Google - The Company

Company Overview Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world's largest search engine -- an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second. When you visit www.google.com or one of the dozens of other Google domains, you'll be able to find information in many different languages; check stock quotes, maps, and news headlines; lookup phonebook listings for every city in the United States; search billions of images and peruse the world's largest archive of Usenet messages -- more than 1 billion posts dating back to 1981. We also provide ways to access all this information without making a special trip to the Google homepage. The Google Toolbar enables you to conduct a Google search from anywhere on the web. And for those times when you're away from your PC altogether, Google can be used from a number of wireless platforms including WAP and i-mode phones. Google's utility and ease of use have made it one of the world's best known brands almost entirely through word of mouth from satisfied users. As a business, Google generates revenue by providing advertisers with the opportunity to deliver measurable, costeffective online advertising that is relevant to the information displayed on any given page. This makes the advertising useful to you as well as to the advertiser placing it. We believe you should know when someone has paid to put a message in front of you, so we always distinguish ads from the search results or other content on a page. We don't sell placement in the search results themselves, or allow people to pay for a higher ranking there. Thousands of advertisers use our Google AdWords program to promote their products and services on the web with targeted advertising, and we believe AdWords is the largest program of its kind. In addition, thousands of web site managers take advantage of our Google AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to the content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenue and enhancing the experience for their users. To learn more about Google, click on the link at the left for the area that most interests you. Or type what you want to find into our search box and hit enter. What's a Google? "Googol" is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was

popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

Our Philosophy Never settle for the best "The perfect search engine," says Google co-founder Larry Page, "would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want." Given the state of search technology today, that's a far-reaching vision requiring research, development and innovation to realize. Google is committed to blazing that trail. Though acknowledged as the world's leading search technology company, Google's goal is to provide a much higher level of service to all those who seek information, whether they're at a desk in Boston, driving through Bonn, or strolling in Bangkok. To that end, Google has persistently pursued innovation and pushed the limits of existing technology to provide a fast, accurate and easy-to-use search service that can be accessed from anywhere. To fully understand Google, it's helpful to understand all the ways in which the company has helped to redefine how individuals, businesses and technologists view the Internet.

Ten things Google has found to be true 1. Focus on the user and all else will follow. From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible. While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site: • • • •

The interface is clear and simple. Pages load instantly. Placement in search results is never sold to anyone. Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.

By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another. 2. It's best to do one thing really, really well. Google does search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we've been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service already considered the best on

the web at making finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of users. Our dedication to improving search has also allowed us to apply what we've learned to new products, including Gmail, Google Desktop, and Google Maps. As we continue to build new products* while making search better, our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help users access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives. 3. Fast is better than slow. Google believes in instant gratification. You want answers and you want them right now. Who are we to argue? Google may be the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have users leave its website as quickly as possible. By fanatically obsessing on shaving every excess bit and byte from our pages and increasing the efficiency of our serving environment, Google has broken its own speed records time and again. Others assumed large servers were the fastest way to handle massive amounts of data. Google found networked PCs to be faster. Where others accepted apparent speed limits imposed by search algorithms, Google wrote new algorithms that proved there were no limits. And Google continues to work on making it all go even faster. 4. Democracy on the web works. Google works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting websites to determine which other sites offer content of value. Instead of relying on a group of editors or solely on the frequency with which certain terms appear, Google ranks every web page using a breakthrough technique called PageRank™. PageRank evaluates all of the sites linking to a web page and assigns them a value, based in part on the sites linking to them. By analyzing the full structure of the web, Google is able to determine which sites have been "voted" the best sources of information by those most interested in the information they offer. This technique actually improves as the web gets bigger, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted. 5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer. The world is increasingly mobile and unwilling to be constrained to a fixed location. Whether it's through their PDAs, their wireless phones or even their automobiles, people want information to come to them. Google's innovations in this area include Google Number Search, which reduces the number of keypad strokes required to find data from a web-enabled cellular phone and an on-the-fly translation system that converts pages written in HTML to a format that can be read by phone browsers. This system opens up billions of pages for viewing from devices that would otherwise not be able to display them, including Palm PDAs and Japanese i-mode, J-Sky, and EZWeb devices. Wherever search is likely to help users obtain the information they seek, Google is pioneering new technologies and offering new solutions. 6. You can make money without doing evil.

