172-446: Google Search (also known simply as Google or Google.com ) is a search engine operated by Google . It allows users to search for information on the Web by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze and rank websites based on their relevance to the search query. It is the most popular search engine worldwide. Google Search is the most-visited website in
344-647: A BASIC interpreter for the device. Gates called MITS and claimed that he had a working interpreter, and MITS requested a demonstration. Allen worked on a simulator for the Altair while Gates developed the interpreter, and it worked flawlessly when they demonstrated it to MITS in March 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico . MITS agreed to distribute it, marketing it as Altair BASIC . Gates and Allen established Microsoft on April 4, 1975, with Gates as CEO, and Allen suggested
516-513: A recursive score for pages, based on the weighted sum of other pages linking to them. PageRank is thought to correlate well with human concepts of importance. In addition to PageRank, Google, over the years, has added many other secret criteria for determining the ranking of resulting pages. This is reported to comprise over 250 different indicators, the specifics of which are kept secret to avoid difficulties created by scammers and help Google maintain an edge over its competitors globally. PageRank
688-515: A semantic search feature named Knowledge Graph . Analysis of the frequency of search terms may indicate economic, social and health trends. Data about the frequency of use of search terms on Google can be openly inquired via Google Trends and have been shown to correlate with flu outbreaks and unemployment levels, and provide the information faster than traditional reporting methods and surveys. As of mid-2016, Google's search engine has begun to rely on deep neural networks . In August 2024,
860-679: A "Google Search" mobile app for Android and iOS devices. The mobile apps exclusively feature Google Discover and a "Collections" feature, in which the user can save for later perusal any type of search result like images, bookmarks or map locations into groups. Android devices were introduced to a preview of the feed, perceived as related to Google Now , in December 2016, while it was made official on both Android and iOS in July 2017. In April 2016, Google updated its Search app on Android to feature "Trends"; search queries gaining popularity appeared in
1032-482: A 2007 interview with the Financial Times : "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take? ' ". Schmidt reaffirmed this during a 2010 interview with The Wall Street Journal : "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, they want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." Because Google
1204-426: A Knowledge Panel is derived from various sources, including Misplaced Pages and other structured databases, ensuring that the information displayed is both accurate and contextually relevant. For instance, querying a well-known public figure may trigger a Knowledge Panel displaying essential details such as biographical information, birthdate, and links to social media profiles or official websites. The primary objective of
1376-528: A Microsoft operating system or a non-Microsoft operating system. In effect, the royalty payment to Microsoft when no Microsoft product is being used acts as a penalty, or tax, on the OEM's use of a competing PC operating system. Since 1988, Microsoft's use of per processor licenses has increased." Following Bill Gates's internal "Internet Tidal Wave memo" on May 26, 1995, Microsoft began to redefine its offerings and expand its product line into computer networking and
1548-515: A US judge in Virginia ruled that Google's search engine held an illegal monopoly over Internet search. The court found that Google mantained its market dominance by paying large amounts to phone-makers and browser-developers to make Google its default search engine. Google indexes hundreds of terabytes of information from web pages . For websites that are currently down or otherwise not available, Google provides links to cached versions of
1720-448: A call must verify on their respective ends. On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures companies' progress against OKRs . Microsoft plans to incorporate Ally.io into its Viva family of employee experience products. On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced the acquisition of American video game developer and holding company Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal worth $ 68.7 billion. Activision Blizzard
1892-623: A certain number of pages crawled, amount of data indexed, or time spent on the website, the spider stops crawling and moves on. "[N]o web crawler may actually crawl the entire reachable web. Due to infinite websites, spider traps, spam, and other exigencies of the real web, crawlers instead apply a crawl policy to determine when the crawling of a site should be deemed sufficient. Some websites are crawled exhaustively, while others are crawled only partially". Indexing means associating words and other definable tokens found on web pages to their domain names and HTML -based fields. The associations are made in
SECTION 10
#17327718954512064-523: A chain of Microsoft-branded retail stores, and on October 22, 2009, the first retail Microsoft Store opened in Scottsdale, Arizona ; the same day Windows 7 was officially released to the public. Windows 7's focus was on refining Vista with ease-of-use features and performance enhancements, rather than an extensive reworking of Windows. As the smartphone industry boomed in the late 2000s, Microsoft had struggled to keep up with its rivals in providing
2236-722: A combination of AI, high-performance computing and quantum computing . The service includes Copilot, a GPT-4 based large language model tool to query and visualize data, write code, initiate simulations, and educate researchers. At a November 2023 developer conference, Microsoft announced two new custom-designed computing chips: The Maia chip, designed to run large language models, and Cobalt CPU, designed to power general cloud services on Azure. On November 20, 2023, Satya Nadella announced that Sam Altman , who had been ousted as CEO of OpenAI just days earlier, and Greg Brockman , who had resigned as president, would join Microsoft to lead
2408-525: A completely new user interface with a novel start button , and 32-bit compatibility; similar to NT, it provided the Win32 API. Windows 95 came bundled with the online service MSN , which was at first intended to be a competitor to the Internet, and (for OEMs) Internet Explorer , a Web browser . Internet Explorer has not bundled with the retail Windows 95 boxes, because the boxes were printed before
2580-535: A crucial component of search engines through algorithms such as Hyper Search and PageRank . The first internet search engines predate the debut of the Web in December 1990: WHOIS user search dates back to 1982, and the Knowbot Information Service multi-network user search was first implemented in 1989. The first well documented search engine that searched content files, namely FTP files,
2752-456: A day after hosting a Sting concert for 50 people, including Microsoft executives, in Davos , Switzerland. On January 23, 2023, Microsoft announced a new multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment deal with ChatGPT developer OpenAI . In June 2023, Microsoft released Azure Quantum Elements to run molecular simulations and calculations in computational chemistry and materials science using
2924-551: A deluxe version for $ 399.99. Increasingly present in the hardware business following Xbox, Microsoft 2006 released the Zune series of digital media players, a successor of its previous software platform Portable Media Center . These expanded on previous hardware commitments from Microsoft following its original Microsoft Mouse in 1983; as of 2007 the company sold the best-selling wired keyboard ( Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 ), mouse ( IntelliMouse ), and desktop webcam ( LifeCam ) in
3096-837: A disagreement with the government over censorship and a cyberattack. But Bing is in top three web search engine with a market share of 14.95%. Baidu is on top with 49.1% market share. Most countries' markets in the European Union are dominated by Google, except for the Czech Republic , where Seznam is a strong competitor. The search engine Qwant is based in Paris , France , where it attracts most of its 50 million monthly registered users from. Although search engines are programmed to rank websites based on some combination of their popularity and relevancy, empirical studies indicate various political, economic, and social biases in
3268-469: A graphical extension for MS-DOS , despite having begun jointly developing OS/2 with IBM that August. Microsoft moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Redmond, Washington , on February 26, 1986, and went public on March 13, with the resulting rise in stock making an estimated four billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees. Microsoft released its version of OS/2 to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) on April 2, 1987. In 1990,
3440-591: A great expanse of information, all at a single desk. He called it a memex . He described the system in an article titled " As We May Think " that was published in The Atlantic Monthly . The memex was intended to give a user the capability to overcome the ever-increasing difficulty of locating information in ever-growing centralized indices of scientific work. Vannevar Bush envisioned libraries of research with connected annotations, which are similar to modern hyperlinks . Link analysis eventually became
3612-471: A joint venture with NBC since 1996. On October 1, Microsoft announced its intention to launch a news operation, part of a new-look MSN , with Windows 8 later in the month. On October 26, 2012, Microsoft launched Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface . Three days later, Windows Phone 8 was launched. To cope with the potential for an increase in demand for products and services, Microsoft opened
