开篇之二：关于Google公司 - Wikipedia

Google公司

维基百科，自由的百科全书

Type:	Public (NASDAQ: GOOG), (LSE: GGEA)
Founded:	Menlo Park, California (1998)
Headquarters:	Mountain View, California, USA
Key people:	Eric E. Schmidt, CEO/Director Sergey Brin, Technology President Larry E. Page, Products President George Reyes, CFO
Industry:	Internet
Products:	See list of Google services and tools
Revenue:	$6.138 Billion USD (2005)
Net income:	$1.465 Billion USD (2005)
Employees:	7,942 (June 30 2006)
Website:	www.google.com

公司类型	公有 (NASDAQ: GOOG)
成立时间	1998年，加州门洛帕克
总部地点	加州芒廷维尤
重要人物	埃里克·施密特 - 董事会主席兼执行总长 拉里·佩奇 - 董事兼产品总裁、共创办人 谢尔盖·布林 - 董事兼技术总裁、共创办人 乔治·雷耶斯 - 财务总长
口号	Don't be evil
产业	互联网
产品	参见公司产品和服务
营业额	$31.9亿美元 (2004年)
员工数	约1000. (2004年)
网站	www.google.com

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American public corporation, first incorporated as a privately held corporation the 7 September 1998, that designs and manages the Internet's most used search engine. The company employs approximately 8,000 employees and is based in Mountain View, California. Eric Schmidt, former chief executive officer of Novell, was named Google's CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol,"which refers to 10¹⁰⁰ (a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Google has had a major impact on online culture. The verb "google" was recently added to both the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."

Google's services are run on several server farms, each consisting of thousands of low-cost commodity computers running stripped-down versions of Linux. While the company does not provide detailed information about its hardware, a 2006 estimate consisted of over 450,000 servers, racked up in clusters located in data centers around the world (See Google platform for more details on their technology).According to the Nielsen cabinet, Google is the most popular search engine on the web with a 54% market share, ahead of Yahoo! (23%) and MSN (13%). However, independent estimates from popular sites indicate that more than 80% of search referrals come from Google, with Yahoo! a distant second and MSN occupying barely 5%. It receives about a billion search requests per day.

Google公司（Google Inc.，NASDAQ: GOOG），是一家美国的公开上市股份公司（公有股份公司），于1998年9月7日以私有股份公司的型式创立，以设计并管理一个因特网搜索引擎；Google网站于1999年下半年启动；2004年8月19日，Google公司的股票在那斯达克（Nasdaq）上市，成为公有股份公司。Google公司的总部称作“Googleplex”，位于美国加州圣克拉拉县的芒廷维尤。2006年，公司在全球有超过3,500名员工。在共创办人拉里·佩奇退下后，Novell公司的前任行政总裁，埃里克·施密特（Eric E. Schmidt）博士，成为了Google公司的行政总裁。

2006年4月12日，Google公司行政总裁埃里克·施密特在北京宣布该公司的全球中文名字为“谷歌”（有报道指出取义“丰收之歌”，如据此，该名的繁体中文应对应“穀歌”；不过亦有报道指出取义“山谷之歌”，如据此，该名的繁体中文则仍为“谷歌”）。同时，Google公司于2006年2月15日在台湾登记之分公司取名为“美商科高国际有限公司”。此前，在一份中国国际经济贸易仲裁委员会域名争议解决中心裁决书中，公司被称为“科高公司”。该公司亦拥有“谷歌.cn”、“谷歌.中国”、“咕果.com”（但不拥有“咕果.中国”及“咕果.公司”）等中文域名。尽管中文用户在除其英文名外更常称Google为“古狗”或“狗狗”，其中文域名“古狗.com”、“古狗.cn”、“古狗.中国”等均已被其他公司抢注。

History

Beginning

Google began as a research project in January, 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California.They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page).It was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance.A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.

Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford University website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 14, 1997, and the company was incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. The total initial investment raised for the new company eventually amounted to almost US$1 million, including a $100,000 check by Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.

In March, 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company settled into their current home in a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, in 2003. The complex has since become known as the Googleplex. Silicon Graphics leased the buildings to Google.

The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users. They were attracted to its simple, uncluttered, clean design — a competitive advantage to attract users who did not wish to enter searches on web pages filled with visual distractions. This appearance, while imitating the early AltaVista, had behind it Google's unique search capabilities. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. This strategy was important for increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of hits users make upon ads. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click. This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture, then Yahoo! Search Marketing). While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.

U.S. Patent 6,285,999 describing part of Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on September 4, 2001. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.

This is what google used to look like: http://web.archive.org/web/19981202230410/http://www.google.com/

Growth

With Google's increased size comes more competition from large mainstream technology companies. One such example is the rivalry between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft has been touting its MSN Search engine, and more recently its Windows Live search in February, 2006, to counter Google's competitive position. Furthermore, the two companies are increasingly offering overlapping services, such as webmail (Gmail vs. Hotmail), search (both online and local desktop searching), and other applications (for example, Microsoft's Windows Live Local competes with Google Maps).

Click fraud has also become a growing problem for Google's business strategy. Google's CFO George Reyes said in a December 2004 investor conference that "something has to be done about this really, really quickly, because I think, potentially, it threatens our business model." Some have suggested that Google is not doing enough to combat click fraud. Jessie Stricchiola, president of Alchemist Media, called Google, "the most stubborn and the least willing to cooperate with advertisers," when it comes to click fraud.