Google is a business. The revenue the company generates is derived from offering its search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on Google and on other sites across the web. However, you may have never seen an ad on Google. That's because Google does not allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they're relevant to the results page on which they're shown. So, only certain searches produce sponsored links above or to the right of the results. Google firmly believes that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find. Google has also proven that advertising can be effective without being flashy. Google does not accept pop-up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you've requested. We've found that text ads (AdWords) that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough rates than ads appearing randomly. Google's maximization group works with advertisers to improve clickthrough rates over the life of a campaign, because high clickthrough rates are an indication that ads are relevant to a user's interests. Any advertiser, no matter how small or how large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium, whether through our self-service advertising program that puts ads online within minutes, or with the assistance of a Google advertising representative. Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a "Sponsored Link." It is a core value for Google that there be no compromising of the integrity of our results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results. No one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust Google's objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust. Thousands of advertisers use our Google AdWords program to promote their products; we believe AdWords is the largest program of its kind. In addition, thousands of web site managers take advantage of our Google AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to the content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenue and enhancing the experience for their users. 7. There's always more information out there. Once Google had indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was not as readily accessible. Sometimes it was just a matter of integrating new databases, such as adding a phone number and address lookup and a business directory. Other efforts required a bit more creativity, like adding the ability to search billions of images and a way to view pages that were originally created as PDF files. The popularity of PDF results led us to expand the list of file types searched to include documents produced in a dozen formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. For wireless users, Google developed a unique way to translate HTML formatted files into a format that could be read by mobile devices. The list is not likely to end there as Google's researchers continue looking into ways to bring all the world's information to users seeking answers. 8. The need for information crosses all borders.

Though Google is headquartered in California, our mission is to facilitate access to information for the entire world, so we have offices around the globe. To that end we maintain dozens of Internet domains and serve more than half of our results to users living outside the United States. Google search results can be restricted to pages written in more than 35 languages according to a user's preference. We also offer a translation feature to make content available to users regardless of their native tongue and for those who prefer not to search in English, Google's interface can be customized into more than 100 languages. To accelerate the addition of new languages, Google offers volunteers the opportunity to help in the translation through an automated tool available on the Google.com website. This process has greatly improved both the variety and quality of service we're able to offer users in even the most far flung corners of the globe. 9. You can be serious without a suit. Google's founders have often stated that the company is not serious about anything but search. They built a company around the idea that work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun. To that end, Google's culture is unlike any in corporate America, and it's not because of the ubiquitous lava lamps and large rubber balls, or the fact that the company's chef used to cook for the Grateful Dead. In the same way Google puts users first when it comes to our online service, Google Inc. puts employees first when it comes to daily life in our Googleplex headquarters. There is an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to the company's overall success. Ideas are traded, tested and put into practice with an alacrity that can be dizzying. Meetings that would take hours elsewhere are frequently little more than a conversation in line for lunch and few walls separate those who write the code from those who write the checks. This highly communicative environment fosters a productivity and camaraderie fueled by the realization that millions of people rely on Google results. Give the proper tools to a group of people who like to make a difference, and they will. 10. Great just isn't good enough. Always deliver more than expected. Google does not accept being the best as an endpoint, but a starting point. Through innovation and iteration, Google takes something that works well and improves upon it in unexpected ways. Search works well for properly spelled words, but what about typos? One engineer saw a need and created a spell checker that seems to read a user's mind. It takes too long to search from a WAP phone? Our wireless group developed Google Number Search to reduce entries from three keystrokes per letter to one. With a user base in the millions, Google is able to identify points of friction quickly and smooth them out. Google's point of distinction however, is anticipating needs not yet articulated by our global audience, then meeting them with products and services that set new standards. This constant dissatisfaction with the way things are is ultimately the driving force behind the world's best search engine.

The Google Culture

Though we've grown a lot since Larry and Sergey started Google in 1998, we still maintain a small company feel. At lunchtime, almost everyone eats in the office café, sitting at whatever table has an opening and enjoying conversations with Googlers from all different departments. Topics range from the trivial to the technical, and whether the discussion is about computer games or encryption or ad serving software, it's not surprising to hear someone say, "That's a product I helped develop before I came to Google." Our commitment to innovation depends on everyone being comfortable sharing ideas and opinions. That means that each employee is a hands-on contributor, and everyone wears several hats. Because everyone realizes they are an equally important part of our success, no one hesitates to ask Larry or Sergey a pointed question in our weekly TGIF meetings, or spike a volleyball over the net at a corporate officer. Our hiring policy is aggressively non-discriminatory and favors ability over experience. The result is a staff that reflects the global audience the search engine serves. We have offices around the globe and dozens of languages are spoken by Google staffers, from Turkish to Telugu. When not at work, Googlers pursue interests from cross-country cycling to wine tasting, from flying to frisbee. As we grow worldwide, we continue to look for those who share an obsessive commitment to creating search perfection and having a great time doing it.

About the Googleplex Our world headquarters building (aka the Googleplex) is located in Mountain View, California, a stone's throw from the Shoreline Regional Park wetlands. While not all Google offices around the globe are identical, they share some essential elements. Here are some things you might find in a Google workspace: •

Local flavor, from a mural in Buenos Aires to ski gondolas in Zurich, expressing each office's unique location and personality.

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Bicycles for efficient travel between meetings, dogs, lava lamps, and massage chairs.

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Googlers sharing cubes, yurts, and huddle rooms (few single offices!) with three or four team members.

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Laptops in every employee's hand (or bike basket), for mobile coding and notetaking.

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Foozball, pool tables, volleyball courts, assorted video games, pianos, ping pong tables, lap pools, gyms that include yoga and dance classes.