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#17327718954513784-482: A keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings. Jughead (Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display) was a tool for obtaining menu information from specific Gopher servers. While the name of the search engine " Archie Search Engine " was not a reference to the Archie comic book series, " Veronica " and " Jughead " are characters in the series, thus referencing their predecessor. In
3956-437: A link to the search results using its proposed spelling), the ability to filter results to a date range, and many more. Google search accepts queries as normal text, as well as individual keywords. It automatically corrects apparent misspellings by default (while offering to use the original spelling as a selectable alternative), and provides the same results regardless of capitalization. For more customized results, one can use
4128-530: A major target of the controversy, will leave the company after the acquisition is finalized. The deal was closed on October 13, 2023. In December 2022, Microsoft announced a new 10-year deal with the London Stock Exchange Group for products including Microsoft Azure; Microsoft acquired around 4% of LSEG as part of the deal. In January 2023, CEO Satya Nadella announced Microsoft would lay off some 10,000 employees. The announcement came
4300-599: A major update in July 2017. Another major update was released in September 2018, which renamed the app from Google Feed to Google Discover, updated the design, and adding more features. Discover can be found on a tab in the Google app and by swiping left on the home screen of certain Android devices. As of 2019, Google will not allow political campaigns worldwide to target their advertisement to people to make them vote. At
4472-513: A minimalist interface to its search engine. In contrast, many of its competitors embedded a search engine in a web portal . In fact, the Google search engine became so popular that spoof engines emerged such as Mystery Seeker . By 2000, Yahoo! was providing search services based on Inktomi's search engine. Yahoo! acquired Inktomi in 2002, and Overture (which owned AlltheWeb and AltaVista) in 2003. Yahoo! switched to Google's search engine until 2004, when it launched its own search engine based on
4644-414: A mobile-friendly interface would be ranked lower and it is expected that this update will cause a shake-up of ranks . Businesses who fail to update their websites accordingly could see a dip in their regular websites traffic. Google's rise was largely due to a patented algorithm called PageRank which helps rank web pages that match a given search string. When Google was a Stanford research project, it
4816-622: A mode for the Windows operating system rather than a separate and unique operating system. In March the company also established guidelines that censor users of Office 365 from using profanity in private documents. In April 2018, Microsoft released the source code for Windows File Manager under the MIT License to celebrate the program's 20th anniversary. In April the company further expressed willingness to embrace open source initiatives by announcing Azure Sphere as its own derivative of
4988-567: A modern smartphone operating system, falling behind Apple and Google -sponsored Android in the United States. As a result, in 2010 Microsoft revamped their aging flagship mobile operating system, Windows Mobile , replacing it with the new Windows Phone OS that was released in October that year. It used a new user interface design language, codenamed "Metro", which prominently used simple shapes, typography, and iconography, utilizing
5160-587: A motion-sensing input device made by Microsoft and designed as a video game controller , first introduced in November 2010, was upgraded for the 2013 release of the Xbox One video game console. Kinect's capabilities were revealed in May 2013: an ultra-wide 1080p camera, function in the dark due to an infrared sensor, higher-end processing power and new software, the ability to distinguish between fine movements (such as
5332-605: A new 24/7 cable news channel, MSNBC . Microsoft created Windows CE 1.0 , a new OS designed for devices with low memory and other constraints, such as personal digital assistants . In October 1997, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court , stating that Microsoft violated an agreement signed in 1994 and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. On January 13, 2000, Bill Gates handed over
Google Search - Misplaced Pages Continue
5504-418: A new advanced AI research team. However, the plan was short-lived, as Altman was subsequently reinstated as OpenAI's CEO and Brockman rejoined the company amid pressure from OpenAI's employees and investors on its board. In March 2024, Inflection AI 's cofounders Mustafa Suleyman and Karen Simonyan announced their departure from the company in order to start Microsoft AI, with Microsoft acqui-hiring nearly
5676-646: A number of "holiday stores" across the U.S. to complement the increasing number of "bricks-and-mortar" Microsoft Stores that opened in 2012. On March 29, 2013, Microsoft launched a Patent Tracker. In August 2012, the New York City Police Department announced a partnership with Microsoft for the development of the Domain Awareness System which is used for Police surveillance in New York City . The Kinect ,
5848-406: A page can be useful to the website when the actual page has been lost, but this problem is also considered a mild form of linkrot . Typically when a user enters a query into a search engine it is a few keywords . The index already has the names of the sites containing the keywords, and these are instantly obtained from the index. The real processing load is in generating the web pages that are
6020-474: A panic due to its potential threat to Google Search. Google added the ability to generate images in October. At I/O in 2024, the feature was upgraded and renamed AI Overviews. AI Overviews was rolled out to users in the United States in May 2024. The feature faced public criticism in the first weeks of its rollout after errors from the tool went viral online. These included results suggesting users add glue to pizza or eat rocks, or incorrectly claiming Barack Obama
6192-410: A portion if it were to go through. On August 5, 2020, Microsoft stopped its xCloud game streaming test for iOS devices. According to Microsoft, the future of xCloud on iOS remains unclear and potentially out of Microsoft's hands. Apple has imposed a strict limit on " remote desktop clients " which means applications are only allowed to connect to a user-owned host device or gaming console owned by
6364-415: A project to bring you a new and improved Google experience, and over the next few months, you'll continue to see more updates to our look and feel." The new navigation bar has been negatively received by a vocal minority. In November 2013, Google started testing yellow labels for advertisements displayed in search results, to improve user experience. The new labels, highlighted in yellow color, and aligned to
6536-408: A public database, made available for web search queries. A query from a user can be a single word, multiple words or a sentence. The index helps find information relating to the query as quickly as possible. Some of the techniques for indexing, and caching are trade secrets, whereas web crawling is a straightforward process of visiting all sites on a systematic basis. Between visits by the spider ,
6708-601: A publishing division named Microsoft Press . Paul Allen resigned from Microsoft in 1983 after developing Hodgkin's lymphoma . Allen claimed in Idea Man: A Memoir by the co-founder of Microsoft that Gates wanted to dilute his share in the company when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease because he did not think that he was working hard enough. Allen later invested in low-tech sectors, sports teams, commercial real estate, neuroscience, private space flight, and more. Microsoft released Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985, as
6880-452: A record profit in 2007. The European Union imposed another fine of €899 million ($ 1.4 billion) for Microsoft's lack of compliance with the March 2004 judgment on February 27, 2008, saying that the company charged rivals unreasonable prices for key information about its workgroup and backoffice servers. Microsoft stated that it was in compliance and that "these fines are about the past issues that have been resolved". 2007 also saw
7052-443: A rudimentary computer to track and analyze automobile traffic data. Gates enrolled at Harvard University while Allen pursued a degree in computer science at Washington State University , though he later dropped out to work at Honeywell . The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems 's (MITS) Altair 8800 microcomputer, which inspired Allen to suggest that they could program
Google Search - Misplaced Pages Continue
7224-475: A search engine to discover it, and to have a web site's record updated after a substantial redesign. Some search engine submission software not only submits websites to multiple search engines, but also adds links to websites from their own pages. This could appear helpful in increasing a website's ranking , because external links are one of the most important factors determining a website's ranking. However, John Mueller of Google has stated that this "can lead to
7396-464: A search function was added, allowing users to search Yahoo! Directory. It became one of the most popular ways for people to find web pages of interest, but its search function operated on its web directory, rather than its full-text copies of web pages. Soon after, a number of search engines appeared and vied for popularity. These included Magellan , Excite , Infoseek , Inktomi , Northern Light , and AltaVista . Information seekers could also browse
