each day. In December 2012 Alexa heeled google.com as the most visited website in the world. Numerous G oogle sites in other languages figure in the top one c, as do some(prenominal) other Google- own sites much(prenominal) as YouTube and Blogger. Its market dominance has led to criticism over issues including copyright, censorship, and privacy. HistoryGoogle began in January 1996 as a research pop by Larry rascal and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. opus conventional search engines ranked go outs by counting how many ms the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about abetter system that analyzed the relationships between websites. They called this tender technology rogueRank it persistent a websites relevance by the number of pages, and the impressiveness of those pages, that linked back to the original site.A sharp search engine called RankDex from IDD Information Services intentional by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a akin strategy for site-scoring and page ranking. The technolo gy in RankDex would be patented and used slowlyr(prenominal) when Li founded Baidu in China. Page and Brin originally nick get wordd their sore search engine BackRub, because the system checked back cogitate to estimate the importance of a site. Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word googol, the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information.Originally, Google ran at a lower place Stanford Universitys website, with the populaces google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu. The domain name for Google was registered on phratry 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in a friends . In January 2013, Google proclaimed it had earned $50 billion in annual r take downue for the year of 2012. This marked the archetypical cartridge clip the company had reached this feat, topping their 2011 total of $38 billion. Financing and initial public offeringThe first supporting for Google was an August 1998 contribution of from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of sunlight Microsystems, given before Google was incorporated. Early in 1999, while graduate students, Brin and Page decided that the search engine they had developed was taking up too much time and distracting their academician pursuits. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to rat it to him for $1 billion. He rejected the offer and later criticized Vinod Khosla, one of Excites venture capitalists, after he negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000.On June 7, 1999, a $25 million round of funding was proclaimed, with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Sequoia Capital. The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share. Shares were sold in an online auction format utilize a system built by Morgan Stanley and reference work Suisse, underwriters for the deal. The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.The vast majorityof the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google, and many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo, a competitor of Google, in any case benefited because it owned 8.4 million shares of Google before the IPO took place. There were concerns that Googles IPO would lead to changes in company culture. Reasons ranged from shareholder oblige for employee benefit reductions to the fact that many company executives would become instant paper millionaires. As a reaction to this concern, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised in a report to potential investors that the IPO would not change the companys culture.In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy. In an effort to maintain the companys eccentric culture, Google designated a Chief coating Officer , who also serves as the Director of Human Resources. The purpose of the Chief Culture Officer is to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on a flat organization with a collaborative environment. Google has also face up allegations of sexism and ageism from former employees.The stock performed well after the IPO, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on October 31, 2007, principally because of strong gross sales and earnings in the online publicizing market. The surge in stock price was furnish mainly by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds. The contiguous year, against Page and Brins initial opposition toward an advertizing-funded search engine, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.When the company changed names to Overture Services, it sued Google over alleged(a) infringements of the companys pay-per-click and bidding pa tents. Overture Services would later be bought by Yahoo and renamed Yahoo appear Marketing. The persona was then settled out of court Google agreed to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo in exchange for a perpetual license. In 2001, Google received a patent for its PageRank mechanism. The patent was officially charge to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office entangled from Silicon Graphics at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.The complex became known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol zeroes. The Googleplex interiors were designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects. Threeyears later, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million. By that time, the name Google had found its way into everyday language, ca exploitation the verb google to be added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford Engli sh Dictionary, denoted as to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet. 2013 onwardGoogle announced the launch of a invigorated company called Calico on September 19, 2013, which exit be led by Apple chairman Arthur Levinson. In the official public statement, Page explained that the wellness and wellbeing company provide focus on the challenge of ageing and associated diseases. As of September 2013, Google operates 70 offices in more than 40 countries. Google celebrated its 15-year anniversary on September 27, 2013, although it has used other dates for its official birthday.The reason for the choice of September 27 remains unclear, and a dispute with rival search