86-419: Google Workspace Marketplace (formerly Google Apps Marketplace and then G Suite Marketplace) is a product of Google LLC . It is an online store for free and paid web applications that work with Google Workspace services and with third party software . Apps are based on Google APIs or on Google Apps Script . Users can now install Google Chat apps from app listing pages. This Google -related article
172-465: A heat map of photo locations was added in 2020. There are issues about data sharing and exporting, such as not being able to download pictures and videos in their original quality or with all the original data, notably GPS location info. Even downloading via the Google Takeout feature results in some of the original information missing. This could potentially lead to vendor lock in if
258-516: A public company via an initial public offering, listing the company on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol GOOG. At that time Page, Brin and Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024. The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $ 85 per share. Shares were sold in an online auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse , underwriters for
344-506: A "Deep blue" slider feature that lets users change the color and saturation of skies, without degrading image quality or inadvertently changing colors of other objects or elements in photos. In February 2017, Google updated the "Albums" tab on the Android app to include three separate sections; one for the phone's camera roll, with different views for sorting options (such as people or location); another for photos taken inside other apps; and
430-517: A $ 250,000 investment. Google received money from two other angel investors in 1998: Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos , and entrepreneur Ram Shriram . Page and Brin had first approached Shriram, who was a venture capitalist, for funding and counsel, and Shriram invested $ 250,000 in Google in February 1998. Shriram knew Bezos because Amazon had acquired Junglee, at which Shriram was the president. It
516-497: A central repository for all photos or specific categories of images. "Photo Books" are physical collections of photos, offered either as softcover or hardcover albums, with Photos automatically suggesting collections based on face, location, trip, or other distinction. Towards the end of the month, Google introduced an "Archive" feature that lets users hide photos from the main timeline view without deleting them. Archived content still appears in relevant albums and in search. In June,
602-497: A chief executive officer, which had been made verbally during investment negotiations. Eric was not initially enthusiastic about joining Google either, as the company's full potential had not yet been widely recognized at the time, and as he was occupied with his responsibilities at Novell where he was CEO. As part of him joining, Eric agreed to buy $ 1 million of Google preferred stocks as a way to show his commitment and to provide funds Google needed. On August 19, 2004, Google became
688-456: A citation to Li's earlier RankDex patent; Li later went on to create the Chinese search engine Baidu . Eventually, they changed the name to Google ; the name of the search engine was a misspelling of the word googol , a very large number written 10 (1 followed by 100 zeros), picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information. Google
774-461: A larger percentage of control over the company to themselves. Larry and Sergey however insisted on taking investments from both. Both venture companies finally agreed to investing jointly $ 12.5 million each due to their belief in Google's great potential and through the mediation of earlier angel investors Ron Conway and Ram Shriram who had contacts in the venture companies. In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California , which
860-426: A lot of images of a specific subject; it now makes animations from videos as well as photos (photo animations have been present since the start), displaying specific photos intermixed with short excerpts from longer videos in videos; and it now attempts to detect sideways and upside down photos and prompts the user to accept or reject a different orientation. For all of these features, Google touts machine learning does
946-487: A low-resolution image will be sent before being updated with a higher-quality version. In April, Google added video stabilization . The feature creates a duplicate video to avoid overwriting the original clip. In May 2017, Google announced several updates to Google Photos. "Suggested Sharing" reminds users to share captured photos after the fact, and also groups photos based on faces and suggests recipients based on facial recognition. "Shared Libraries" lets two users share
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#17328010663741032-481: A meeting with Page and Brin and his Granite co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim. The meeting was set for 8 a.m. at the front porch of David's home in Palo Alto and it had to be brief because Andy had another meeting at Cisco, where he now worked after the acquisition, at 9 a.m. Andy briefly tested a demo of the website, liked what he saw, and then went back to his car to grab the check. David Cheriton later also joined in with
1118-428: A memo throughout the company that argued bias and " Google's Ideological Echo Chamber " clouded their thinking about diversity and inclusion, and that it is also biological factors, not discrimination alone, that cause the average woman to be less interested than men in technical positions. Google CEO Sundar Pichai accused Damore of violating company policy by "advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace", and he
1204-410: A monopoly on the market harming publishers, advertisers, and consumers. In 2022, Google began accepting requests for the removal of phone numbers, physical addresses and email addresses from its search results. It had previously accepted requests for removing confidential data only, such as Social Security numbers, bank account and credit card numbers, personal signatures, and medical records. Even with
1290-1093: A multitude of products and services beyond Google Search , many of which hold dominant market positions. These products address a wide range of use cases, including email ( Gmail ), navigation and mapping ( Waze , Maps and Earth ), cloud computing ( Cloud ), web navigation ( Chrome ), video sharing ( YouTube ), productivity ( Workspace ), operating systems ( Android ), cloud storage ( Drive ), language translation ( Translate ), photo storage ( Photos ), videotelephony ( Meet ), smart home ( Nest ), smartphones ( Pixel ), wearable technology ( Pixel Watch and Fitbit ), music streaming ( YouTube Music ), video on demand ( YouTube TV ), AI ( Google Assistant and Gemini ), machine learning APIs ( TensorFlow ), AI chips ( TPU ), and more. Discontinued Google products include gaming ( Stadia ), Glass , Google+ , Reader , Play Music , Nexus , Hangouts , and Inbox by Gmail . Google's other ventures outside of internet services and consumer electronics include quantum computing ( Sycamore ), self-driving cars ( Waymo , formerly