7568-473: A search provider, its engine is part of a distributed computing system that can encompass many data centers throughout the world. The speed and accuracy of an engine's response to a query is based on a complex system of indexing that is continuously updated by automated web crawlers . This can include data mining the files and databases stored on web servers , but some content is not accessible to crawlers. There have been many search engines since
7740-612: A search uses 30 times more energy than a conventional one. It has also been criticized for condensing information from various sources, making it less likely for people to view full articles and websites. When it was announced in May 2024, Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance was quoted as saying "This will be catastrophic to our traffic, as marketed by Google to further satisfy user queries, leaving even less incentive to click through so that we can monetize our content." In August 2024, AI Overviews were rolled out in
7912-624: A searchable database of file names; however, Archie Search Engine did not index the contents of these sites since the amount of data was so limited it could be readily searched manually. The rise of Gopher (created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota ) led to two new search programs, Veronica and Jughead . Like Archie, they searched the file names and titles stored in Gopher index systems. Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) provided
8084-488: A secondary, less up-to-date index for desktop use. The change was a response to the continued growth in mobile usage, and a push for web developers to adopt a mobile-friendly version of their websites. In December 2017, Google began rolling out the change, having already done so for multiple websites. In August 2009, Google invited web developers to test a new search architecture, codenamed "Caffeine", and give their feedback. The new architecture provided no visual differences in
8256-634: A significant update to its core search algorithm and spam targeting, which is expected to wipe out 40 percent of all spam results. On March 20th, it was confirmed that the roll out of the spam update was complete. On September 10, 2024, the European-based EU Court of Justice found that Google held an illegal monopoly with the way the company showed favoritism to its shopping search, and could not avoid paying €2.4 billion. The EU Court of Justice referred to Google's treatment of rival shopping searches as "discriminatory" and in violation of
8428-453: A thumb movement), and determining a user's heart rate by looking at their face. Microsoft filed a patent application in 2011 that suggests that the corporation may use the Kinect camera system to monitor the behavior of television viewers as part of a plan to make the viewing experience more interactive. On July 19, 2013, Microsoft stocks suffered their biggest one-day percentage sell-off since
8600-402: A tremendous number of unnatural links for your site" with a negative impact on site ranking. In comparison to search engines, a social bookmarking system has several advantages over traditional automated resource location and classification software, such as search engine spiders . All tag-based classification of Internet resources (such as web sites) is done by human beings, who understand
8772-457: A website's homepage. The upgrade marked the most significant change to Google search in years, with more "human" search interactions and a much heavier focus on conversation and meaning. Thus, web developers and writers were encouraged to optimize their sites with natural writing rather than forced keywords, and make effective use of technical web development for on-site navigation. In 2023, drawing on internal Google documents disclosed as part of
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#17327718954518944-480: A wide variety of operators , including, but not limited to: Google also offers a Google Advanced Search page with a web interface to access the advanced features without needing to remember the special operators. Google applies query expansion to submitted search queries, using techniques to deliver results that it considers "smarter" than the query users actually submitted. This technique involves several steps, including: Search engine A search engine
9116-485: Is "tailor-made for the millions of people in [India and Indonesia] coming online for the first time". Google Search consists of a series of localized websites . The largest of those, the google.com site , is the top most-visited website in the world. Some of its features include a definition link for most searches including dictionary words, the number of results you got on your search, links to other searches (e.g. for words that Google believes to be misspelled, it provides
9288-420: Is Muslim. Google described these viral errors as "isolated examples", maintaining that most AI Overviews provide accurate information. Two weeks after the rollout of AI Overviews, Google made technical changes and scaled back the feature, pausing its use for some health-related queries and limiting its reliance on social media posts. Scientific American has criticised the system on environmental grounds, as such
9460-505: Is US$ 500,000 per year. Some analysts deemed this unthinkable ten years prior, however, as in 2001 then-CEO Steve Ballmer called Linux "cancer". Microsoft planned to launch a preview of Intune for Education "in the coming weeks", with general availability scheduled for spring 2017, priced at $ 30 per device, or through volume licensing agreements. In January 2018, Microsoft patched Windows 10 to account for CPU problems related to Intel's Meltdown security breach . The patch led to issues with
9632-431: Is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages and other relevant information on the Web in response to a user's query . The user inputs a query within a web browser or a mobile app , and the search results are often a list of hyperlinks, accompanied by textual summaries and images. Users also have the option of limiting the search to a specific type of results, such as images, videos, or news. For
9804-436: Is a feature integrated into Google search engine result pages, designed to present a structured overview of entities such as individuals, organizations, locations, or objects directly within the search interface. This feature leverages data from Google's Knowledge Graph, a database that organizes and interconnects information about entities, enhancing the retrieval and presentation of relevant content to users. The content within
9976-581: Is a personalized stream of articles, videos, and other news-related content. The feed contains a "mix of cards" which show topics of interest based on users' interactions with Google, or topics they choose to follow directly. Cards include, "links to news stories, YouTube videos, sports scores, recipes, and other content based on what [Google] determined you're most likely to be interested in at that particular moment." Users can also tell Google they're not interested in certain topics to avoid seeing future updates. Google Discover launched in December 2016 and received
10148-482: Is a system that generates an " inverted index " by analyzing texts it locates. This first form relies much more heavily on the computer itself to do the bulk of the work. Most Web search engines are commercial ventures supported by advertising revenue and thus some of them allow advertisers to have their listings ranked higher in search results for a fee. Search engines that do not accept money for their search results make money by running search related ads alongside
10320-441: Is because misinformation can affect users financially, physically, or emotionally. Therefore, the update targeted particularly those YMYL pages that have low-quality content and misinformation. This resulted in the algorithm targeting health and medical-related websites more than others. However, many other websites from other industries were also negatively affected. By 2012, it handled more than 3.5 billion searches per day. In 2013
10492-595: Is best known for producing franchises, including but not limited to Warcraft , Diablo , Call of Duty , StarCraft , Candy Crush Saga , Crash Bandicoot , Spyro , Tony Hawk's , Guitar Hero , and Overwatch . Activision and Microsoft each released statements saying the acquisition was to benefit their businesses in the metaverse , many saw Microsoft's acquisition of video game studios as an attempt to compete against Meta Platforms , with TheStreet referring to Microsoft wanting to become "the Disney of
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#173277189545110664-588: Is by far the world's most used search engine, with a market share of 90.6%, and the world's other most used search engines were Bing , Yahoo! , Baidu , Yandex , and DuckDuckGo . In 2024, Google's dominance was ruled an illegal monopoly in a case brought by the US Department of Justice. In Russia, Yandex has a market share of 62.6%, compared to Google's 28.3%. And Yandex is the second most used search engine on smartphones in Asia and Europe. In China, Baidu
10836-549: Is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet , Amazon , Apple , and Meta . However it has been criticized for its monopolistic practices and the company's software has been criticized for problems with ease of use , robustness , and security . Childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen sought to make a business using their skills in computer programming . In 1972, they founded Traf-O-Data , which sold
11008-600: Is currently the third-largest gaming company in the world by revenue, following the 2023 acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $ 68.7 billion. Microsoft has been market-dominant in the IBM PC–compatible operating system market and the office software suite market since the 1990s. Its best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems , the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications,