engine Yahoo Search in 2005 has been suggested as the cause. The Alliance for Affordable Internet was launched in October 2013 and Google is part of the merger of public and private organisations that also includes Facebook, Intel and Microsoft.Led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the A4AI seeks to make Internet access more low-priced so that access is broadened in the developing world, where only 31% of people are online. Google will athletic supporter to decrease internet access prices so that they fall below the UN Broadband Commissions worldwide target of 5% of monthly income.The corporations consolidated revenue for the third quarter of 2013 is reported in mid-October 2013 as US$14.89 billion, a 12 percent summation compared to the previous quarter. Googles Internet business was responsible for US$10.8 billion of this total, with an increase in the number of users clicks on advertisements. Acquisitions and partnershipsSince 2001, Google has acquired many companies, primarily small venture capital-funded firms. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc. The start-up company developed a product called Earth Viewer that gave a triplet-dimensional view of the Earth. Google renamed the armed service to Google Earth in 2005. Google acquired Urchin Software in April 2005, using thei r Urchin on Demand product to create Google Analytics in 2006.In October 2006, Google announced that it had acquired the icon-sharing site YouTubefor US$1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006. Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTubes travel rapidly woos, and YouTubes revenues in 2007 were noted as not material in a regulatory filing. In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 YouTube revenue at US$200 million, noting progress in publicizing sales. On April 13, 2007, Google reached an accordance to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, giving Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies.Later that same year, Google purchased Grand primeval for $50 million. The site would later be changed over to Google Voice. On August 5, 2009, Google bought out its first public company, purchasing delineation software maker On2 Technologies for $106.5 million. Google also acqu ired Aardvark, a social electronic network search engine, for $50 million, and commented on its internal blog, were looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it. In April 2010, Google announced it had acquired a hardware startup, Agnilux. In addition to the many companies Google has purchased, the company has partnered with other organizations for research, advertising, and other activities. In 2005, Google partnered with NASA Ames Research Center to shape up of offices.The offices would be used for research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing, and the entrepreneurial space industry. Google entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems in October 2005 to helper share and distribute each others technologies. The company also partnered with AOL to enhance each others video search go. Googles 2005 partnerships also included financing the tonic .mobi top-level domain for mobile devices, along with other companies including Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson.Google would later launch AdSense for Mobile, taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market. Increasing its advertising reach even further, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corporation entered into a $900 million agreement to provide search and advertising on the then-popular social networking site MySpace. In 2007, Google began sponsoring NORAD Tracks Santa, displacing former sponsor AOL. NORAD Tracks Santa purports to follow Santa Claus progress on Christmas Eve, using Google Earth to shack Santa in 3-D for the first time. Google-owned YouTube gave NORAD Tracks Santa its own channel.In 2008, Google developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providingGoogle with high-resolution imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 6, 2008. Google also announced in 2008 that it was hosting an archive of Life Magazines photographs. Some of the images in the archive were neer published in the magazine. The photos were watermarked and originally had copyright notices posted on all photos, regardless of public domain status. In 2010, Google Energy make its first investment in a renewable capability project, move $38.8 million into two wriggle farms in North Dakota.The company announced the two locations will generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to supply 55,000 homes. The farms, which were developed by NextEra Energy Resources, will reduce fossil fuel use in the region and return profits. NextEra Energy Resources sold Google a twenty-percent stake in the project to get funding for its development. In February 2010, the federal Energy Regulatory Commission FERC granted Google an authorization to buy and sell energy at market rates.The order specifically states that Google Energya subsidiary of Googleholds the rights for the sale of energy, capacity, and supplementary services at market-based rates, but acknowledges that neither Google Energy nor its affiliates own or control any extension or transmission facilities. The corporation exercised this authorization in September 2013 when it announced that it will purchase all of the electricity produced by the not-yet-built 240-megawatt Happy Hereford wind farm. Also in 2010, Google purchased Global IP Solutions, a Norway-based company that provides web-based teleconferencing and other related services.This acquisition enabled Google to add tele knell-style services to its list of products. On May 27, 2010, Google announced it had also closed the acquisition of the mobile ad network AdMob. This occurred days after the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation into the purchase. Google acquired the company for an undisclosed amount. In July 2010, Google signed an agreement with an Iowa wind farm to buy 114 megawatts of energy for 20 years. On April 4, 2011, The Globe and Mail reported that Google bid $900 million for six thousand Nortel Networks patents.On Aug ust 15, 2011, Google made its largest-ever acquisition to-date when announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion field of view to approval from regulators in the United States and Europe. In a post on Googles blog, Google Chief executive director and co-founder Larry Page revealed that the acquisition was astrategic move to strengthen Googles patent portfolio. The companys Android operating system has come under fire in an industry-wide patent battle, as Apple and Microsoft have sued Android device makers much(prenominal) as HTC, Samsung, and Motorola.The merger was completed on the May 22, 2012, after the approval of Peoples Republic of China. This purchase was made in part to help Google gain Motorolas considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies to help protect it in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies, mainly Apple and Microsoft After the acquisition closed, Google began to reconstitute the Motorola business to f it Googles strategy. On August 13, 2012, Google announced plans to layoff 4000 Motorola Mobility employees. On December 10, 2012, Google sold the manufacturing operations of Motorola Mobility to Flextronics for $75 million.As a part of the agreement, Flextronics will manufacture undisclosed Android and other mobile devices. On December 19, 2012, Google sold the Motorola Home business division of Motorola Mobility to Arris Group for $2.35 billion in a cash-and-stock transaction. As a part of this deal, Google acquired a 15.7% stake in Arris Group valued at $300 million. On June 5, 2012, Google announced it acquired Quickoffice, a company widely known for their mobile productivity suite for both iOS and Android. Google plans to immix Quickoffices technology into its own product suite.On February 6, 2013, Google announced it had acquired Channel Intelligence for $125 million. Channel Intelligence, a technology company that helps customers buy products online, is active globally in 31 contrasting countries and works with over 850 retailers. Google will use this technology to enhance its e-commerce business. The official confirmation of Googles acquisition of the Israel-based startup Waze occurred in June 2013. Waze is promoted as a community-based traffic and navigation app.Following the acquisition of Waze, Google submitted a 10-Q filing with the Securities Exchange Commission that revealed that the corporation spent US$1.3 billion on acquisitions during the first half of 2013. The filing also revealed that the Waze acquisition cost Google US$966 million, instead of the US$1.1 billion figure that was initially presented in media sources.The 2012 acquisition of WIMM Labs, a company that previously made an Android-powered smartwatch, was confirmed in August 2013. As of August 31, 2013, Google has not publicly commented on the news concerning WIMM Labs. The acquisition ofFlutter, a creator of hand gesture recognition technology, was confirmed by the corporation in early October 2013.The reported price is US$40 million and Google spokesperson stated Were genuinely impressed by the Flutter teams ability to design new technology based on cutting edge research. Flutters technology allows users to enact hand gestures to control navigation for apps such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Winamp. Google data centersAs of 2011, Google Inc. owned and operated six data centers across the U.S., plus one in Finland and another in Belgium. On September 28, 2011, the company announced plans to build three data centers at a cost of more than $200 million in Asia and purchased the land for them. Google said they will be operational within two years. Products and servicesAdvertisingFor the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues. In 2011, 96% of Googles revenue was derived from its advertising programs. Using technology from the company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they are relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them. Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program.Googles AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, done either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud, which occurs when a person or automated handwriting clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing the advertiser to pay money to Google unduly.Industry reports in 2006 claimed that about 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudule nt or in legal. In February 2003, Google stopped showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ships sewage treatment practices. Google cited its editorialpolicy at the time, stating Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations.The policy was later changed. In June 2008, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo, which would have allowed Yahoo to feature Google advertisements on its web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized because of antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2008. In an exertion to advertise its own products, Google launched a website called Demo Slam, developed to demonstrate technology demos of Google Products. Search engineAccording to market research published by comScore in November 2009, Google Search is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%. Google indexes billions of web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire through the use of keywords and operators. In 2003, The New York Times complained about Googles indexing, claiming that Googles caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content. In this case, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google in Field v.Google and Parker v. Google. The publication 2600 The plug Quarterly has compiled a list of words that the web giants new instant search feature will not search. Google Watch has criticized Googles PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor effected sites. The site has also alleged that there are connections between Google and the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency.Google also hosts Google Books. The company began scanning books and uploading contain previews, and dependable book s where allowed, into its new book search engine. The Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, filed a class action suit in a New York City federal court against