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Grassroots employee organizations of all kinds, such as meditation classes, film clubs, wine tasting groups, and salsa dance clubs.

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Healthy lunches and dinners for all staff at a wide variety of cafés, and outdoor seating for sunshine brainstorming.

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Snack rooms packed with various snacks and drinks to keep Googlers going throughout the day.

The Best Place to Work 2008 Black Googler Network (BGN) Summer Cookout

Around here, being yourself is a job requirement. When we encourage Googlers to express themselves, we really mean it. In fact, we count on it. Intellectual curiosity and passionate perspectives drive our policies, our work environment, our perks and our profits. At the end of the day, it’s Googlers who make Google one of Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.” What makes working here so inspiring?

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Our 20% time program gives engineers the opportunity to pursue personal interests in their work.

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Our work environment reflects the needs of our employees, including flexible hours, family programs, mothers’ rooms, and transgender-friendly restrooms.

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Employee resource groups (ERGs) actively participate in building community and driving policy at Google.

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Google’s Council on Disability meets twice annually to weigh in on accessibility issues internally and externally.

Employee Resource Groups At Google, our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) get a great deal of company support and draw their membership from across the globe. Google ERGs create networks within the company that reach across functional and national boundaries to strengthen the company’s retention programs. They provide valuable feedback about the workings of Google’s HR programs and policies, as well as provide valuable opportunities for personal growth and professional development. We are proud to be recipients of awards honoring us for our inclusive work environment, including:

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HRC Corporate Equality Index 100% Rating (2007, 2008, 2009)

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The Times UK "Top 50 Places Women Want to Work" (2007, 2008)

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Fortune Magazine's #1 on 100 Best Companies To Work For (2007, 2008) Other international groups, like the Gayglers (Googler’s GLBT employees), help us connect with the communities in which we work (and play), worldwide. To learn more about how Google values an inclusive work environment, visit the official Google blog series, Interface, with submissions from our employee resource group members. Our Employee Resource Groups include: Asian American Googler Network Black Googler Network Gayglers (the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender [LGBT] affinity network) Google American Indian Network

Google Disability Network Google Women's Network Google Women Engineers Female Googler Leadership Community Hispanic Googler Network Indus Googler Network Mosaic (cross-network groups)

"As a Gaygler (a member of Google's gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender [LGBT] affinity group) and a Greygler (a Googler over 40 years old), for the first time in my long career, I'm working for a company that not only recognizes and values their LGBT employees, but gives those employees the tools to succeed in defining their mission, outreach, and activities. As an avid cyclist, I've worked with my colleagues to sponsor teams of Googlers in AIDS LifeCycle on the west coast and Braking the Cycle on the east coast. In our office, we've become involved in the Human Rights Campaign as a local sponsor of their annual dinner, and with the Imperial Court of New York, a philanthropic organization that opens their hearts and their daily planners to ensure that people in the entire LGBT community have enough medical care, food, and shelter. Of course, we celebrate Gay Pride Month and participate in those festivities, but I'm also proud that Google values diversity and is a responsible corporate citizen that puts those values into practice." - Scott, Software Engineer, New York Next Testimonial Equal Opportunity At Google, we are committed to a supportive work environment, where employees have the opportunity to reach their fullest potential. Each Googler is expected to do his or her utmost to create a respectful workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination of any kind. Equal Opportunity Employment Statement Employment here is based solely upon individual merit and qualifications directly related to professional competence. We strictly prohibit unlawful discrimination or harassment of any kind, including discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, veteran status, national origin, ancestry, pregnancy status, sex, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, mental or physical disability, medical condition, sexual orientation or any other characteristics protected by law. We also make all reasonable accommodations to meet our obligations under laws protecting the rights of the disabled. Our full Code of Conduct can be found here.

Google Milestones Google Timeline Check out the interactive version of our company history. Our company has packed a lot in to a relatively young life. We've captured some of the key milestones in Google's development. 1995-1997 - 1998 - 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008 - 2009

1995-1997 1995 •

Larry Page and Sergey Brin meet at Stanford. (Larry, 22, a U Michigan grad, is considering the school; Sergey, 21, is assigned to show him around.) According to some accounts, they disagree about most everything during this first meeting.

1996 • •

Larry and Sergey, now Stanford computer science grad students, begin collaborating on a search engine called BackRub. BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year -- eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university.

1997 •

Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google -- a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

1998 August •

Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes a check for $100,000 to an entity that doesn't exist yet: a company called Google Inc.

September •

Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki's garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park.

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Google files for incorporation in California on September 4. Shortly thereafter, Larry and Sergey open a bank account in the newly-established company's name and deposit Andy Bechtolsheim's check. Larry and Sergey hire Craig Silverstein as their first employee; he's a fellow computer science grad student at Stanford.

December •

"PC Magazine" reports that Google "has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results" and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.

1999 February •

We outgrow our garage office and move to new digs at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto with just 8 employees.

April •

Yoshka, our first "company" dog, comes to work with our senior vice president of operations, Urs Hoelzle.