11180-475: Is illegal. Biases can also be a result of social processes, as search engine algorithms are frequently designed to exclude non-normative viewpoints in favor of more "popular" results. Indexing algorithms of major search engines skew towards coverage of U.S.-based sites, rather than websites from non-U.S. countries. Google Bombing is one example of an attempt to manipulate search results for political, social or commercial reasons. Several scholars have studied
11352-480: Is little evidence for the filter bubble. On the contrary, a number of studies trying to verify the existence of filter bubbles have found only minor levels of personalisation in search, that most people encounter a range of views when browsing online, and that Google news tends to promote mainstream established news outlets. The global growth of the Internet and electronic media in the Arab and Muslim world during
11524-421: Is only indexing less than 5% of the total Internet, with the rest belonging to the deep web , inaccessible through its search tools. In 2012, Google changed its search indexing tools to demote sites that had been accused of piracy . In October 2016, Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst with Google, announced that the search engine would be making a separate, primary web index dedicated for mobile devices, with
11696-709: Is that search engines and social media platforms use algorithms to selectively guess what information a user would like to see, based on information about the user (such as location, past click behaviour and search history). As a result, websites tend to show only information that agrees with the user's past viewpoint. According to Eli Pariser users get less exposure to conflicting viewpoints and are isolated intellectually in their own informational bubble. Since this problem has been identified, competing search engines have emerged that seek to avoid this problem by not tracking or "bubbling" users, such as DuckDuckGo . However many scholars have questioned Pariser's view, finding that there
11868-663: Is the most popular search engine , many webmasters attempt to influence their website's Google rankings. An industry of consultants has arisen to help websites increase their rankings on Google and other search engines. This field, called search engine optimization, attempts to discern patterns in search engine listings, and then develop a methodology for improving rankings to draw more searchers to their clients' sites. Search engine optimization encompasses both "on page" factors (like body copy, title elements, H1 heading elements and image alt attribute values) and Off Page Optimization factors (like anchor text and PageRank). The general idea
12040-538: Is the most popular search engine. South Korea's homegrown search portal, Naver , is used for 62.8% of online searches in the country. Yahoo! Japan and Yahoo! Taiwan are the most popular avenues for Internet searches in Japan and Taiwan, respectively. China is one of few countries where Google is not in the top three web search engines for market share. Google was previously a top search engine in China, but withdrew after
12212-508: Is the opinion of the owner of one business about which there have been numerous complaints, that negative publicity, for example, numerous consumer complaints, may serve as well to elevate page rank on Google Search as favorable comments. The particular problem addressed in The New York Times article, which involved DecorMyEyes , was addressed shortly thereafter by an undisclosed fix in the Google algorithm. According to Google, it
12384-562: Is to affect Google's relevance algorithm by incorporating the keywords being targeted in various places "on page", in particular the title element and the body copy (note: the higher up in the page, presumably the better its keyword prominence and thus the ranking). Too many occurrences of the keyword, however, cause the page to look suspect to Google's spam checking algorithms. Google has published guidelines for website owners who would like to raise their rankings when using legitimate optimization consultants. It has been hypothesized, and, allegedly,
12556-463: Is to search for text in publicly accessible documents offered by web servers, as opposed to other data, such as images or data contained in databases . It was originally developed in 1996 by Larry Page , Sergey Brin , and Scott Hassan . The search engine would also be set up in the garage of Susan Wojcicki 's Menlo Park home. In 2011, Google introduced " Google Voice Search " to search for spoken, rather than typed, words. In 2012, Google introduced
12728-613: The Azure cloud computing platform, and the Edge web browser. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Other consumer and enterprise software it produces include Internet search with Bing ; digital services through MSN ; mixed reality through HoloLens ; cloud computing with Azure ; and software development through Visual Studio . Today, Microsoft
12900-620: The Baidu search engine, which was founded by him in China and launched in 2000. In 1996, Netscape was looking to give a single search engine an exclusive deal as the featured search engine on Netscape's web browser. There was so much interest that instead, Netscape struck deals with five of the major search engines: for $ 5 million a year, each search engine would be in rotation on the Netscape search engine page. The five engines were Yahoo!, Magellan, Lycos, Infoseek, and Excite. Google adopted
13072-460: The Department of Justice's Antitrust Division filed a competitive impact statement that said: "Beginning in 1988 and continuing until July 15, 1994, Microsoft induced many OEMs to execute anti-competitive 'per processor licenses. Under a per-processor license, an OEM pays Microsoft a royalty for each computer it sells containing a particular microprocessor, whether the OEM sells the computer with
13244-500: The Digital Markets Act . At the top of the search page, the approximate result count and the response time two digits behind decimal is noted. Of search results, page titles and URLs, dates, and a preview text snippet for each result appears. Along with web search results, sections with images, news, and videos may appear. The length of the previewed text snipped was experimented with in 2015 and 2017. "Universal search"
13416-495: The European Commission found that Google Search favored Google's own products, instead of the best result for consumers' needs. In February 2015 Google announced a major change to its mobile search algorithm which would favor mobile friendly over other websites . Nearly 60% of Google searches come from mobile phones. Google says it wants users to have access to premium quality websites . Those websites which lack
13588-599: The Linux operating system. In May 2018, Microsoft partnered with 17 American intelligence agencies to develop cloud computing products. The project is dubbed "Azure Government" and has ties to the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) surveillance program. On June 4, 2018, Microsoft officially announced the acquisition of GitHub for $ 7.5 billion, a deal that closed on October 26, 2018. On July 10, 2018, Microsoft revealed
13760-470: The Microsoft Azure virtual machines reliant on Intel's CPU architecture. On January 12, Microsoft released PowerShell Core 6.0 for the macOS and Linux operating systems. In February 2018, Microsoft killed notification support for their Windows Phone devices which effectively ended firmware updates for the discontinued devices. In March 2018, Microsoft recalled Windows 10 S to change it to
13932-580: The Open Networking Foundation started on March 23, 2011. Fellow founders were Google , HPE Networking , Yahoo! , Verizon Communications , Deutsche Telekom and 17 other companies. This nonprofit organization is focused on providing support for a cloud computing initiative called Software-Defined Networking. The initiative is meant to speed innovation through simple software changes in telecommunications networks, wireless networks, data centers, and other networking areas. Following
14104-515: The Surface Go platform to the public. Later in the month, it converted Microsoft Teams to gratis . In August 2018, Microsoft released two projects called Microsoft AccountGuard and Defending Democracy. It also unveiled Snapdragon 850 compatibility for Windows 10 on the ARM architecture . In August 2018, Toyota Tsusho began a partnership with Microsoft to create fish farming tools using
14276-532: The United States v. Google LLC (2020) antitrust case, technology reporters claimed that Google Search was "bloated and overmonetized" and that the "semantic matching" of search queries put advertising profits before quality. Wired withdrew Megan Gray's piece after Google complained about alleged inaccuracies, while the author reiterated that «As stated in court, "A goal of Project Mercury was to increase commercial queries"». In March 2024, Google announced
14448-604: The World Wide Web . With a few exceptions of new companies, like Netscape , Microsoft was the only major and established company that acted fast enough to be a part of the World Wide Web practically from the start. Other companies like Borland , WordPerfect , Novell , IBM and Lotus , being much slower to adapt to the new situation, would give Microsoft market dominance. The company released Windows 95 on August 24, 1995, featuring pre-emptive multitasking ,
14620-495: The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S video game consoles. In February 2021, Microsoft released Azure Quantum for public preview. The public cloud computing platform provides access to quantum software and quantum hardware including trapped ion , neutral atom , and superconducting systems. In April 2021, Microsoft announced it would buy Nuance Communications for approximately $ 16 billion. The acquisition of Nuance