While the company's primary market is in the web content arena, Google has also recently begun to experiment with other markets, such as radio and print publications. On January 17, 2006, Google announced that it had purchased the radio advertising company dMarc, which provides an automated system that allows companies to advertise on the radio. This will allow Google to combine two niche advertising media -- the Internet and radio -- with Google's ability to laser-focus on the tastes of consumers. Google has also begun an experiment in selling advertisements from its advertisers in offline newspapers and magazines, with select advertisements in the Chicago Sun-Times. They have been filling unsold space in the newspaper that would have normally been used for in-house advertisements. The company has also created other engines, such as Google Earth and Froogle.

Google was added to the S&P 500 index on March 31, 2006. Google replaced Burlington Resources, a major oil producer based in Houston which was acquired by ConocoPhillips.

Criticism and controversy

As it has grown, Google has found itself the focus of various controversies related to its business practices and services. For example, Google Print's effort to digitize millions of books and make the full text searchable has led to copyright disputes with the Authors Guild. Google's cooperation with the governments of China, France and Germany to filter search results in accordance to regional laws and regulations has led to claims of censorship. Google's persistent cookie and other information collection practices have led to concerns over user privacy. A number of governments have raised concerns about the security risks posed by geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging. Moreover, Google advertisers have filed several lawsuits against the company in 2006, claiming that up to 14-20% of the clicks on the bills were in fact fraudulent or invalid.

历史

Google搜索项目是由二名斯坦福大学的理学博士生拉里·佩奇和谢尔盖·布林在1996年早期建立的，他们开发了一个对网站之间的关系做精确分析为基础的搜寻引擎，他的使用结果上胜于当时使用的基本搜索技术。当时项目被称作BackRub因为系统需要检查backlinks（反向链接）去估计站点的重要性。

由于深信得到从其他高相关网站得到最多链接的网页一定是最有关的页面，Page和Brin决定把这作为他们研究的一部分进行测试，这为他们的搜寻引擎打下了基础。他们正式在1998年9月7日在位于加州Menlo Park的朋友的车库里建立了谷歌公司。在稍后搬到“Googleplex”之前的1999年二月，公司先搬进了加州的Palo Alto大学街165号办公，那里是很多著名的硅谷新建立技术公司荟萃的地方。

Google搜索引擎以它简单，干净的页面设计和最有关的搜寻结果赢得了因特网使用者。广告被以关键字的形式出售，以便他们只对感兴趣是最终使用者出现，而且，为了要使页面设计不变而且快速，广告是以文本的形式出现的。这种以关键字卖广告概念本来是Overture

开发的（即原来的Goto.com）。当大部份的网络公司倒下时，Google则一直安静地在稳步发展着并开始盈利。

2001年九月，Google的网页评级机制PageRank被授予了美国专利。专利正式地被颁发给利兰斯坦福大学，Lawrence Page作为发明人列于文件中。

2003年二月，Google接管了Blogger的所有者Pyra实验室，一个主导Weblog网络服务的先锋。似乎这与Google的使命矛盾。然而，这实际上巩固了公司从blog发布改善Google新闻搜索的速度和其搜索相关性的能力。

2004年初的一个最高峰时期，通过它的网站及其客户网站如雅虎，美国在线和CNN，Google处理了万维网上的80%的搜寻请求。Google的份额在2004年2月跌落一些，因为雅虎放弃了Google的搜寻技术， 决定给出自己独立的搜索结果。

Google做事的行为准则是不作恶，他们的站点时常包括富有幽默感的特征，如他们的图标有选择的在特定时机内风趣的变化，还提供幻想或幽默的语言接口，如克林贡语（科幻连续剧《星舰奇航记》中克林贡人的语言）和Leet语，还有愚人节里公司的笑话。

很多人推测Google对于yahoo的反应是籍由从Orkut，Gmail和Froogle搜集到的个人信息，Google下一步将会引入个性化搜索，事实上，在Google实验室网站里，有一个个性化的搜寻测试页面。

2005年7月19日，Google宣布将在中国设立研发中心。

2005年12月20日，谷歌公司宣布斥资10亿美元收购互联网服务供应商“美国在线”5%的股权。

Google和法律

有一些组织（其中最具争议性的是科学神教）已经开始根据千禧数字版权法要求Google把其他的站点上的被版权保护的材料移除。Google一般是按要求把连接移除然后在搜索结果里添上一个连接到这个问题的连接。也有一些人抱怨“Google缓存”违犯了著作权。然而，多数人似乎是认为缓存是网络正常功能的一部分，并且HTTP对那些无效的缓存提供了合适的机制（这也是Google所尊重的；网站所有人可以使用robots.txt文件使他们站点的一部分或全部不被包含在搜寻引擎索引内）。

2002年，新闻报告了Google搜寻引擎在中国大陆被封。一个叫做elgooG的镜像站点（镜像包括所有的方面：所有文字也是反的）证实了这个封锁的存在。封锁稍后被解除，有报告指出，不只是Google本身被封，而且，Google网站的缓存功能由于可能准许中国使用者绕开任何对网站的封锁而访问缓存也被封锁。这里有一个类似代理服务器的动态Google像镜站点http://www.zensur.freerk.com/google/.