May •

Omid Kordestani joins to run sales -- the first non-engineering hire.

June •

Our first press release announces a $25 million round from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins; John Doerr and Michael Moritz join the board. The release quotes Moritz describing "Googlers" as "people who use Google."

August •

We move to our first Mountain View location: 2400 E. Bayshore. Mountain View is a few miles south of Stanford University, and north of the older towns of Silicon Valley: Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose.

November •

Charlie Ayers joins as Google's first chef. He wins the job in a cook-off judged by the company's 40 employees. Previous claim to fame: catering for the Grateful Dead.

2000 April •

On April Fool's Day, we announce the MentalPlex: Google's ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. Thus begins our annual foray in the Silicon Valley tradition of April 1 hoaxes.

May • •

The first 10 language versions of Google.com are released: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish. We win our first Webby Awards: Technical Achievement (voted by judges) and Peoples' Voice (voted by users).

June • •

We forge a partnership with Yahoo! to become their default search provider. We announce the first billion-URL index and therefore Google becomes the world's largest search engine.

September •

We start offering search in Chinese, Japanese and Korean, bringing our total number of supported languages to 15.

October •

Google AdWords launches with 350 customers. The self-service ad program promises online activation with a credit card, keyword targeting and performance feedback.

December •

Google Toolbar is released. It's a browser plug-in that makes it possible to search without visiting the Google homepage.

2001 January •

We announce the hire of Silicon Valley veteran Wayne Rosing as our first VP of engineering operations.

February

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Our first public acquisition: Deja.com's Usenet Discussion Service, an archive of 500 million Usenet discussions dating back to 1995. We add search and browse features and launch it as Google Groups.

March • •

Eric Schmidt is named chairman of the board of directors. Google.com is available in 26 languages.

April •

Swedish Chef becomes a language preference.

July •

Image Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.

August • •

We open our first international office, in Tokyo. Eric Schmidt becomes our CEO. Larry and Sergey are named presidents of products and technology, respectively.

October •

A new partnership with Universo Online (UOL) makes Google the major search service for millions of Latin Americans.

December •

Keeping track: Our index size grows to 3 billion web documents.

2002 February • •

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Klingon becomes one of 72 language interfaces. The first Google hardware is released: it's a yellow box called the Google Search Appliance that businesses can plug into their computer network to enable search capabilities for their own documents. We release a major overhaul for AdWords, including new cost-per-click pricing.

April •

For April Fool's Day, we announce that pigeons power our search results.

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We release a set of APIs, enabling developers to query more than 2 billion web documents and program in their favorite environment, including Java, Perl and Visual Studio.

May • •

We announce a major partnership with AOL to offer Google search and sponsored links to 34 million customers using CompuServe, Netscape and AOL.com. We release Google Labs, a place to try out beta technologies fresh from our R&D team.

September •

Google News launches with 4000 news sources.

October •

We open our first Australian office in Sydney.

December •

Users can now search for stuff to buy with Froogle (later called Google Product Search).

2003 January •

American Dialect Society members vote "google" the "most useful" Word of the Year for 2002.

February •

We acquire Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger.

March •

We announce a new content-targeted advertising service, enabling publishers large and small to access Google's vast network of advertisers. (Weeks later, on April 23, we acquired Applied Semantics, whose technology bolsters the service named AdSense.)

April •

We launch Google Grants, our in-kind advertising program for nonprofit organizations to run in-kind ad campaigns for their cause.

October •

Registration opens for programmers to compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first-ever Code Jam. Coders can work in Java, C++, C# or VB.NET.

December •

We launch Google Print (which later becomes Google Book Search), indexing small excerpts from books to appear in search results.

2004 January •

orkut launches as a way for us to tap into the sphere of social networking.

February • •

Larry Page is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering. Our search index hits a new milestone: 6 billion items, including 4.28 billion web pages and 880 million images.

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We move to our new "Googleplex" at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, giving 800+ employees a campus environment. We formalize our enterprise unit with the hire of Dave Girouard as general manager; reporters begin reporting in April about our vision for the enterprise search business. We introduce Google Local, offering relevant neighborhood business listings, maps, and directions. (Later, Local is combined with Google Maps.)

April •

For April Fool's we announce plans to open the Googlunaplex, a new research facility on the Moon.

May •

We announce the first winners of the Google Anita Borg Scholarship, awarded to outstanding women studying computer science. Today these scholarships are open to students in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.

August

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Our Initial Public Offering of 19,605,052 shares of Class A common stock takes place on Wall Street on August 18. Opening price: $85 per share.

September •

There are more than 100 Google domains (Norway and Kenya are #102 and #103). The list has since grown to more than 150.

