Google Inc.

Google Inc., American company specializing in Internet search and advertising, based in Mountain View, California. Google’s name derives from the word googol, the mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. The company’s use of the term reflects its business mission to index the seemingly infinite amount of information on the World Wide Web and make it universally accessible. Google has become so popular that its name is often used as a verb; to “google” something means to search for it on the Internet.

Google’s search engine service is free and easy to use, and usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second. The company’s principal source of revenue is advertising. Google provides advertisers with the opportunity to deliver measurable, cost-effective online advertising relevant to the information displayed on any given Web page.

Google was founded by computer scientists Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who first met in 1995 at Stanford University in California, where they were both studying for doctorates in computer science. Brin and Page were interested in finding a unique approach to retrieving relevant information from a massive set of data. Their first search engine technology was developed in their university dormitory and released in 1996. It was called BackRub, named for its ability to analyze the “back links” pointing to a given Web site. Also known as PageRank, the unique contribution that Page and Brin made to search applications was to rank Web sites on the basis of the number of other Web sites that linked to them as well as the number of links that linked into the linking sites. PageRank was based on the assumption that sites with the greatest number of links were more likely to offer the best and most relevant information for a given search term.

After impressing potential investors with their developing technology, Page and Brin incorporated Google Inc. on September 7, 1998. Their first office space was a spare room in a house in Menlo Park, California, which they entered through the garage. The utility and ease of use of the Google search engine quickly spread through word of mouth from satisfied users to information seekers worldwide. By late 1998 Google’s search engine could answer 10,000 search queries per day.

By 1999 Google was operating from its current headquarters at the Googleplex in Mountain View. Google’s original business model was to license its search engine capabilities to other larger sites, rather than to sell advertising space. One of its initial customers was Netscape Communications Corporation. In June 2000 another major client, Yahoo!, signed up with Google as the company continued to expand. By this time Google was able to offer access to 1 billion Web pages—the first time so much of the Web’s content had been made available in a searchable format. Shortly after, in October 2000, Google began experimenting with a business model based on advertising revenue by introducing a service for small businesses known as AdWords, linking search terms to paid advertising.

AdWords received a major overhaul in 2002 that included pay-per-click features in which Google received a share of revenue each time a user clicked on an ad. That same year, America Online, Inc., adopted Google’s search engine for both search and advertising. In 2005 Google bought a 5 percent stake in America Online for $1 billion. The following year, the company made press headlines with its $1.65-billion purchase of the video-sharing Internet venture YouTube.

Google became a publicly traded company in 2004. As of 2006 Google ranked as the world’s most comprehensive search engine, providing Web searches in more than 100 countries. Google was the most frequently visited Web site for searches. Google also offered a variety of other services for computer users, including e-mail, blog space, and tools for searching computer hard drives.