Google努力精炼的数据库已经导致一些法律论战，一个叫SearchKing的公司于2002年10月的一个诉讼Google故意夸大页面评级卖广告。在辩护中，Google说了它的页面等级是受保护的。2003年中旬，法官以这个理由驳回了SearchKing的诉讼。

2003年下半年和2004开始，传出了Google会因为使用Linux而受到SCO集团起诉的谣言，这是SCO对IBM在Linux版权归属诉讼的一部分。

2004年5月，巴尔的摩太阳报采访了Peri Fleisher——Edward Kasner的侄女，Edward Kasner是发明单词“googol”的数学家，Peri Fleisher说Kasner的子孙们正在探讨合法行为对抗Google的名字。

2004年9月，香港的Google由于未经本地两家电视台允许而私自下载了他们放在网上的电视片断并提供与Google的用户，而被控侵权。同月的27日，动态网络公司的夏比尔撰文指出Google新闻中国版进行自我审查，去除了一些可能引起中国官方不快的新闻源，这则消息被世界各大通讯社转载，Google则在其官方Blog上发表文章说这样做是出于无奈。

美国司法部要求谷歌公司提供百万个网站地址及用户输入的搜索关键词等资料，公司对此要求表示拒绝。2006年3月17日，美国地区法院就谷歌公司与司法部之间的纠纷作出裁决，要求其向司法部提交部分索引网址，但无需提交用户输入的搜索关键词等信息。

Salaries

Originally, typical salaries at Google were considered to be quite low by industry standards. For example, some system administrators earned no more than $33,000 — while $40,000 at that time was considered to be low for the Bay Area job market. Nevertheless, Google's excellent stock performance following the IPO has enabled these early employees to be competitively compensated by participation in the corporation's remarkable equity growth. In 2005, Google has implemented other employee incentives such as the Google Founders' Award, in addition to offering higher salaries to new employees. Google's workplace amenities, culture, global popularity, and strong brand recognition have also attracted potential applicants.

After the company's IPO in August 2004, it was reported that Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, as well as CEO Eric Schmidt, have accepted a base salary of $1.00. They have all declined recent offers of bonuses and increases in compensation by Google's board of directors. In a 2006 report of the world's richest people, Forbes reported that Sergey Brin was #26 with a net worth of $12.9 billion, and Larry Page was #27 with a net worth of $12.8 billion

公司年薪

很多人都认为在Google工作的基本年薪太低了。举例来说，系统管理只有不超过$33，000-37，000，这以湾区标准来看是非常非常少的了。

Corporate culture

Google is particularly known for its relaxed corporate culture, reminiscent of the Dot-com boom. Google's corporate philosophy is based on many casual principles including, "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." A complete list of corporate fundamentals is available on Google's website. The company encourages equality within corporate levels. Twice a week there is a roller hockey game in the company parking lot. Google's relaxed corporate culture can also be seen externally through their holiday variations of the Google logo.

"Twenty percent" time

Every Google engineer is encouraged to spend 20 percent (20%) of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News and orkut, originated from these independent endeavors. In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience, stated that her analysis showed that half of new product launches originated from 20% time.

Googleplex

As a further play on Google's name, its headquarters, located in California, are referred to as "the Googleplex" — a googolplex being 1 followed by a googol of zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf. multiplex, cineplex, etc). The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, and a real-time projection of current search queries. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus, and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, Foosball, a baby grand piano, a pool table, and ping pong. In addition to the rec room, there are snack rooms stocked with various cereals, gummy bears, toffee, licorice, cashews, yogurt, carrots, fresh fruit, and dozens of different drinks including fresh juice, soda, and make your own cappuccino.

April Fool's Day jokes

Google has a tradition of creating April Fool's Day jokes - such as Google MentalPlex, which allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web. In 2002, they claimed that pigeons were the secret behind their growing search engine. In 2004, they featured Google Lunar (which claimed to feature jobs on the moon) and in 2005, a fictitious brain-boosting drink, termed Google Gulp was announced. In 2006 they came up with Google Romance.

One can find other pranks hidden in amongst Google's pages; for instance, in the languages list one can find a Bork! Bork! Bork! version of the site (imitating the Muppet Show's Swedish Chef), and they also offer versions in Pig Latin, "Elmer Fudd", Hacker ("H4X0R"), and Klingon.

Some thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004 around April Fool's Day (as well as the doubling of Gmail's storage space to two gigabytes in 2005) was a joke, though it turned out (in both cases) to be a genuine announcement. In 2005 a comedic graph depicting Google's goal of "infinity plus one" GB of storage was featured on the Gmail homepage.

IPO and culture

Many people speculated that Google's IPO would inevitably lead to changes in the company's culture, because of shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions and short-term advances, or because a large number of the company's employees would suddenly become millionaires on paper. In a report given to potential investors, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised that the IPO would not change the company's culture. Later Mr. Page said, "We think a lot about how to maintain our culture and the fun elements."

As Google grows, many analysts are finding that the company is becoming more "corporate". In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy.

融资和IPO

Google的主要投资者是投机资本公司Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers和Sequoia Capital。2003年10月，当讨论可能的IPO（初始公开募股）的时候，公司几乎有被微软占股或吞并的可能。

2004年1月，Google宣布雇用摩根士丹利和高盛证劵集团管理及IPO。IPO被估计（最高）达40亿美元。因为银行的牵涉，对于Google估计有120亿美元在市场上被销售资本化。

2004年4月29日，Google从证券交易委员会为IPO申请了高达2,718,281,828美元的S-1表单。有文件显示Google自从2001年以后的每年里都是赢利的，而且仅在2003年还从赚的9亿6180万美元中获利1亿560万美元。

2004年5月，Google正式地减少来自高盛证劵集团IPO，留下摩根士丹利和瑞士信贷第一波士顿做联合承保人。

在开始的短暂踌躇之后，Google在2004年8月19日首 次公开募股的19，605，052股被以每份$85的价值出售。14，142，135股被Google筹得，5，462，917股卖给股东。销售上升到 16亿7000万元，其中大约12亿元在Google里。Google股票中的2亿7100万股在Google的掌控中。IPO给了Google超过 230亿美元的市场资本。大部份Google雇员立即变成了百万富翁。

