Google

Information: Cynthia Hu

History

 - An American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products
 - Began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California
 - Originally nicknamed "BackRub"
 - Domain name registered on September 15, 1997
 - Incorporated on September 4, 1998
 - An initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004
 - Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex
 - In August 2015, became a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc.
 - Sundar Pichai replaced Larry Page as the CEO of Google

Products and Services
 - Advertising
 - Search engine 
 - Enterprise services
 - Consumer services
     - Web-based services
     - Operating systems
     - Software services
     - Hardware platforms
 - Internet services
 - Other products
 - APIs
 - Other websites

Advertising
 - In 2011, 96% of Google's revenue was from its advertising programs
 - Google uses technology from the company DoubleClick to project user interest and target advertising to the search context and the user history

Search Engine
 - 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

Enterprise Services
 - G Suite is a monthly subscription offering for organizations and businesses to get access to a collection of Google's services, including Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides
 - Provides additional administrative tools, unique domain names, and 24/7 support

Consumer Services: Web-based Services
 - In 2004, Google launched Gmail, a web-based email service, with a significantly higher storage offer than competitors
 - Gmail grew to become the world's most popular email service, with over a billion active users in February 2016
 - In April 2012, Google launched Google Drive, a cloud storage service with 15 GB free storage space
 - Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are web-based word processors, spreadsheets, and presentations respectively that form the Google Docs Suite
 - Google Photos is a photo sharing and storage service, offering unlimited free storage for photos up to 16 megapixels and 1080p resolution

Consumer Services: Operating Systems
 - Google released Android, which is 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 phone
 - In August 2016, Google released the seventh major version of the Android operating system, which featured the Google Daydream virtual reality platform
 - In 2009, Google introduced Chrome OS, described as a new, open-source, lightweight operating system based entirely around the browser and targeted netbooks

Consumer Services: Software Services
 - In September 2008, Google introduced the Google Chrome web browser in beta testing status
 - As of October 2016, the Chrome browser is the world's most widely used web browser across all platforms

Consumer Services: Hardware Platforms
 - In January 2010, Google released Nexus One, the first Android phone under its own "Nexus" brand, which was known as being "high-quality low-cost"
 - In 2016, the Nexus line was discontinued and replaced by a new brand, called Pixel
 - In 2011, the Chromebook was introduced, which ran Chrome OS and first came from Samsung and Acer
 - In July 2013, Google introduced the Chromecast dongle, which allows users to stream YouTube and Netflix videos via smartphones
 - In June 2014, Google announced Google Cardboard, a simple cardboard viewer that lets user place their smartphone in a special front compartment to view virtual reality (VR) media

Internet Services
 - In February 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project, with experimental plans to build an ultra high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities
 - In September 2016, Google began expanding its Google Station initiative, which was previously a project for public Wi-Fi at railway stations in India
 - Caesar Sengupta, VP for Google's next billion users, told The Verge that 15,000 people get online for the first time thanks to Google Station and that 3.5 million people use the service every month

Other Products
 - Google Translate is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate between 80 different languages
 - Google launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which summarizes news articles from various websites
 - In May 2011, Google announced Google Wallet, a mobile application for wireless payments
 - In late June 2011, Google launched a social networking service called Google+
 - In 2013, Google launched Google Shopping Express, a delivery service initially available in San Francisco and Silicon Valley
 - Google Alerts is a content change detection and notification service, which sends emails to the user when it finds new results, such as web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs, that match the user's search term
 - In July 2015, Google released DeepDream, an image recognition software capable of creating psychedelic images using a convolutional neural network
 - Google introduced its Family Link service in March 2017, letting parents buy Android Nougat-based Android devices for kids under 13 years of age and create a Google account through the app, with parents controlling the apps, monitoring the time spent using the device, and setting a "Bedtime" feature that remotely locks the device
 - In April 2017, Google launched AutoDraw, a web-based tool using artificial intelligence and machine learning to recognize users' drawing and replace scribbles with related stock images that have been created by professional artists
 - In May 2017, Google added "Family Groups", which lets users create a group consisting of their family members' individual Google accounts, add their "Family Group" as a collaborator to shared albums in Google Photos, and share notes in Google Keep along with common events in Google Calendar

APIs
 - Google APIs are a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) developed by Google which allows communication with Google Services and their integration to other services
 - Third-party apps can use APIs such as Search, Gmail, Translate or Google Maps to take advantage of or extend the functionality of the existing services

Other Websites
 - Google Developers is Google's site for software development tools, APIs, and technical resources, and contains documentation on using Google developer tools and APIs  - including discussion groups and blogs for developers using Google's developer products
 - Google Labs was a page created by Google to demonstrate and test new projects
 - In March 2017, Google launched a new website, opensource.google.com, to publish its internal documentation for Google Open Source projects