October •

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We formally open our office in Dublin, Ireland, with 150 multilingual Googlers, a visit from Sergey and Larry, and recognition from the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, Mary Harney. Google SMS (short message service) launches; send your text search queries to GOOGL or 466453 on your mobile device. Larry and Sergey are named Fellows by the Marconi Society, which recognizes "lasting scientific contributions to human progress in the field of communications science and the Internet." We spotlight our new engineering offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, India with a visit from Sergey and Larry. Google Desktop Search is introduced: you can now search for files and documents stored on your hard drive using Google technology. We launch the beta version of Google Scholar, a free service for searching scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports. We acquire Keyhole, a digital mapping company whose technology will later become Google Earth.

November •

Our index of web pages reaches 8 billion.

December • •

We open our Tokyo R&D (research & development) center to attract the best and brightest among Japanese and other Asian engineers. The Google Print Program (since renamed Google Book Search) expands through digital scanning partnerships with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, University of Michigan, and Oxford plus the New York Public Library.

2005 February • •

We hit a milestone in Image Search: 1.1 billion images indexed. Google Maps goes live.

March • •

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We launch code.google.com, a new place for developer-oriented resources, including all of our APIs. Some 14,000 programmers from six countries compete for cash prizes and recognition at our first coding competition in India, with top scores going to Ardian Kristanto Poernomo of Singapore. We acquire Urchin, a web analytics company whose technology is used to create Google Analytics.

April • • • • • •

Our first Google Maps release in Europe is for the U.K. For April Fool's, we announce a magical beverage that makes its imbibers more intelligent, and therefore better capable of properly using search results. Google Maps now features satellite views and directions. Google Local goes mobile, and includes SMS driving directions. My Search History launches in Labs, allowing you to view all the web pages you've visited and Google searches you've made over time. We release Site Targeting, an AdWords feature giving advertisers the ability to better target their ads to specific content sites.

May • • •

We release Blogger Mobile, enabling bloggers to use their mobile phones to post and send photos to their blogs. Google Scholar adds support for institutional access: searchers can now locate journal articles within their own libraries. Personalized Homepage (now iGoogle) is designed for people to customize their own Google homepage with content modules they choose.

June • • • • •

We hold our first Summer of Code, a 3-month $2 million program that aims to help computer science students contribute to open source software development. Google Mobile Web Search is released, specially formulated for viewing search results on mobile phones. We unveil Google Earth: a satellite imagery-based mapping service combining 3D buildings and terrain with mapping capabilities and Google search. We release Personalized Search in Labs: over time, your (opt-in) search history will closely reflect your interests. API for Maps released; developers can embed Google Maps on many kinds of mapping services and sites.

August

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Google scores well in the U.S. government's 2005 machine translation evaluation. (We've done so in subsequent years as well.) We launch Google Talk, a downloadable Windows application that enables you to talk or IM with friends quickly and easily, as well as talk using a computer microphone and speaker (no phone required) for free.

September •

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Overlays in Google Earth illuminate the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina around New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Some rescue teams use these tools to locate stranded victims. DARPA veteran Vint Cerf joins Google to carry on his quest for a global open Internet. Dr. Kai-Fu Lee begins work at our new Research and Development Center in China. Google Blog Search goes live; it's the way to find current and relevant blog postings on particular topics throughout the enormous blogosphere.

October • •

Feed aficionados rejoice as Google Reader, a feed reader, is introduced at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Googlers volunteer to produce the first Mountain View book event with Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink" and "The Tipping Point." Since then, the Authors@Google program has hosted more than 480 authors in 12 offices across the U.S., Europe and India.

November • •

We release Google Analytics, formerly known as Urchin, for measuring the impact of websites and marketing campaigns. We announce the opening of our first offices in São Paulo and Mexico City.

December • •

Google Transit launches in Labs. People in the Portland, Oregon metro area can now plan their trips on public transportation at one site. Gmail for mobile launches in the United States.

2006 January • •

Our first Code Jam in China concludes in Beijing. The winner, graduate student Chuan Xu, is one of more than 13,000 registrants. We announce the acquisition of dMarc, a digital radio advertising company.

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Google.cn, a local domain version of Google, goes live in China. We introduce Picasa in 25 more languages, including Polish, Thai and Vietnamese.

February • • • •

We release Chat in Gmail, using the instant messaging tools from Google Talk. Eric Schmidt is inducted into the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Larry Brilliant becomes the executive director of Google.org, our philanthropic arm. Google News for mobile launches.

March • •

We announce the acquisition of Writely, a web-based word processing application that subsequently becomes the basis for Google Docs. A team working from Mountain View, Bangalore and New York collaborates to create Google Finance, our approach to an improved search experience for financial information.

April • • •

For April Fool's we unveil a new product, Google Romance: "Dating is a search problem." We launch Google Calendar, complete with sharing and group features. We release Maps for France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

May •

We release Google Trends, a way to visualize the popularity of searches over time.

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July

We announce Picasa Web Albums, allowing your to upload and share your photos online. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) adds "Google" as a verb. We announce Google Checkout, a fast and easy way to pay for online purchases. Gmail, Google News and iGoogle become available on mobile phones in eight more languages besides English: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese and Turkish. Gmail launches in Arabic and Hebrew, bringing the number of interfaces up to 40.