14792-411: The cached version of the page (some or all the content needed to render it) stored in the search engine working memory is quickly sent to an inquirer. If a visit is overdue, the search engine can just act as a web proxy instead. In this case, the page may differ from the search terms indexed. The cached page holds the appearance of the version whose words were previously indexed, so a cached version of
14964-472: The 2023 Google I/O event in May, Google unveiled Search Generative Experience (SGE), an experimental feature in Google Search available through Google Labs which produces AI-generated summaries in response to search prompts. This was part of Google's wider efforts to counter the unprecedented rise of generative AI technology, ushered by OpenAI 's launch of ChatGPT , which sent Google executives to
15136-574: The CEO position to Steve Ballmer , an old college friend of Gates and employee of the company since 1980, while creating a new position for himself as Chief Software Architect . Various companies including Microsoft formed the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance in October 1999 to (among other things) increase security and protect intellectual property through identifying changes in hardware and software. Critics decried
15308-662: The Federal Trade Commission examined Microsoft for possible collusion due to the partnership with IBM, marking the beginning of more than a decade of legal clashes with the government. Meanwhile, the company was at work on Microsoft Windows NT , which was heavily based on their copy of the OS/2 code. It shipped on July 21, 1993, with a new modular kernel and the 32-bit Win32 application programming interface (API), making it easier to port from 16-bit (MS-DOS-based) Windows. Microsoft informed IBM of Windows NT, and
15480-493: The Google Knowledge Panel is to provide users with immediate, factual answers, reducing the need for extensive navigation across multiple web pages. In May 2017, Google enabled a new "Personal" tab in Google Search, letting users search for content in their Google accounts' various services, including email messages from Gmail and photos from Google Photos . Google Discover, previously known as Google Feed,
15652-405: The Internet without assistance. They can either submit one web page at a time, or they can submit the entire site using a sitemap , but it is normally only necessary to submit the home page of a web site as search engines are able to crawl a well designed website. There are two remaining reasons to submit a web site or web page to a search engine: to add an entirely new web site without waiting for
15824-506: The Jewish version of Google, and Christian search engine SeekFind.org. SeekFind filters sites that attack or degrade their faith. Web search engine submission is a process in which a webmaster submits a website directly to a search engine. While search engine submission is sometimes presented as a way to promote a website, it generally is not necessary because the major search engines use web crawlers that will eventually find most web sites on
15996-484: The Microsoft Azure application suite for Internet of things (IoT) technologies related to water management. Developed in part by researchers from Kindai University , the water pump mechanisms use artificial intelligence to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt , analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. The specific computer programs used in
16168-554: The OS/2 partnership deteriorated. In 1990, Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Office suite which bundled separate applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel . On May 22, Microsoft launched Windows 3.0 , featuring streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor, and both Office and Windows became dominant in their respective areas. On July 27, 1994,
16340-607: The Surface, in 2012, and the formation of Microsoft Mobile through Nokia . Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has changed focus towards cloud computing , as well as its large acquisition of LinkedIn for $ 26.2 billion in 2016. Under Nadella's direction, the company has also expanded its video gaming business to support the Xbox brand, establishing the Microsoft Gaming division in 2022, which
16512-543: The U.S. smartphone market in January 2016 was 2.7%. During the summer of 2015 the company lost $ 7.6 billion related to its mobile-phone business, firing 7,800 employees. In 2015, the construction of a data center in Mecklenburg County , Virginia led to the destruction of a historic African American cemetery despite archeological recommendations for preservation. On March 1, 2016, Microsoft announced
16684-581: The UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil, with local language support. On October 28, 2024, AI Overviews was rolled out to 100 more countries, including Australia and New Zealand. In late June 2011, Google introduced a new look to the Google homepage in order to boost the use of the Google+ social tools. One of the major changes was replacing the classic navigation bar with a black one. Google's digital creative director Chris Wiggins explains: "We're working on
16856-657: The United States, with international expansion by the end of the year. The information covered by the Knowledge Graph grew significantly after launch, tripling its original size within seven months, and being able to answer "roughly one-third" of the 100 billion monthly searches Google processed in May 2016. The information is often used as a spoken answer in Google Assistant and Google Home searches. The Knowledge Graph has been criticized for providing answers without source attribution. A Google Knowledge Panel
17028-462: The United States. That year the company also launched the Surface "digital table", later renamed PixelSense . Released in January 2007, the next version of Windows, Vista , focused on features, security and a redesigned user interface dubbed Aero . Microsoft Office 2007 , released at the same time, featured a " Ribbon " user interface which was a significant departure from its predecessors. Relatively strong sales of both products helped to produce
17200-505: The Unix world standard of assigning programs and files short, cryptic names such as grep, cat, troff, sed, awk, perl, and so on. Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington . Founded in 1975, the company became highly influential in the rise of personal computers through software like Windows , and
17372-499: The ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy." In November 2018, Microsoft introduced Azure Multi-Factor Authentication for Microsoft Azure. In December 2018, Microsoft announced Project Mu , an open source release of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) core used in Microsoft Surface and Hyper-V products. The project promotes the idea of Firmware as a Service . In
17544-400: The alliance as a way to enforce indiscriminate restrictions over how consumers use software, and over how computers behave, and as a form of digital rights management : for example, the scenario where a computer is not only secured for its owner but also secured against its owner as well. On April 3, 2000, a judgment was handed down in the case of United States v. Microsoft Corp. , calling
17716-593: The autocomplete box along with normal query autocompletion. The update received significant backlash, due to encouraging search queries unrelated to users' interests or intentions, prompting the company to issue an update with an opt-out option. In September 2017, the Google Search app on iOS was updated to feature the same functionality. In December 2017, Google released "Google Go", an app designed to enable use of Google Search on physically smaller and lower-spec devices in multiple languages. A Google blog post about designing "India-first" products and features explains that it
17888-504: The collections from Google and Bing (and others). While lack of investment and slow pace in technologies in the Muslim world has hindered progress and thwarted success of an Islamic search engine, targeting as the main consumers Islamic adherents, projects like Muxlim (a Muslim lifestyle site) received millions of dollars from investors like Rite Internet Ventures, and it also faltered. Other religion-oriented search engines are Jewogle,
18060-487: The combined technologies of its acquisitions. Microsoft first launched MSN Search in the fall of 1998 using search results from Inktomi. In early 1999, the site began to display listings from Looksmart , blended with results from Inktomi. For a short time in 1999, MSN Search used results from AltaVista instead. In 2004, Microsoft began a transition to its own search technology, powered by its own web crawler (called msnbot ). Microsoft's rebranded search engine, Bing ,
18232-488: The company , citing it abused its dominance with the Windows OS, resulting in a judgment of €497 million ($ 613 million) and requiring Microsoft to produce new versions of Windows XP without Windows Media Player : Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N. In November 2005, the company's second video game console, the Xbox 360 , was released. There were two versions, a basic version for $ 299.99 and
18404-541: The company an "abusive monopoly." Microsoft later settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2004. On October 25, 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP , unifying the mainstream and NT lines of OS under the NT codebase. The company released the Xbox later that year, entering the video game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo . In March 2004 the European Union brought antitrust legal action against