Google in 2005 over this service.Google replied that it is in compliance with all existing and pastal applications of copyright laws regarding books. Google last reached a revised settlement in 2009 to limit its scans to books from the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Canada. Furthermore, the Paris Civil Court ruled against Google in late 2009, asking it to remove the works of La Martinire from its database. In competition with Amazon.com, Google sells digital versionsof new books.On July 21, 2010, in response to Bing, Google updated its image search to display a streaming sequence of thumbnails that hyperbolise when pointed at. Though web searches still appear in a batch per page format, on July 23, 2010, vocabulary definitions for certain English words began appearing above the linked results for web sea rches. The Hummingbird update to the Google search engine was announced in September 2013. The update was introduced over the month prior to the announcement and allows users ask the search engine a question in natural language rather than entering keywords into the search box. productiveness toolsGmail, a free webmail service provided by Google, was launched as an invitation-only genus Beta program on April 1, 2004, The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009, at which time it had 146 million users monthly. The service was the first online electronic mail service with one gigabyte of computer memory. It was also the first to keep emails from the same conversation together in one thread, similar to an Internet forum. The service offers over 15 GB of free storage, shared with other Google Apps, with additional storage ranging from 20 GB to 16 TB visible(prenominal) for per 1 GB per year.Gmail uses AJAX, a programming technique that allows web pages to be interactive without refreshing the browser. Steve Ballmer, Liz Figueroa, Mark Rasch, and the editors of Google Watch have criticised the privacy of Gmail, but Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the musical score holder and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements. In 2004, Google started opensource software project hosting, called Google Code, which allows developers to download unelaborated programs at no charge.Google Docs, another part of Googles productivity suite, allows users to create, edit, and collaborate on documents in an online environment, similar to Microsoft Word. The service was originally called Writely, but was obtained by Google on March 9, 2006, and was released as an invitation-only preview. On June 6 after the acquisition, Google created an observational spreadsheet editing program, which was combined with Google Docs on October 10. Enterprise productsGoogle Search Appliance was launched in February 2002, targ eted toward providing search technology for big organizations. Google Apps allowsorganizations to bring Googles web application offerings, such as Gmail and Google Docs, into their own domains. The service is available in some(prenominal) editions a basic free edition, Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Education, and Google Apps for Government. In the same year Google Apps was launched, Google acquired Postini and proceeded to integrate the companys security technologies into Google Apps under the name Google Postini Services. Other productsGoogle Translate is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate between 35 different languages. The software uses corpus linguistics techniques, where the program learns from professionally translated documents, specifically UN and European Parliament proceedings. Google launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which summarizes news articles from various websites. In March 2005, Agence France Pre sse sued Google for copyright infringement in federal court in the District of Columbia, a case which Google settled for an undisclosed amount in a pact that included a license of the full text of AFP articles for use on Google News.In 2006, Google made a bid to offer free wireless broadband access end-to-end the city of San Francisco along with Internet service provider EarthLink. Large telecommunications companies such as Comcast and Verizon opposed the efforts, claiming it was dirty competition and that cities would be violating their commitments to offer local monopolies to these companies. In his testimony before Congress on network neutrality in 2006, Googles Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf blamed the tactics on the fact that closely half of all consumers lack choice in broadband providers.Google currently offers free wi-fi access in its hometown of Mountain View, California. In 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project with plans to build an ultra-high-speed broa dband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities. On March 30, 2011, Google announced that Kansas City, Kansas would be the first community where the new network would be deployed. In July 2012, Google completed the construction of a fiber-optic broadband internet network infrastructure in Kansas City, and after building an infrastructure, Google announced pricing for Google Fiber.The service will offer three options including a free broadband internet option, a 1Gbit/s internet option for $70 per month, and a version thatincludes television service for $120 per month. The project, called Android, turned out not to be a phone but an operating system for mobile devices, which Google acquired and then released as an open source project under the Apache 2.0 license. Google provides a software development kit for developers so applications can be created to be run on Android-based phones. In September 2008, T-Mobile released the G1, the first Android-based ph one.On January 5, 2010, Google released an Android phone under its own company name called the Nexus One. A report in July 2013 stated that Googles share of the global smartphone market, led by Samsung products, was 64% in March 2013. Other projects Google has worked on include a new collaborative communication service, a web browser, and a mobile operating system. The first of these was first announced on May 27, 2009. The company described Google Wave as a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web.The