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At Google Code Jam Europe, nearly 10,000 programmers from 31 countries compete at Google Dublin for the top prizes; Tomasz Czajka from Poland wins the final round.

August • • • • •

We launch free citywide WiFi in Mountain View. More than 100 libraries on 10 campuses of the University of California join the Google Books Library Project. Star Trek's 40th Anniversary Convention in Las Vegas features a Google booth showcasing tools appropriate for intergalactic use. Apps for Your Domain, a suite of applications designed for organizations of all sizes, and including including Gmail and Calendar, is released. Google Book Search begins offering free PDF downloads of books in the public domain.

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We add an archive search to Google News, with more than 200 years of historical articles. Featured Content for Google Earth includes overlays from the UN Environmental Program, Discovery Networks, the Jane Goodall Institute, and the National Park Service. The University Complutense of Madrid becomes the first Spanish-language library to join the Google Books Library Project.

October •

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Together with LitCam and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning, we launch the Literacy Project, offering resources for teachers, literacy groups and anyone interested in reading promotion. We announce our acquisition of YouTube. We release web-based applications Docs & Spreadsheets: Word processor Docs is a reworking of Writely (acquired in March). Google Custom Search Engine launches, giving bloggers and website owners the ability to create a search engine tailored to their own interests. We acquire JotSpot, a collaborative wiki platform, which later becomes Google Sites.

November •

The first nationwide Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.K. takes place with the theme My Britain. More than 15,000 kids in Britain enter, and 13-year old Katherine Chisnall is chosen to have her doodle displayed on www.google.co.uk. There have been Doodle 4 Google contests in several other years and countries since.

December •

We release Patent Search in the U.S., indexing more than 7 million patents dating back to 1790.

2007 January •

We announce a partnership with China Mobile, the world's largest mobile telecom carrier, to provide mobile and Internet search services in China.

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We release Google Maps in Australia, complete with local business results and mobile capability. Google Docs & Spreadsheets is available in eleven more languages: French, Italian, German, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil) and Russian. For Valentine's Day, we open up Gmail to everyone. (Previously, it was available by invitation only). Google Apps Premier Edition launches, bringing cloud computing to businesses. The Candidates@Google series kicks off with Senator Hillary Clinton, the first of several 2008 Presidential candidates, including Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, to visit the Googleplex. We introduce traffic information to Google Maps for more than 30 cities around the US.

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Our first Latin American software coding contest ends with Fábio Dias Moreira of Brazil taking the grand prize. He scored more points than 5,000 other programmers from all over the continent. We sign partnerships to give free access to Google Apps for Education to 70,000 university students in Kenya and Rwanda.

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May

This April Fool's Day is extra busy: not only do we introduce the Gmail Paper Archive and TiSP (Toilet Internet Service Provider) -- we lose (and find) a real snake in our New York office! We add eight more languages to Blogger, bringing the total to 19.

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In partnership with the Growing Connection, we plant a vegetable garden in the middle of the Googleplex, the output of which is incorporated into our café offerings. We move into permanent space in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Governor Jennifer Granholm helps us celebrate. The office is an AdWords support site. At our Searchology event, we announce new strides taken towards universal search. Now video, news, books, image and local results are all integrated together in one search result. Google Hot Trends launches, listing the current 100 most active queries, showing what people are searching for at the moment. Street View debuts in Google Maps in five U.S. cities: New York, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver. On Developer Day, we announce Google Gears (now known just as Gears), an open source technology for creating offline web applications.

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Google Maps gets prime placement on the original Apple iPhone. YouTube becomes available in nine more domains: Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Ireland and the U.K. We announce a partnership with Salesforce.com, combining that company's ondemand CRM applications with AdWords. We unveil several "green" initiatives: RechargeIT, aimed at accelerating the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the completion of our installation of solar panels at the Googleplex, in Mountain View, and our intention to be completely carbon-neutral by the end of 2007. We also announce the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, in collaboration with Intel, Dell, and more than 30 other companies. Google Earth Outreach is introduced, designed to help nonprofit organizations use Google Earth to advocate their causes.

July • • • •

We announce the acquisition of Postini. The first CNN/YouTube debate takes place between the eight U.S. Democratic Presidential candidates. (The Republicans get their turn in November 2007.) Google Finance becomes available for non-U.S. markets for the first time, in Canada. Google Apps is now available in 28 languages.

August • •

We ask your for you interpretation of how Gmail travels around the world, and receive more than 1,100 video responses from more than 65 different countries. To infinity and beyond! Sky launches inside Google Earth, including layers for constellation information and virtual tours of galaxies.

September • • • •

AdSense for Mobile is introduced, giving sites optimized for mobile browsers the ability to host the same ads as standard websites. Together with the X PRIZE Foundation we announce the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a robotic race to the Moon for a $30 million prize purse. We add Presently, a new application for making slide presentations, to Google Docs. Google Reader becomes available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, English (U.K.), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese and Korean.

October •

We partner with IBM on a supercomputing initiative so that students can learn to work at Internet scale on computing challenges.