18576-606: The company announced it was laying off 1,850 workers, and taking an impairment and restructuring charge of $ 950 million. In June 2016, Microsoft announced a project named Microsoft Azure Information Protection. It aims to help enterprises protect their data as it moves between servers and devices. In November 2016, Microsoft joined the Linux Foundation as a Platinum member during Microsoft's Connect(); developer event in New York. The cost of each Platinum membership
18748-504: The company has since expanded to Internet services, cloud computing , video gaming and other fields. Microsoft is the largest software maker , one of the most valuable public U.S. companies, and one of the most valuable brands globally. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800 . It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in
18920-633: The company's war profiteering from a $ 480 million contract to develop virtual reality headsets for the United States Army . On March 26, 2020, Microsoft announced it was acquiring Affirmed Networks for about $ 1.35 billion. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic , Microsoft closed all of its retail stores indefinitely due to health concerns. On July 22, 2020, Microsoft announced plans to close its Mixer service, planning to move existing partners to Facebook Gaming . On July 31, 2020, it
19092-506: The company's distributed database platform. In August 2018, Danny Sullivan from Google announced a broad core algorithm update. As per current analysis done by the industry leaders Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land, the update was to drop down the medical and health-related websites that were not user friendly and were not providing good user experience. This is why the industry experts named it "Medic". Google reserves very high standards for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages. This
19264-468: The concept of minimalism. Microsoft implemented a new strategy for the software industry, providing a consistent user experience across all smartphones using the Windows Phone OS. It launched an alliance with Nokia in 2011 and Microsoft worked closely with the company to co-develop Windows Phone, but remained partners with long-time Windows Mobile OEM HTC . Microsoft is a founding member of
19436-454: The content of the resource, as opposed to software, which algorithmically attempts to determine the meaning and quality of a resource. Also, people can find and bookmark web pages that have not yet been noticed or indexed by web spiders. Additionally, a social bookmarking system can rank a resource based on how many times it has been bookmarked by users, which may be a more useful metric for end-users than systems that rank resources based on
19608-579: The creation of a multi-core unit at Microsoft, following the steps of server companies such as Sun and IBM. Gates retired from his role as Chief Software Architect on June 27, 2008, a decision announced in June 2006, while retaining other positions related to the company in addition to being an advisor for the company on key projects. Azure Services Platform , the company's entry into the cloud computing market for Windows, launched on October 27, 2008. On February 12, 2009, Microsoft announced its intent to open
19780-512: The cultural changes triggered by search engines, and the representation of certain controversial topics in their results, such as terrorism in Ireland , climate change denial , and conspiracy theories . There has been concern raised that search engines such as Google and Bing provide customized results based on the user's activity history, leading to what has been termed echo chambers or filter bubbles by Eli Pariser in 2011. The argument
19952-412: The dawn of the Web in the 1990s, but Google Search became the dominant one in the 2000s and has remained so. It currently has a 91% global market share. The business of websites improving their visibility in search results , known as marketing and optimization , has thus largely focused on Google. In 1945, Vannevar Bush described an information retrieval system that would allow a user to access
20124-560: The desired date range. It is also possible to weight by date because each page has a modification time. Most search engines support the use of the Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT to help end users refine the search query . Boolean operators are for literal searches that allow the user to refine and extend the terms of the search. The engine looks for the words or phrases exactly as entered. Some search engines provide an advanced feature called proximity search , which allows users to define
20296-629: The directory instead of doing a keyword-based search. In 1996, Robin Li developed the RankDex site-scoring algorithm for search engines results page ranking and received a US patent for the technology. It was the first search engine that used hyperlinks to measure the quality of websites it was indexing, predating the very similar algorithm patent filed by Google two years later in 1998. Larry Page referenced Li's work in some of his U.S. patents for PageRank. Li later used his Rankdex technology for
20468-480: The distance between keywords. There is also concept-based searching where the research involves using statistical analysis on pages containing the words or phrases you search for. The usefulness of a search engine depends on the relevance of the result set it gives back. While there may be millions of web pages that include a particular word or phrase, some pages may be more relevant, popular, or authoritative than others. Most search engines employ methods to rank
20640-438: The existence at each site of an index file in a particular format. JumpStation (created in December 1993 by Jonathon Fletcher ) used a web robot to find web pages and to build its index, and used a web form as the interface to its query program. It was thus the first WWW resource-discovery tool to combine the three essential features of a web search engine (crawling, indexing, and searching) as described below. Because of
20812-515: The feature aims to simplify finding jobs suitable for each user. In May 2009, Google announced that they would be parsing website microformats to populate search result pages with "Rich snippets". Such snippets include additional details about results, such as displaying reviews for restaurants and social media accounts for individuals. In May 2016, Google expanded on the "Rich snippets" format to offer "Rich cards", which, similarly to snippets, display more information about results, but shows them at
20984-502: The goal of Universal search as "we're attempting to break down the walls that traditionally separated our various search properties and integrate the vast amounts of information available into one simple set of search results. In June 2017, Google expanded its search results to cover available job listings. The data is aggregated from various major job boards and collected by analyzing company homepages. Initially only available in English,
21156-402: The idea of selling search terms in 1998 from a small search engine company named goto.com . This move had a significant effect on the search engine business, which went from struggling to one of the most profitable businesses in the Internet. Search engines were also known as some of the brightest stars in the Internet investing frenzy that occurred in the late 1990s. Several companies entered
21328-528: The information they provide and the underlying assumptions about the technology. These biases can be a direct result of economic and commercial processes (e.g., companies that advertise with a search engine can become also more popular in its organic search results), and political processes (e.g., the removal of search results to comply with local laws). For example, Google will not surface certain neo-Nazi websites in France and Germany, where Holocaust denial
21500-561: The last decade has encouraged Islamic adherents in the Middle East and Asian sub-continent , to attempt their own search engines, their own filtered search portals that would enable users to perform safe searches . More than usual safe search filters, these Islamic web portals categorizing websites into being either " halal " or " haram ", based on interpretation of Sharia law . ImHalal came online in September 2011. Halalgoogling came online in July 2013. These use haram filters on
21672-440: The last version of the operating system; set to be released in the third quarter of 2021. It was released to the general public on October 5, 2021. In September 2021, it was announced that the company had acquired Takelessons, an online platform that connects students and tutors in numerous subjects. The acquisition positioned Microsoft to grow its presence in the market of providing online education to large numbers of people. In
21844-410: The left of each sponsored link help users differentiate between organic and sponsored results. On December 15, 2016, Google rolled out a new desktop search interface that mimics their modular mobile user interface. The mobile design consists of a tabular design that highlights search features in boxes. and works by imitating the desktop Knowledge Graph real estate, which appears in the right-hand rail of
22016-435: The limited resources available on the platform it ran on, its indexing and hence searching were limited to the titles and headings found in the web pages the crawler encountered. One of the first "all text" crawler-based search engines was WebCrawler , which came out in 1994. Unlike its predecessors, it allowed users to search for any word in any web page , which has become the standard for all major search engines since. It
22188-489: The market spectacularly, receiving record gains during their initial public offerings . Some have taken down their public search engine and are marketing enterprise-only editions, such as Northern Light. Many search engine companies were caught up in the dot-com bubble , a speculation-driven market boom that peaked in March 2000. Around 2000, Google's search engine rose to prominence. The company achieved better results for many searches with an algorithm called PageRank , as