Google目前在纳斯达克证券交易所下以股票代号GOOG进行交易。

Products and services

Service	Summary	Logo
Accessible Search	Google's Accessible Search is a search engine, aimed at the blind and visually impaired. It prioritises usable and accessible web sites in the search results, so the user incurs minimal distractions when browsing.
AdSense	AdSense is an advertisement program for website owners. Adverts can incorporate text, image and video. These are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis. Advertisements shown are from AdWords users, and are displayed using contextual relevancy to determine the subject matter of the page.
AdWords	AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product, and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads.
Alerts	Google Alerts is an e-mail notification service, which sends alerts based on chosen search terms, whenever the are new results. Alerts include web results, Groups results and news.
Analytics	Google Analytics is a free service that generates traffic statistics for defined websites. Webmasters can optimize their ad campaigns, based on the statistics that are given. Analytics is based on previous Urchin software.
Answers	Google Answers allows users to pay approved researchers to answer questions. Once a question has been resolved, they can be browsed or searched for free.
Apps for Your Domain	Google Apps for Your Domain service combines Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Page Creator into a single offering targeted to small businesses and educational institutions. Includes Administrator's control panel for managing services and users, and makes the services work with client's domain.
Base	Google Base enables content owners to submit content, have it hosted and make it easily searchable via Google. Information within the database is described using labels and attributes.
Blog Search	Google Blog Search is a search engine for blogs, with a continiously-updated search index. Results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger. Results can be viewed and filtered by date.
Bookmarks	Google Bookmarks is a free online bookmark storage service available to Google Account holders which organizes bookmarks with tags. Bookmarks labelled homepage will be displayed on the user's Personalized Homepage.
Book Search	Google Book Search is a search engine for the full text of printed books. Google scans and stores in its digital database. The content that is displayed depends on the arrangement with the publishers, ranging from short extracts to entire books.
Blogger	Blogger is a weblog publishing tool. Users can create a customisable, hosted blog with features such as photo publishing, comments, group blogs, blogger profiles and mobile-based posting with little technical knowledge.
Browser Sync	Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes web browser settings, including bookmarks, history, cookies and saved passwords, across multiple computers. It also allows users to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.
Calendar	Google Calendar is a free online calendar. It includes a unique "quick add" function, that inserts events from natural language input. Other features include Gmail intergration and calendar sharing. It is similar to those offered by Yahoo! and MSN.
Catalogs	Google Catalogs is a search engine for over 6,600 print catalogs, which are acquired through Optical character recognition.
Checkout	Google Checkout is an online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at simplifying the process of paying for online purchases. Webmasters can choose to implement Google Checkout as a form of payment. This service is currently only available to US residents.
Code	Google Code is Google's site for developers interested in Google-related development. The site contains Open Source code and lists of their API services.
Click-to-Call	Google Click-to-Call is a service which allows users to call advertisers for free at Google's expense from search results pages.
Compute	Google Compute is a feature of the Google Toolbar that enables a user's computer to help solve challenging scientific problems when it would otherwise be idle.
Co-op	Google Co-op enables users to subscribe to two types of content feeds: (1) Content feeds from sites they trust, and: (2) Feeds of sites labelled by subject matter experts. When a user subscribes to links and labels provided by a Google Co-op contributor this information is incorporated into that user's web search results when they search for a related topic.
Desktop	Google Desktop is a desktop search application, that makes e-mails, documents, music, photos, chat and web history searchable. It allows the installation of Google Gadgets, which are similar to Mac OS X's widgets.
Directory	Google Directory is a collection of links arranged into hierarchical subcategories. The links and their categorization are from the Open Directory Project (ODP), but are sorted by PageRank. The directory can be searched or browsed. Despite being based on the DMOZ, it is updated very infrequently and thus is probably of limited value as some sites it contains may no longer exist.
dodgeball	dodgeball is a social networking site built specifically for use on mobile phones. Users text their location to the service, which then notifies them of crushes, friends, friends' friends and interesting venues nearby.
Earth	Google Earth is a free, downloadable virtual globe application. It maps the entire earth by pasting images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS over a 3D globe.
Finance	Google Finance features searchable US business news, opinion, and financial data. Features include company-specific pages, blog search, interactive charts, executives information, discussion groups and a portfolio.
Froogle	Froogle is a price engine that searches online stores, including auctions, for products. It is also offered in Wireless Markup Language (WML) form as Froogle Mobile.
Gmail	Gmail is a free webmail and POP e-mail service provided by Google, known for its abundant storage and advanced interface. Its competitors include AIM Mail, MSN Hotmail / Windows Live Mail, and Yahoo! Mail. It was first released in an invitation-only form on April 1, 2004, leading many to assume that it was an April Fools' Day joke.
Groups	Google Groups is a searchable Usenet archive. As well as searching, users can join a group, make a group, publish posts, and track their favorite topics.
Hello	Hello is a free application that allows users to send images across the Internet and publish them to their blogs.
Image search	Google Image search is a search engine for images. Results are based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image, and text adjacent to the image. When searching, a thumbnail of each matching image is displayed.
Joga Bonito	Joga Bonito is an Internet community for those interested in soccer. It is similar to services like as MySpace, in that each member has a profile, and can join groups based on shared interests. The service allows a user to meet other fans, create games and clubs, access athletes from Nike, and watch and upload video clips and photos.
Labs	Google Labs lists all of Google's experimental projects, that are not yet widely available.
Language Tools	Google Language Tools is a collection of applications, including one that allows users to translate text or web pages from one language to another, and another that allows searching in web pages located in a specific country or written in a specific language.
Maps Formerly Local	Google Maps provides maps, satellite imagery, driving directions and local search for the USA, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. It is also available as a mobile service in some countries.
Mars	Google Mars provides imagery of Mars, using the Google Maps interface. Elevation, visible imagery and infrared imagery can be shown. It was released on March 13, 2006, the anniversary of the birth of astronomer Percival Lowell.
Measure Map	Measure Map provides statistics for blog writers. It was launched on February 2, 2006.
Mobile	Google Mobile allows users to search using Google from wireless devices such as mobile phones and PDAs.