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We announce OpenSocial, a set of common APIs for developers to build applications for social networks. Android, the first open platform for mobile devices, and a collaboration with other companies in the Open Handset Alliance, is announced. Soon after, we introduce the $10 million Android Developer Challenge. Google.org announces RE
December •

The Queen of England launches The Royal Channel on YouTube. She is the first monarch to establish a video presence this way.

2008 January •

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Google.org announces five key initiatives: in addition to the previouslyannounced RE
February

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For people searching in Hebrew, Arabic, or other right-to-left languages, we introduce a feature aimed at making searches easier by detecting the direction of a query. Google Sites, a revamp of the acquisition JotSpot, debuts. Sites enables you to create collaborative websites with embedded videos, documents, and calendars.

March • •

We finally complete the acquisition deal for DoubleClick. Together with Yahoo and MySpace, we announce the OpenSocial Foundation, an independent non-profit group designed to provide transparency and operational guidelines around the open software tools for social computing.

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We feature 16 April Fool's jokes from our offices around the world, including the new airline announced with Sir Richard Branson (Virgle), AdSense for Conversations, a Manpower Search (China), and the Google Wake-Up Kit. Bonus foolishness: all viewers linking to YouTube-featured videos are "Rickrolled." A new version of Google Earth launches, incorporating Street View and 12 more languages. At the same time, KML 2.2, which began as the Google Earth file format, is accepted as an official Open Geospacial Consortium standard. Google Website Optimizer comes out of beta, expanding from an AdWords-only product. It's a free website-testing tool with which site owners can continually test different combinations of their website content (such as images and text), to see which ones yield the most sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals. We launch Google Finance China allowing Chinese investors to get stock and mutual fund data as a result of this collaboration between our New York and Shanghai teams. We introduce a collection of 70+ new themes ("skins") for iGoogle, contributed by such artists and designers as Dale Chihuly, Oscar de la Renta, Kwon Ki-Soo and Philippe Starck.

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Following both the Sichuan earthquake in China and Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), Google Earth adds new satellite information for the region(s) to help recovery efforts. Reflecting our commitment to searchers worldwide, Google search now supports Unicode 5.1. At a developer event, we preview Google FriendConnect, a set of functions and applications enabling website owners to easily make their sites social by adding registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, plus applications built by the OpenSocial developer community. With IPv4 addresses (the numbers that computers use to connect to the Internet) running low, Google search becomes available over IPv6, a new IP address space

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large enough to assign almost three billion networks to every person on the planet. Vint Cerf is a key proponent of broad and immediate adoption of IPv6. Google Translate adds 10 more languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian and Swedish), bringing the total to 23. We release Google Health to the public, allowing people to safely and securely collect, store, and manage their medical records and health information online. We introduce a series of blog posts detailing the many aspects of good search results on the Official Google Blog. California 6th grader Grace Moon wins the U.S. 2008 Doodle 4 Google competition for her doodle "Up In The Clouds."

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Real-time stock quotes go live on Google Finance for the first time. With the launch of Google Site Search, site owners can enable Google-powered searches on their own websites. We launch Gmail Labs, a set of experimental Gmail features, including saved searches and different kinds of stars, which let you customize your Gmail experience. A new version of Maps for Mobile debuts, putting Google Transit directions on phones in more than 50 cities worldwide. For the first time, Google engineers create the problems for contestants to solve at the 7th Annual Code Jam competition.

July • • • •

We provide Street View for the entire 2008 Tour de France route -- the first launch of Street View imagery in Europe. Our first downloadable iPhone app, featuring My Location and word suggestions for quicker mobile searching, debuts with the launch of the Apple 3G iPhone. We work with the band Radiohead to make a music video of their song "House of Cards," using only data, and not cameras. Our indexing system for processing links indicates that we now count 1 trillion unique URLs (and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day).

August • • •

Street View is available in several cities in Japan and Australia - the first time it's appeared outside of North America or Europe. Google Suggest feature arrives on Google.com, helping formulate queries, reduce spelling errors, and reduce keystrokes. Just in time for the U.S. political conventions, we launch a site dedicated to the 2008 U.S. elections, with news, video and photos as well as tools for teachers and campaigners.

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Word gets out about Chrome a bit ahead of schedule when the comic book that introduces our new open source browser is released earlier than planned on September 1. The browser officially becomes available for worldwide download a day later. We get involved with the U.S. political process at the presidential nominating conventions for the Democratic and Republican parties. We release an upgrade for Picasa, including new editing tools, a movie maker, and easier syncing with the web. At the same time, Picasa Web Albums is updated with a new feature allowing you to "name tag" people in photos. Google News Archive helps to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives. T-Mobile announces the G1, the first phone built on the Android operating system. At the same time, we release a new Android Software Developer Kit, and the Open Handset Alliance announces its intention to open source the entire Android platform by the end of 2008. The G1 becomes available for purchase in October. We launch Transit for the New York metro region, making public transit information easily available for users of the largest transportation agency in the U.S. Thanks to all of you, Google celebrates 10 fast-paced years.