service is Googles email redesigned, with realtime editing, the ability to embed audio, video, and other media, and extensions that further enhance the communication experience. Google Wave was initially in a developers preview, where interested users had to be invited to test the service, but was released to the general public on May 19, 2010, at Googles I/O keynote. On September 1, 2008, Google pre-announced the upcoming availability of Google Chrome, an open source web browser, which was then released on September 2, 2008.On July 7, 2009, Google announced Google Chrome OS, an open source Linux-based operating system that includes only a web browser and is designed to log users into their Google account. Google Goggles is a mobile application available on Android and iOS used for image recognition and non-text-based search. In addition to scanning QR codes, the app can recognize historic landmarks, import business cards, and solve Sudoku puzzles. While Goggles could originally identify people as well, Google has limited that functionality as a privacy protection.In 2011, Google announced Google Wallet, a mobile application for wireless payments. In late June 2011, Google soft-launched a social networking service called Google+. On July 14, 2011, Google announced that Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after it was launched in this limited trial phase. After four weeks in operation, it reached 25 million users.At a launch event on July 24, 2013 in San Francisco, U.S., a newer version of the Nexus 7 Google inkpad device was released to the public, alongside theChromecast dongle that allows users to stream YouTube and Netflix videos via smartphones. In 2013 Google launched Google Shopping Express, a delivery service initially available only in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Moto XSpeaking at the D11 conference in Palos Verdes, U.S. in late May 2013, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, a former Google employee, announced that a new mobile device will be built by his company, which is wholly owned by Google, at a 500,000 square-feet facility in Texas, U.S. formerly used by the Nokia company.The facility will employ 2,000 people by August 2013 and the new phone, named the Moto X, will be available to the public in October 2013. The Moto X features Google Now software, and an array of sensors and two microprocessors that will mean that users can interact with in very different ways than you can with other d evices, in the words of Woodside. Media reports suggest that the phone will be able to activate functions preemptively based on an sensory faculty of what the user is doing at any given moment. Corporate affairs and cultureOn Fortune magazines list of best companies to work for, Google ranked first in 2007, 2008 and 2012 and fourth in 2009 and 2010. Google was also nominated in 2010 to be the worlds most attractive employer to graduating students in the Universum Communications talent attraction index. Googles corporate philosophy includes principles such as you can make money without doing evil, you can be serious without a suit, and work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun. EmployeesAfter the companys IPO, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt requested that their base profit be cut to $1. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because their main pay continues to come from owning stock in Google. Before 2004, Schmidt made $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each received an annual salary of $150,000. In 2007 and early 2008, several top executives left Google.In October 2007, former chief financial ships officer of YouTube Gideon Yu joined Facebook along with Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer. In March 2008, Sheryl Sandberg, then vice-president of global online sales and operations, began her position as chief operating officerof Facebook. At the same time, Ash ElDifrawi, formerly head of brand advertising, left to become chief marketing officer of Netshops. On April 4, 2011, Larry Page became CEO and Eric Schmidt became Executive Chairman of Google. In July 2012, Googles first female employee, Marissa Mayer, left Google to become Yahoos CEO.As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy often called Innovation Time Off, where Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of Googles newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors. In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Googles Vice President of Search Products and User Experience until July 2012, showed that half of all new product launches at the time had originated from the Innovation Time Off.GoogleplexGoogles headquarters in Mountain View, California, is referred to as the Googleplex, a play on words on the number googolplex and the headquarters itself being a complex of buildings. The mansion house is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, old server clusters, and a projection of search queries on the wall. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles.Each employee has access to the corporate refreshment center. Recreational amenities are scattered passim the campus and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, table football, a baby grand piano, a billiard table, and ping pong. In addition to the recreation room, there are snack rooms stocked with various foods and drinks, with special emphasis placed on nutrition. Free food is available to employees 24/7, with nonrecreational vending machines prorated favoring nutritional value. In 2006, Google moved into of office space in New York City, at 111 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.The office was specially designed and built for Google and houses its largest advertising sales team, which has been instrumental in securing large partnerships. As of February 2012, a significant engine room team is based in New York City, and has been responsible for more than 100 engineering projects, including Google Maps, Google Spreadsheets. As of September 2013, Googles East Coast office is located at 76 Ninth Ave, New York City, New York.In November 2006, Google opened offices on Carnegie Mellons campus in Pittsburgh, focusing on shopping-related advertisement