Moon	Google Moon provides NASA imagery of the moon through the Google Maps interface. It was launched on July 20, 2005, in honor of the first manned Moon landing on July 20, 1969.
Music Trends	Google Music Trends shows a ranking of the songs played with iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player and Yahoo Music. Trends are generated by Google Talk's "share your music status" feature.
News	Google News is an automated news compilation service and search engine for news. There are versions of the aggregator for more than 20 languages. While the selection of news stories is fully automated, the sites included are selected by human editors.
Notebook	Google Notebook provides a simple way to save and organize information when conducting research online. The tool permits users to clip text, images, and links from pages while browsing, save them online, access them from any computer, and share them with others.
Orkut	Orkut is a social networking service, where users can list their personal and professional information, create relationships amongst friends and join communities of mutual interest. New Orkut accounts are by invitation only from an existing member.
Pack	Google Pack is a collection of computer applications, including Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picasa, Google Talk, Mozilla Firefox and more. It was released on January 6, 2006.
Page Creator	Google Page Creator is a beta release of a web-publishing program which creates pages and hosts them on Google's servers.
Personalized Home	Google Personalized Homepage is a customizable, modular page which a user can access through their Google Account. It was launched in May 2005. The user selects the content of the page from RSS feeds as well as specialized modules offering services such as: language translation, recipe databases, new emails, Wikipedia search and weather forecasts.
Personalized Search	Google Personalized Search prioritizes Google search results based on previous search habits. Search History keeps a record of all searches and clicked results while a user is logged into a Google Account and allows this to be accessed and searched. This also tracks queries made to Google Images and Google News.
Picasa	Picasa is a downloadable photo-organisation application. Users can organise photos into albums and collections, view in various orders, apply simple effects, create slideshows, print and order physical prints.
Picasa Web Albums	Picasa Web Albums is Picasa’s newest feature, designed to help users post and share their photos quickly and easily on the web.
Reader	Google Reader is a web-based feed reader, or "news aggregator", capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds. It allows the user to subscribe to feeds by URL, import/export subscription lists using OPML, and search for new feeds. The service also embeds audio enclosures in the page.
Ride Finder	Google Ride Finder is a service that allows users to find a taxi, limousine or shuttle using real time position of vehicles in 14 US cities. Ride Finder uses the Google Maps interface and cooperates with any car service that wishes to participate.
Scholar	Google Scholar a search engine for the full text of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and scholarly fields. Today, the index includes virtually all peer-reviewed journals available online, except those published by Elsevier, the world's largest scientific publisher.
Sets	Google Sets attempts to make a list of items when the user enters a few examples. For example, entering "Green, Purple, Red" produces the list "Green, Purple, Red, Blue, Black, White, Yellow, Orange, Brown.
Sitemaps	Google Sitemaps is part of Google Webmaster Tools, and allows users to create a file that lists the URLs on the site for better indexing.
SketchUp	Google SketchUp is a simple 3D sketching program with many of the tools a professional 3D program has. SketchUp models can be directly imported into Google Earth and can be skinned with various premade colours and textures.
SMS	Google SMS is a mobile phone short message service offered by Google in several countries, including the USA, Japan, Canada, Germany, Spain and formerly the UK. It allows search queries to be sent as a text message. The results are sent as a reply, with no premium charge for the service.
Special Searches	Google Special Searches is a collection of search engines, tailored to a particular topic. These include U.S. Government Search, Linux Search, BSD Search, Apple Macintosh Search, and a Microsoft Windows Search. There is also Google University Search, which lets you select a particular university, then search within their own site, and Google Public Service Search, a service intended for non-commercial organizations only.
Spreadsheets	Google Spreadsheets allows the creation and editing of spreadsheets online, as well as real-time chat collaboration and editing. It was released on June 6, 2006 on a 'limited test basis'. Users were granted access on a first-come, first-serve basis after requesting to sign up.
Store	Google Store sells a range of physical Google-branded products. These include clothes, toys, office equipment and lava lamps.
Suggest	Google Suggest uses auto-complete while typing to give popular searches. It is still in beta stage.
Talk	Google Talk is a windows application for VoIP and instant messaging. Google Talk beta was released on August 24, 2005. It consists of both a service and a client used to connect to the service. It is integrated with Gmail.
Toolbar	Google Toolbar is an internet browser toolbar available for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox (with slightly different features). Features include, but not limited to, Google search bar, phishing protection, feed subscription, spellcheck, autofill, translator and pop-up blocker.
Transit	Google Transit provides public transport trip planning through the Google Maps interface. Google Transit was released on December 7, 2005, but only for the Portland, Oregon area.
Trends	Google Trends shows, as a graph, the popularity of particular search terms over time. Multiple terms can be shown at once. Results can also be displayed by city, region or language. Related news stories are also shown.
Video	Google Video allows users to search, buy, watch and upload videos. Users can also see stills and closed caption transcripts of some videos. Search is based on title, keywords, network and transcript. Google has signed agreements with CBS and the NBA to offer some programs online.
Web Accelerator	Google Web Accelerator is a download that uses various strategies to increase the speed of browsing.
Web API	The Google Web API is Google's public interface for registered developers. Using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), a programmer can write services for search and data mining that rely on Google's results. Also, users can view cached pages and make suggestions for better spelling.
Web Search	Google Web Search is an internet search engine. It was the company's first creation, coming out of beta on September 21, 1999, and remains by far their most popular and famous: it receives 200 million requests a day and is the largest search engine on the Internet. It uses a proprietary system (including PageRank) to return the search results from its 8 billion Web site index. A culture has grown around the search engine, and to google has come to mean, "to search for something on Google." When certain terms are used, Web Search automatically provides: calculations, conversions, definitions, movie information, music information, phonebook details, spellcheck, alternative terms, or weather information.
Web Toolkit	Google Web Toolkit allows users to create AJAX interfaces for their websites. Google claimed it could be used to create similar interfaces to that of Gmail and Google Calendar.
Writely	Writely is an online word-processor. On March 9, 2006 Google acquired Upstartle, the makers of Writely.
Zeitgeist	Google Zeitgeist is a collection of lists of the most frequent search queries. There are weekly, monthly and yearly lists, as well as topic and country specific lists.