22360-525: The merger of its PC and Xbox divisions, with Phil Spencer announcing that Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps would be the focus for Microsoft's gaming in the future. On January 24, 2017, Microsoft showcased Intune for Education at the BETT 2017 education technology conference in London . Intune for Education is a new cloud-based application and device management service for the education sector. In May 2016,
22532-487: The metaverse". Microsoft also named Phil Spencer , head of the Xbox brand since 2014, the inaugural CEO of the newly established Microsoft Gaming division, which now houses the Xbox operations team and the three publishers in the company's portfolio (Xbox Game Studios, ZeniMax Media, Activision Blizzard). Microsoft has not released statements regarding Activision's recent legal controversies regarding employee abuse, but reports have alleged that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick ,
22704-602: The mid-1980s, followed by Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market. Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000 which would see the then-largest of Microsoft's corporate acquisitions in Skype Technologies in 2011, and an increased focus on hardware that led to its first in-house PC line,
22876-400: The name "Micro-Soft", short for micro-computer software. In August 1977, the company formed an agreement with ASCII Magazine in Japan, resulting in its first international office of ASCII Microsoft . Microsoft moved its headquarters to Bellevue, Washington , in January 1979. Microsoft entered the operating system (OS) business in 1980 with its own version of Unix called Xenix , but it
23048-473: The number of external links pointing to it. However, both types of ranking are vulnerable to fraud, (see Gaming the system ), and both need technical countermeasures to try to deal with this. The first web search engine was Archie , created in 1990 by Alan Emtage , a student at McGill University in Montreal. The author originally wanted to call the program "archives", but had to shorten it to comply with
23220-637: The process fall under the Azure Machine Learning and the Azure IoT Hub platforms. In September 2018, Microsoft discontinued Skype Classic . On October 10, 2018, Microsoft joined the Open Invention Network community despite holding more than 60,000 patents. In November 2018, Microsoft agreed to supply 100,000 Microsoft HoloLens headsets to the United States military in order to "increase lethality by enhancing
23392-401: The regular search engine results. The search engines make money every time someone clicks on one of these ads. Local search is the process that optimizes the efforts of local businesses. They focus on change to make sure all searches are consistent. It is important because many people determine where they plan to go and what to buy based on their searches. As of January 2022, Google
23564-521: The release of Windows Phone , Microsoft undertook a gradual rebranding of its product range throughout 2011 and 2012, with the corporation's logos, products, services, and websites adopting the principles and concepts of the Metro design language . Microsoft unveiled Windows 8 , an operating system designed to power both personal computers and tablet computers , in Taipei in June 2011. A developer preview
23736-644: The release of the IBM PC in August 1981. IBM had copyrighted the IBM PC BIOS , so other companies had to reverse engineer it for non-IBM hardware to run as IBM PC compatibles , but no such restriction applied to the operating systems. Microsoft eventually became the leading PC operating systems vendor. The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as with
23908-465: The results to provide the "best" results first. How a search engine decides which pages are the best matches, and what order the results should be shown in, varies widely from one engine to another. The methods also change over time as Internet usage changes and new techniques evolve. There are two main types of search engine that have evolved: one is a system of predefined and hierarchically ordered keywords that humans have programmed extensively. The other
24080-507: The role of CFO. On February 4, 2014, Steve Ballmer stepped down as CEO of Microsoft and was succeeded by Satya Nadella , who previously led Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise division. On the same day, John W. Thompson took on the role of chairman, in place of Bill Gates, who continued to participate as a technology advisor. Thompson became the second chairman in Microsoft's history. On April 25, 2014, Microsoft acquired Nokia Devices and Services for $ 7.2 billion. This new subsidiary
24252-407: The same month, Microsoft acquired Australia-based video editing software company Clipchamp . In October 2021, Microsoft announced that it began rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) support for Microsoft Teams calls in order to secure business communication while using video conferencing software. Users can ensure that their calls are encrypted and can utilize a security code that both parties on
24424-927: The same month, Microsoft announced the open source implementation of Windows Forms and the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) which will allow for further movement of the company toward the transparent release of key frameworks used in developing Windows desktop applications and software. December also saw the company discontinue the Microsoft Edge project in favor of Chromium backends for their browsers. On February 20, 2019, Microsoft Corp said it will offer its cyber security service AccountGuard to 12 new markets in Europe including Germany, France and Spain, to close security gaps and protect customers in political space from hacking. In February 2019, hundreds of Microsoft employees protested
24596-477: The search engine result page, these featured elements frequently feature Twitter carousels, People Also Search For, and Top Stories (vertical and horizontal design) modules. The Local Pack and Answer Box were two of the original features of the Google SERP that were primarily showcased in this manner, but this new layout creates a previously unseen level of design consistency for Google results. Google offers
24768-542: The search results list: Every page in the entire list must be weighted according to information in the indexes. Then the top search result item requires the lookup, reconstruction, and markup of the snippets showing the context of the keywords matched. These are only part of the processing each search results web page requires, and further pages (next to the top) require more of this post-processing. Beyond simple keyword lookups, search engines offer their own GUI - or command-driven operators and search parameters to refine
24940-428: The search results. These provide the necessary controls for the user engaged in the feedback loop users create by filtering and weighting while refining the search results, given the initial pages of the first search results. For example, from 2007 the Google.com search engine has allowed one to filter by date by clicking "Show search tools" in the leftmost column of the initial search results page, and then selecting
25112-556: The site, formed by the search engine's latest indexing of that page. Additionally, Google indexes some file types, being able to show users PDFs , Word documents , Excel spreadsheets , PowerPoint presentations , certain Flash multimedia content , and plain text files. Users can also activate " SafeSearch ", a filtering technology aimed at preventing explicit and pornographic content from appearing in search results. Despite Google search's immense index, sources generally assume that Google
25284-416: The speed and accuracy of the hummingbird . The change was announced on September 26, 2013, having already been in use for a month. "Hummingbird" places greater emphasis on natural language queries, considering context and meaning over individual keywords. It also looks deeper at content on individual pages of a website, with improved ability to lead users directly to the most appropriate page rather than just
25456-507: The standard filename robots.txt , addressed to it. The robots.txt file contains directives for search spiders, telling it which pages to crawl and which pages not to crawl. After checking for robots.txt and either finding it or not, the spider sends certain information back to be indexed depending on many factors, such as the titles, page content, JavaScript , Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), headings, or its metadata in HTML meta tags . After
25628-452: The summer of 1993, no search engine existed for the web, though numerous specialized catalogs were maintained by hand. Oscar Nierstrasz at the University of Geneva wrote a series of Perl scripts that periodically mirrored these pages and rewrote them into a standard format. This formed the basis for W3Catalog , the web's first primitive search engine, released on September 2, 1993. In June 1993, Matthew Gray, then at MIT , produced what
25800-418: The team finished the Web browser, and instead were included in the Windows 95 Plus! pack. Backed by a high-profile marketing campaign and what The New York Times called "the splashiest, most frenzied, most expensive introduction of a computer product in the industry's history," Windows 95 quickly became a success. Branching out into new markets in 1996, Microsoft and General Electric 's NBC unit created
25972-538: The title "What's New!". The first tool used for searching content (as opposed to users) on the Internet was Archie . The name stands for "archive" without the "v". It was created by Alan Emtage , computer science student at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec , Canada. The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP ( File Transfer Protocol ) sites, creating