coding and smartphone applications andprograms. By late 2006, Google also established a new headquarters for its AdWords division in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Other office locations in the U.S. include Ann Arbor, Michigan Atlanta, Georgia Austin, Texas Boulder, Colorado Cambridge, Massachusetts New York City San Francisco, California Seattle, Washington Reston, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Furthermore, Google has several transnational offices.In October 2006, the company announced plans to install thousands of solar panels to provide up to 1.6 megawatts of electricity, enough to satisfy approximately 30% of the campus energy needs. The system will be the largest solar power system constructed on a U.S. corporate campus and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world. The idea of trimming lawns using goats originated from R. J. Widlar, an engineer who worked for National Semiconductor.Google has faced accusations in Harpers Magazine of being an energy glutton. The company was accused of employing its Dont be evil motto and its pub lic energy-saving campaigns to cover up or make up for the massive amounts of energy its servers require. Easter eggs and April Fools Day jokesGoogle has a tradition of creating April Fools Day jokes. On April 1, 2000, Google MentalPlex allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web. In 2007, Google announced a free Internet service called TiSP, or Toilet Internet Service Provider, where one obtained a connection by flushing one end of a fiber-optic cable down their toilet.Also in 2007, Googles Gmail page displayed an announcement for Gmail Paper, allowing users to have email messages printed and shipped to them. In 2008, Google announced Gmail Custom time where users could change the time that the email was sent. In 2010, Google changed its company name to capital of Kansas in honor of Topeka, Kansas, whose mayor changed the citys name to Google for a short amount of time in an attempt to sway Googles decision in its new Google Fiber Project.In 2011, Google announced Gmail Motion, an interactive way of despotic Gmail and the computer with body movements via the users webcam. Googles services contain easter eggs, such as the Swedish Chefs Bork bork bork, Pig Latin, Hacker or leetspeak, Elmer Fudd, Pirate, and Klingon as language selections for its search engine.The search engine calculator provides the Answer to the Ultimate suspense of Life, theUniverse, and Everything from Douglas Adams The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. When searching the word recursion, the spell-checkers result for the properly spelled word is exactly the same word, creating a recursive link. When searching for the word anagram, meaning a rearrangement of letters from one word to form other valid words, Googles suggestion feature displays Did you mean nag a ram?In Google Maps, searching for directions between places free by large bodies of water, such as Los Angeles and Tokyo, results in instructions to kayak across the Pacific Ocean. During FIFA origination Cup 2010, search queries including World Cup and FIFA caused the Goooogle page indicator at the bottom of every result page to read Gooooal instead. PhilanthropyIn 2004, Google formed the not-for-profit philanthropic Google.org, with a start-up fund of $1 billion. The mission of the organization is to create awareness about mood change, global public health, and global poverty. One of its first projects was to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 miles per gallon. Google employ Larry Brilliant as the programs executive director in 2004, and the current director is Megan Smith. In 2008 Google announced its project 10100 which accepted ideas for how to help the community and then allowed Google users to vote on their favorites.After two years of silence, during which many wondered what had happened to the program, Google revealed the winners of the project, giving a total of ten million dollars to various ideas ranging from non-profit organizations that promote education to a website that intends to make all legal documents public and online. In 2011, Google donated 1 million euros to International Mathematical Olympiad to support the next five annual International Mathematical Olympiads . On July 2012, Google launched a Legalize Love campaign in support of gay rights.Tax avoidance Google uses various tax avoidance strategies. Out of the five largest American technology companies it pays the lowest taxes to the countries of origin of its revenues. The company accomplishes this partly by licensing technology through subsidiaries in Ireland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Netherlands. This has reportedly sparked a French investigation into Googles transfer pricing practices. Following criticism of the amount ofcorporate taxes that Google paid in the United Kingdom, Chairman Eric Schmidt said, Its called capitalism.We are proudly capitalistic. During the same December 2012 interview Schmidt confirmed that the company had no intention of paying more to the UK exchequer. In 2013, Schmidt responded to questions about taxes paid in the UK by pointing to the advertising fees Google charged UK companies as a source of economic growth. Google Vice president Matt Brittin testified to the Public Accounts delegacy of the UK house of commons that his UK sales team made no sales and hence owed no sales taxes to the UK. EnvironmentSince 2007, Google has aimed for carbon neutrality in regard to its operations. In June 2013, the Washington Post reported that Google had donated US$50,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank. In July 2013, it was reported that Google had hosted a fundraising event for Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, who has called climate change a hoax. See alsoComparison of web search enginesCriticism of GoogleDont Be diabolicalGoogleGoogle Balloon InternetGoogle CatalogsGoogle ChinaGoogle Chrome ExperimentsGoogle logoGoogle platformGoogle Ventures venture capital fundGoogle XGoogle+Googlebo t web crawlerGooglizationList of Google domainsList of mergers and acquisitions by GoogleUngoogleableReferencesExternal linksnot add links at the Internet Archiveat HooversBibliographyWikipedia