Google's core business model revolves around its internet search engine, which also includes a tool to search for images, news stories, and peer-reviewed, academic publications. Froogle is a similar search engine that is geared towards searching online shopping websites for products based on price. Google Groups is a service that lets users search the complete archive of Usenet newsgroups, as well as hosting mailing lists and other discussion groups. In early 2006, the company also launched Google Video, which not only allows users to search and view freely available videos, but also offers various media publishers to offer their content for a fee, including television shows on CBS, NBA basketball games, and music videos. Videos offered via this service are protected using Google's own Digital rights management system.

Google Maps, previously known as Google Local, provides road maps for the United States, Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Japan, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. Medium-resolution satellite images are also available for the entire globe, and sister projects Google Moon and Google Mars provide satellite imagery of the Moon and Mars, respectively.

In 2004, Google and Keyhole provided Google Earth, a downloadable program that allows the user to zoom into nearly any spot on the earth, close enough to make out cars, and in some cases, people. The technology comes with hundreds of add-ons, like "Crime rate", to see the crime rate of the city you are zoomed in on, or "3D buildings", to create 3D models of the towers and buildings of larger cities. There are three available versions, "free edition", "plus", and "pro".

In 2004, Google launched its own free web-based email service, known as Gmail. Gmail features improved spam filtering technology, combined with the capability to use Google search technology on individual email messages. Gmail shook up the free, web-based email market by initially offering 1 GB of email storage, prompting competitors Yahoo! and Hotmail to increase their storage quotas considerably. Google has since expanded Gmail's mail quota (and continues to expand it); as of August, 2006, the quota was over 2.75 GB. The service generates revenue by displaying advertisements from the AdWords service that are tailored to the content of the email messages displayed on screen. This feature has proven controversial, with some privacy advocates expressing concern that the company was reading individual emails. Google maintains, however, that the process is fully automated and that no humans read the content of users' messages.

Google also launched Google SMS in October 2004, an original service that allows users to do specific queries simply using their cellphones. This service, first released in the US, is now also available in the U.K., Japan, Canada, Germany and Spain.

Google also branched into the instant messaging arena in August of 2005 by introducing Google Talk, a Jabber-based instant messaging service. Since February, 2006, Google Talk has been integrated with Gmail, allowing users to send instant messages directly from their email service, as well as to save and archive messages.

Google Desktop is a service that brings the search engine to the local computer desktop, allowing one to search individual files, folders, and emails that reside locally on one's own PC.

2006 saw the dawn of a number of new services, such as Google Page Creator (an easy to use, WYSIWYG webpage creator), Google Calendar (a shared-calendaring application), Google Spreadsheets (an application for editing of spreadsheets online), Google Notebook (a tool permitting users to clip text, images, and links from web pages while browsing, save them online, access them from any computer, and share them with others), and Google Apps for Your Domain (a combination of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Page Creator into a single offering targeted to small businesses and educational institutions ).

2006 also saw the introduction of Google Code - Project Hosting, a Subversion-based source code and bug tracker as a direct competitor to SourceForge.

公司产品和服务

Google搜索引擎

公司产品Google是 全世界最受欢迎的搜索引擎，使用一种自创的称为PageRank™（网页级别）技术来索引网页，索引是由程序“Googlebot”执行的，它会定期地请 求访问已知的网页新拷贝。页面更新愈快，Googlebot访问的也愈多。再通过在这些已知网页上的链接来发现新页面，并加入到数据库。索引数据库和网页缓存大小是以兆兆字节（terabyte） 来衡量的。A culture has grown around the very popular search engine and the word to google has come to mean, "to search for something on Google."

由 于Google已经成为最流行的搜索引擎之一，很多网站管理员十分热衷于跟踪他们网站的排名，并试图解释他们排名变化的原因。因此，现在已有不少 网站提供服务，意图在一些高流量的讨论区内刻意加入商业网站的链接，从而使该网站在Google的排名提高。这种“发明”虽然的确有一定成效，但这种收取 客户金钱，在第三者的讨论区上大卖广告，一方面对讨论区的读者做成困扰，也侵害了讨论区的商业利益；而这种做法也明显违反了商业道德。

Google已将大量先前的测试服务整合为搜索功能的一部分(如Google计算器)。在Google中搜索what is the answer to life, the universe and everything?(什么是生命，宇宙以及所有一切事物的答案?)将会得到智能化的搜索结果. (这曾是著名科幻小说的情节，被认为是人工智能达到一定高度的表现，即机器能释读人类的语言。)

Gmail

2004年4月1日愚人节，Google宣布推出1GB空间的电子邮件服务Gmail，次年4月1日更是增加为2GB以上，并增加了多语言入口以及富文本编辑功能。这个邮箱会利用广告词服务扫描邮件内容以显示特定的广告来营利。无论如何，最初发布的消息引发了业界的怀疑。Google的产品副主管Jonathan Rosenberg稍后向英国广播公司的新闻重申“我们对Gmail的发布是认真的。”