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We release the first draft of Clean Energy 2030, a proposal to wean the U.S. off of coal and oil for electricity use and to reduce oil use by cars 40 percent by 2030. The plan could generate billions in savings as well as millions of "green jobs." We introduce Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch, complete with photos, geo-located Wikipedia articles, and the ability to tilt your phone to view 3D terrain. Googlers in Mountain View build a zip line to travel across the small Permanente Creek separating a few of our bulidings.

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In a vote by 5-0, the FCC formally agrees to open up "white spaces," or unused television spectrum, for wireless broadband service. We see this decision as a clear victory for Internet users and anyone who wants good wireless communications. After we discover a correlation between certain search queries and CDC data on flu symptoms, we release Google Flu Trends, an indicator of flu activity around the U.S. as much as two weeks earlier than traditional flu surveillance systems.

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We announce the availability of the LIFE photo archive in Google Image Search. Only a fraction of the approximately 10 million photos have ever been seen before. SearchWiki launches, a way for you to customize your own search experience by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. Comments can also be read by other users.

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We invite musicians around the globe to audition to participate in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, the world's first collaborative online orchestra. Google Friend Connect is available to any webmaster looking to easily integrate social features into their site. Street View coverage more than doubles in the United States, including several states never before seen on Street View (Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota, and South Dakota). We partner with publishers to digitize millions of magazine articles and make them readily available on Google Book Search.

2009 January • • •

We kick off January with the launch of Picasa for Mac at Macworld. The Vatican launches a YouTube Channel, providing updates from the Pope and Catholic Church. Together with the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium, and academic researchers, we announce Measurement Lab (M-Lab), an open platform that provides tools to test broadband connections.

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The latest version of Google Earth makes a splash with Ocean, a new feature that provides a 3D look at the ocean floor and information about one of the world's greatest natural resources. We introduce Google Latitude, a Google Maps for mobile feature and an iGoogle gadget that lets you share your location with friends and see the approximate location of people who have decided to share their location with you. After adding Turkish, Thai, Hungarian, Estonian, Albanian, Maltese, and Galician, Google Translate is capable of automatic translation between 41 languages, covering 98% of the languages read by Internet users. Our first message on Twitter gets back to binary: I'm 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010. (Hint: it's a button on our homepage.)

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We launch a beta test of interest-based advertising on partner sites and on YouTube. This kind of tailored advertising lets us show ads more closely related to what people are searching for, and it gives advertisers an efficient way to reach those who are most interested in their products or services. We release Google Voice to existing Grand Central users. The new application improves the way you use your phone, with features like voicemail transcription and archive and search of all of your SMS text messages. We celebrate our San Francisco office's Gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System. We see it as a sign that we're on track with our approach to building environmentally friendly offices. The White House holds an online town hall to answer citizens' questions submitted on Google Moderator. We launch new iGoogle backdrops inspired by video games, including classics like "Mario," "Zelda," and "Donkey Kong." We announce Google Ventures: a venture capital fund aimed at using our resources to support innovation and encourage promising new technology companies. Using our transliteration technology, we build and release a feature in Gmail that makes it easy to type messages in Indian languages like Hindi or Malayalam. Google Suggest goes local with keyword suggestions for 51 languages in 155 domains.

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Our April Fool's Day prank this year is CADIE, our "Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity" who spends the day taking over various Google products before self-destructing. We announce an update to search which enables people to get localized results even if they don't include a location in their search query. For India's 15th general election, we launch the Google India Elections Centre, where people can check to see if they're registered to vote, find their polling place, as well as read news and other information. Over 90 musicians from around the world — including a Spanish guitarist, a Dutch harpist and a Lithuanian birbyne player — perform in the first-ever YouTube Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. We rebuild and redesign Google Labs as well as release two new Labs: Similar Image search and Google News Timeline. Later in the month, we introduce Toolbar Labs. We begin to show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. search pages when people search for names, giving people more control over what others find about them when they search on Google.

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We release 11 short films about Google Chrome made by Christoph Niemann, Motion Theory, Steve Mottershead, Go Robot, Open, Default Office, Hunter Gatherer, Lifelong Friendship Society, SuperFad, Jeff&Paul, and Pantograph.

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To clear brush and reduce fire hazard in the fields near our Mountain View headquarters, we rent some goats from a local company. They help us trim the grass the low-carbon way! At our second Searchology event, we introduce a few new search features, including the Search Options panel and rich snippets in search results. We launch Sky Map for Android, which uses your Android phone to help you identify stars, constellations and planets. Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, wins the second U.S. Doodle 4 Google competition with her doodle "A new beginning." At our second annual Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, we preview Google Wave, a new communication and collaboration tool.

And on and on What's next from Google? It's hard to say. We don't talk much about what lies ahead, because we believe one of our chief competitive advantages is surprise. You can always take a peek at some of the ideas our engineers are currently kicking around by visiting them at Google Labs. Have fun, but be sure to wear your safety goggles.