26144-510: The top of the mobile website in a swipeable carousel-like format. Originally limited to movie and recipe websites in the United States only, the feature expanded to all countries globally in 2017. The Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base used by Google to enhance its search engine's results with information gathered from a variety of sources. This information is presented to users in a box to the right of search results. Knowledge Graph boxes were added to Google's search engine in May 2012, starting in
26316-597: The user interface, but added significant speed improvements and a new "under-the-hood" indexing infrastructure. The move was interpreted in some quarters as a response to Microsoft 's recent release of an upgraded version of its own search service, renamed Bing , as well as the launch of Wolfram Alpha , a new search engine based on "computational knowledge". Google announced completion of "Caffeine" on June 8, 2010, claiming 50% fresher results due to continuous updating of its index. With "Caffeine", Google moved its back-end indexing system away from MapReduce and onto Bigtable ,
26488-407: The user. On September 21, 2020, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire video game company ZeniMax Media , the parent company of Bethesda Softworks , for about $ 7.5 billion, with the deal expected to occur in the second half of 2021 fiscal year. On March 9, 2021, the acquisition was finalized and ZeniMax Media became part of Microsoft's Xbox Game Studios division. The total price of the deal
26660-862: The world . As of 2020, Google Search has a 92% share of the global search engine market. Approximately 26.75% of Google's monthly global traffic comes from the United States , 4.44% from India , 4.4% from Brazil , 3.92% from the United Kingdom and 3.84% from Japan according to data provided by Similarweb . The order of search results returned by Google is based, in part, on a priority rank system called " PageRank ". Google Search also provides many different options for customized searches, using symbols to include, exclude, specify or require certain search behavior, and offers specialized interactive experiences, such as flight status and package tracking, weather forecasts, currency, unit, and time conversions, word definitions, and more. The main purpose of Google Search
26832-607: The year 2000, after its fourth-quarter report raised concerns among investors on the poor showings of both Windows 8 and the Surface tablet. Microsoft suffered a loss of more than US$ 32 billion. In line with the maturing PC business, in July 2013, Microsoft announced that it would reorganize the business into four new business divisions, namely Operating systems, Apps, Cloud, and Devices. All previous divisions will be dissolved into new divisions without any workforce cuts. On September 3, 2013, Microsoft agreed to buy Nokia 's mobile unit for $ 7 billion, following Amy Hood taking
27004-510: Was Archie , which debuted on 10 September 1990. Prior to September 1993, the World Wide Web was entirely indexed by hand. There was a list of webservers edited by Tim Berners-Lee and hosted on the CERN webserver . One snapshot of the list in 1992 remains, but as more and more web servers went online the central list could no longer keep up. On the NCSA site, new servers were announced under
27176-542: Was MS-DOS that solidified the company's dominance. IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980 to provide a version of the CP/M OS to be used in the IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products which it branded as MS-DOS, although IBM rebranded it to IBM PC DOS . Microsoft retained ownership of MS-DOS following
27348-438: Was $ 8.1 billion. On September 22, 2020, Microsoft announced that it had an exclusive license to use OpenAI 's GPT-3 artificial intelligence language generator. The previous version of GPT-3 , called GPT-2 , made headlines for being "too dangerous to release" and had numerous capabilities, including designing websites, prescribing medication, answering questions, and penning articles. On November 10, 2020, Microsoft released
27520-403: Was also the search engine that was widely known by the public. Also, in 1994, Lycos (which started at Carnegie Mellon University ) was launched and became a major commercial endeavor. The first popular search engine on the Web was Yahoo! Search . The first product from Yahoo! , founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994, was a Web directory called Yahoo! Directory . In 1995,
27692-468: Was completed in March 2022. In 2021, in part due to the strong quarterly earnings spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic , Microsoft's valuation came to nearly $ 2 trillion. The increased necessity for remote work and distance education drove demand for cloud computing and grew the company's gaming sales. On June 24, 2021, Microsoft announced Windows 11 during a Livestream. The announcement came with confusion after Microsoft announced Windows 10 would be
27864-446: Was explained in the paper Anatomy of a Search Engine written by Sergey Brin and Larry Page , the later founders of Google. This iterative algorithm ranks web pages based on the number and PageRank of other web sites and pages that link there, on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others. Larry Page's patent for PageRank cites Robin Li 's earlier RankDex patent as an influence. Google also maintained
28036-476: Was influenced by a similar page-ranking and site-scoring algorithm earlier used for RankDex , developed by Robin Li in 1996. Larry Page's patent for PageRank filed in 1998 includes a citation to Li's earlier patent. Li later went on to create the Chinese search engine Baidu in 2000. In a potential hint of Google's future direction of their Search algorithm, Google's then chief executive Eric Schmidt , said in
28208-478: Was launched by Google on May 16, 2007, as an idea that merged the results from different kinds of search types into one. Prior to Universal search, a standard Google search would consist of links only to websites. Universal search, however, incorporates a wide variety of sources, including websites, news, pictures, maps, blogs, videos, and more, all shown on the same search results page. Marissa Mayer , then-vice president of search products and user experience, described
28380-478: Was launched on June 1, 2009. On July 29, 2009, Yahoo! and Microsoft finalized a deal in which Yahoo! Search would be powered by Microsoft Bing technology. As of 2019, active search engine crawlers include those of Google, Sogou , Baidu, Bing, Gigablast , Mojeek , DuckDuckGo and Yandex . A search engine maintains the following processes in near real time: Web search engines get their information by web crawling from site to site. The "spider" checks for
28552-520: Was nicknamed BackRub because the technology checks backlinks to determine a site's importance. Other keyword-based methods to rank search results, used by many search engines that were once more popular than Google, would check how often the search terms occurred in a page, or how strongly associated the search terms were within each resulting page. The PageRank algorithm instead analyzes human-generated links assuming that web pages linked from many important pages are also important. The algorithm computes
28724-404: Was not the frequently published consumer complaints about DecorMyEyes which resulted in the high ranking but mentions on news websites of events which affected the firm such as legal actions against it. Google Search Console helps to check for websites that use duplicate or copyright content. In 2013, Google significantly upgraded its search algorithm with "Hummingbird". Its name was derived from
28896-511: Was probably the first web robot , the Perl -based World Wide Web Wanderer , and used it to generate an index called "Wandex". The purpose of the Wanderer was to measure the size of the World Wide Web, which it did until late 1995. The web's second search engine Aliweb appeared in November 1993. Aliweb did not use a web robot , but instead depended on being notified by website administrators of
29068-693: Was released on September 13, which was subsequently replaced by a consumer preview on February 29, 2012, and released to the public in May. The Surface was unveiled on June 18, becoming the first computer in the company's history to have its hardware made by Microsoft. On June 25, Microsoft paid US$ 1.2 billion to buy the social network Yammer . On July 31, they launched the Outlook.com webmail service to compete with Gmail . On September 4, 2012, Microsoft released Windows Server 2012 . In July 2012, Microsoft sold its 50% stake in MSNBC, which it had run as
29240-535: Was released, with its server sibling, Windows Server 2016 , released in September 2016. In Q1 2015, Microsoft was the third-largest maker of mobile phones , selling 33 million units (7.2% of all). While a large majority (at least 75%) of them do not run any version of Windows Phone — those other phones are not categorized as smartphones by Gartner – in the same timeframe 8 million Windows smartphones (2.5% of all smartphones) were made by all manufacturers (mostly Microsoft). Microsoft's share of
29412-425: Was renamed Microsoft Mobile Oy. On September 15, 2014, Microsoft acquired the video game development company Mojang , best known for Minecraft , for $ 2.5 billion. On June 8, 2017, Microsoft acquired Hexadite , an Israeli security firm, for $ 100 million. On January 21, 2015, Microsoft announced the release of their first Interactive whiteboard , Microsoft Surface Hub . On July 29, 2015, Windows 10
29584-590: Was reported that Microsoft was in talks to acquire TikTok after the Trump administration ordered ByteDance to divest ownership of the application to the U.S. On August 3, 2020, after speculation on the deal, Donald Trump stated that Microsoft could buy the application, however, it should be completed by September 15, 2020, and that the United States Department of the Treasury should receive
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