Gmail邮箱拥有2000MB以上的存储空间。比起大部分其他免费的网络邮箱服务都要大很多——例如，微软的Hotmail和雅虎的 邮箱。为了回击Gmail，这两家公司稍后推出了邮箱升级计划，Hotmail英文免费邮箱将由2MB升级到250MB，雅虎英文免费邮箱由4-6MB升 级到100MB，后来很快变成250MB，后来雅虎免费邮箱更升级到1GB。其他的邮箱服务提供商也紧跟其后，有一些邮箱现在已经比Gmail还要大了。

2004年8月25日，这项服务开始进行内部测试。公众目前还不能自由注册。不管怎么样，一些Blogger用户还有收到已有的Gmail用户邀请的人已经可以使用他了。由于在类似swap的交换系统上Gmail邀请被人用钱和物品交换，Google后来改变了他的政策：不允许用钱来换Gmail邀请。

有许多人批评Gmail的隐私策略/ 其中有很多是批评“残留的电子邮件拷贝可能会在我们的系统上保留一段时间，甚至是你把它从邮箱里删除或是终止你的帐号后也是这样。”这一条款的。很多人相 信这意味着Google会有意的永久存档已被删除的邮件副本。Google稍后宣称他们将“使用时将尽快地使合理有效的从我们的系统里删除信息”。然而， 很多的批评仍然反对Google计划在邮箱内添加自动扫描邮件的文本关联广告。

Gmail Notifier

Gmail Notifier是Google出品的用来检视Gmail邮箱的软件。该软件能实时提醒用户新收到的电子邮件。

Blogger

2003年，Google接管了Pyra实验室及其Blogger服务。Google使得先前需要收费的一些功能对用户免费。

Blogger工具及服务，使得发布weblog变得更加简单。用户不需要书写任何代码或是安装任何软件和脚本。而且，用户可以自由的改变blog的设计方案。

Orkut

Orkut没有在Google的页面上被提及。Orkut是一个服务提供商，它被Google工程师们创建并维护。Orkut是一种社会性网络服务，在Orkut用户可以留下他们的个人或专业信息，创建与朋友之间的关系或者因为共有的兴趣爱好加入虚拟社团.

有传言说Orkut和Gmail是Google有效搜集他们用户信息计划的一部分，为了将来提供更好的个性化搜索。Google已经在Google实验室开始提供个性化搜索测试。

Picasa

2004年7月13日，Google接管了Picasa公司软件的开发，Picasa软件可以管理共享数字图像。Picasa同时被整合进Google的Blogger内。现在它是免费的,而且提供对中文的全面支持。

Hello

Hello是Picasa公司的另外一个产品。它允许身处异地的朋友一同浏览图片或交换评论。它也是免费的。

Google的GBrowser浏览器

在Google注册“gbrowser.com”域名之后，很多人相信它计划开发一个万维网浏览器，用以与Internet Explorer竞争。执行主管们想秘密的开发浏览器。一个发言人暗示说，“Google可能再次发明浏览器技术。”Google雇佣了Adam Bosworth，他之前在微软工 作并写了Internet Explorer，还有Joe Beda，他曾在微软工作七年并致力于开发下一代操作系统Vista 图形化接口（GUI）。最近，Firefox的项目负责人之一Ben Goodger也加入了谷歌公司。但是Google官方从来没有承认过任何Google的浏览器开发计划。

Google Desktop Search

2004年Google推出本地资源搜索工具，需要安装一个不到2M的程序在硬盘，便可通过桌面搜索搜索本地硬盘里的文档。支持的搜索内容包括：

• Outlook Email
• Outlook Express
• Word
• Excel
• Powerpoint
• Internet Explorer
• AOL Instant Messenger
• Netscape Mail/Thunderbird
• 企业版还包括Lotus Notes Email
• Netscape/Firefox/Mozilla
• PDF
• Music
• Images
• Video
• QQ
• MSN Messenger

通过使用插件，Google Desktop Search还可以支持任意一种文件，前提是，你必须有这种文件类型的插件（无论Google开发的、或是你自行开发的、或是第三方软件）。 Google桌面搜索推出后，Yahoo!、MSN以及一些中国大陆搜索网站也相继推出了桌面搜索工具。

之前据报Google正在开发一款下载工具，内部开发名称为Puffin，它可以搜索本地文件。Puffin似乎是为了迎战下一代开发名称为Longhorn的微软视窗操作系统中将提供的文件和网络搜寻能力而开发的——Longhorn中的这项功能将与Google的技术核心万维网搜索业务产生直接的竞争。

2004年下半年谷歌公司推出了这一桌面搜索工具，它的正式名称是Google Desktop Search，这个工具主要用来通过关键字方式搜索安装了该软件的计算机硬盘上的MS Office和TXT文档。

2005年3月8日该软件英文正式版推出正式版，同时推出中文、韩文测试版。该英文正式版产品增加了众多功能，包括插件的使用。5月26日该软件推出中文正式版，支持QQ和MSN Messenger聊天记录搜索。Google Blog。该软件对中文的支持程度较微软和雅虎的桌面搜索工具更好且软件体积更小，速度也较其它软件快。

Google Web Accelerator

2005年5月4日，谷歌公司推出一款新的软体：Google Web Accelerator。它是一款为宽频连接设计的软体。该软体可以利用Google位于世界各地的服务器而加速网页的访问，其原理类似于破网软件，透过架设本地代理，把浏览器的连接请求通过此代理访问实现。与一般的破网软件不同的是，Google Web Accelerator会向 Google网站传送回诸如页面请求、临时cookies之 类的数据，通过与位于Google服务器上的版本比对只下载更新的部分，而且因为一般访问Google网站较其他网站快，这也加快了网络访问。该软件更可 以对经常访问的网页进行存档以加速访问。Google网页加速器可以利用Google全球的计算机网络的处理能力，提高网站的加载速度。还能够在向计算机 发送前对网站数据进行压缩。Google的这一系统存储用户经常访问的网站的拷贝，并自动获取这些网站的新数据，当用户请求访问这些网站时，浏览器仅仅需 要加载网站上更新的部分。

对于隐私问题，该软件不会访问任何https网站，也可以自定义某些网站不允许加速。Google 宣称不会搜集或转售个人信息。

该软件目前默认支持Mozilla Firefox和Internet Explorer浏览器。对于其他浏览器需要手动配置代理服务器。

目前，该软件在中国大陆的部分地区不能起到加速作用，估计是受到了网络封锁。

Keyhole

Google Earth

2005年6月30日，谷歌公司发布了Google Earth的β版，相信由先前的Keyhole演变而来。Google在UTC时间2005年7月1日再次暂停了该软件的下载。现在的Google Earth已经发展为三个不同版本的软件。2006年1月10日，Mac上的Google Earth发布。

Google Maps

Google Maps提供各种地图服务，包括局部详细的卫星照片。2005年6月20日，Google Maps的覆盖范围从原先的美国、英国及加拿大扩大为全球。

注意: 该软件仍然处于β状态， 这意味着软件本身可能存在需要进一步修复的缺陷与改进。

Google Moon

2005年7月20日，谷歌公司发布了称为Google Moon的网上服务，纪念阿波罗11号于1969年7月20日登月36周年。此服务以之前发布的Google Maps作基础，卫星数据则来自NASA。用家可使用Google Moon观看月球凹凸不平的表面地形，当把地图放到最大时，月球表面会变成一片乾酪。

AdWords

Google建立的关键词搜索广告服务。

AdSense

Google建立一个广告联盟，加盟的网站根据CPC，CPS的广告方式运行。目前有成千上万的网站加入此联盟。

Google Talk

Google的即时聊天软 件，于2005年8月24日发布。用户必须先拥有一个Gmail帐号，才能登陆并使用这个软件。目前只有英文版（有非官方汉化版本），功能还很简单。具有 VoIP语音通话功能，界面简单清新，安装文件不到900K。软件的设计思想是力求简洁，所以尚不具备文件传输和表情图片等功能（但在对话中发布“:)” 等文字会被Gtalk软件以彩色显示，可见设计者想到了表情符号的功能）。2006年3月，Google Talk的文字聊天记录可以被保存在用户的Gmail账户里，并且Gmail用户可以在网页上使用Google Talk的部分聊天功能。

Google Pack

2006年1月6日，Google Pack在拉斯维加斯国际消费性电子展上宣布，将Google与非Google软件（如Adobe Reader、Norton Antivirus或Trillian）捆束到一个软件包中。用户可以自行选择要下载的软件，一次性下载所需要的全部软件。

Google Calendar

2006年4月13日推出。

Google Analytics

Google推出的免费网站流量和数据统计服务。只对Gmail用户开放。

Google Spreadsheets

Google的网页版试算表，类似微软的Excel。于2006年6月6日推出。

Google Apps for Your Domain

2006年8月27日，Google公司宣布推出通过互联网提供电子邮件、即时网络通信及网络电话、电子日历和网页制作等服务的软件平台Google Apps for Your Domain。该公司称，把这些过去单独提供的软件服务进行整合，可以满足客户在商业方面的基本需要。

Google partnerships

On September 28, 2005, Google announced a long-term research partnership with NASA which would involve Google building a 1-million square foot R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center. NASA and Google are planning to work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing for Google engineers.

Time Warner's AOL unit and Google unveiled an expanded partnership on December 21, 2005, including an enhanced global advertising partnership and a $1 Billion investment by Google for a 5% stake in AOL.As part of the collaboration, Google plans to work with AOL on video search and offer AOL's premium-video service within Google Video. This will allow users of Google Video to search for AOL's premium-video services. Display advertising throughout the Google network will also increase.

Additionally, Google has also recently formed a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help the open source office program OpenOffice.org.

In August, 2006, Google signed a $900 million deal with Fox International Media to provide search and advertising on MySpace and other Fox-owned websites.

外部链接

Google.com的链接

• Google网站
• Google网上论坛
• Google图像
• Google新闻（活跃测试中）
• Google Web Accelerator
• Froogle 产品搜索引擎（活跃测试中）
• Google功能接口
• Google网页目录
• Google Book Search
• Google商店
• AdWords
• AdSense
• Gmail（β版）
• Google实验室（一个测试服务试验场）
• Google Groups 2
• Google Web Accelerator
• Blogger
• Google正式雇员用的weblog
• googlesyndication.com-Google官方镜像
• 早期Google.com接口-1998年11月11日的Google界面，来自Internet Archive
• Google超级界面
• Google彩蛋

关于Google的网站

• Google Fight - instantly compare two search queries
• 非官方Google网页目录 - 工具和资源的搜集
• Google世界 - a directory to find any type of information about the world according to Google
• The Unofficial Google迷俱乐部
• Google Adsenser Tracker
• Google观察的观察
• Google的新闻
• Logoogle.com - Google图标
• Zorgloob - The french news about Google
• - A blog entry detailing the answers to a public math challenge issued by Google
• PageRank™计算
• IPO:
  • Google IPO Coverage
  • Google Initial Public Offering， Google IPO
  • Prospectus as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 18， 2004