1376-480: A research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California. The project initially involved an unofficial "third founder", Scott Hassan , the original lead programmer who wrote much of the code for the original Google Search engine, but he left before Google was officially founded as a company; Hassan went on to pursue a career in robotics and founded
1462-574: A service which searches the text found in books in its database and shows limited previews or and the full book where allowed. Google expanded its search services to include shopping (launched originally as Froogle in 2002), finance (launched 2006), and flights (launched 2011). Google generates most of its revenues from advertising. This includes sales of apps, purchases made in-app, digital content products on Google and YouTube, Android and licensing and service fees, including fees received for Google Cloud offerings. Forty-six percent of this profit
1548-533: A third for the actual photo albums. In March, Google added an automatic white balance feature to the service. The Android app and website were the first to receive the feature, with a later rollout to the iOS app. Later in March, updates to the service enabled uploading of photos in a "lightweight preview" quality for immediate viewing on slow cellular networks before a higher-quality upload later while on faster Wi-Fi. The feature also extends to sharing photos, in which
1634-1034: A third in December affecting the entire suite of Google applications. All three outages were resolved within hours. In 2021, the Alphabet Workers Union was founded, composed mostly of Google employees. In January 2021, the Australian Government proposed legislation that would require Google and Facebook to pay media companies for the right to use their content. In response, Google threatened to close off access to its search engine in Australia. In March 2021, Google reportedly paid $ 20 million for Ubisoft ports on Google Stadia. Google spent "tens of millions of dollars" on getting major publishers such as Ubisoft and Take-Two to bring some of their biggest games to Stadia. In April 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google ran
1720-459: A years-long program called "Project Bernanke" that used data from past advertising bids to gain an advantage over competing for ad services. This was revealed in documents concerning the antitrust lawsuit filed by ten US states against Google in December. In September 2021, the Australian government announced plans to curb Google's capability to sell targeted ads, claiming that the company has
1806-474: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Google LLC Google LLC ( / ˈ ɡ uː ɡ əl / GOO -gəl ) is an American-based multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising , search engine technology, cloud computing , computer software , quantum computing , e-commerce , consumer electronics , and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in
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#17328010663741892-471: Is also integrated into the service. Recipients of shared images can view web galleries without needing to download the app. Users can swipe their fingers across the screen to adjust the service's photo editing settings, as opposed to using sliders. Images can be easily shared with social networks (Google+, Facebook, Twitter ) and other services. The application generates web links that both Google Photos users and non-users can access. A new feature showing
1978-432: Is home to several prominent Silicon Valley technology start-ups. The next year, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords against Page and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine. To maintain an uncluttered page design, advertisements were solely text-based. In June 2000, it was announced that Google would become the default search engine provider for Yahoo! , one of
2064-576: Is what allowed them to open up their original shop in Menlo Park, California . Craig Silverstein , a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee. After some additional, small investments through the end of 1998 to early 1999, a new $ 25 million round of funding was announced on June 7, 1999, with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital . Both firms were initially reticent about investing jointly in Google, as each wanted to retain
2150-636: The Android and iOS operating systems, and a website. Users back up their photos to the cloud service, which becomes accessible for all of their devices. The Photos service analyzes and organizes images into groups and can identify features such as beaches, skylines, or "snowstorm in Toronto." From the application's search window, users are shown potential searches for groups of photos in three major categories: People, Places, and Things. The service analyzes photos for similar faces and groups them together in
2236-579: The EU Court of Justice , based in Europe, would also find that Google held an illegal monopoly, in this case with regards to its shopping search, and could not avoid paying a €2.4 billion fine. The EU Court of Justice found that Google's treatment of rival shopping searches, which the court referred to as "discriminatory", was in violation of the Digital Markets Act . In October 2024, Google
2322-628: The Google Self-Driving Car Project ), smart cities ( Sidewalk Labs ), and transformer models ( Google DeepMind ). Google Search and YouTube are the two most-visited websites worldwide followed by Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter). Google is also the largest search engine , mapping and navigation application , email provider , office suite , online video platform , photo and cloud storage provider, mobile operating system , web browser , machine learning framework, and AI virtual assistant provider in
2408-641: The Israeli Defense Forces , to surveil Palestinians in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas War . Intelligence officers told the Times that the unit uploads databases of known faces to the service and uses its search functions to identify individuals. A Google spokesman commented that the service is free and "does not provide identities for unknown people in photographs." The service has apps for
2494-581: The Picasa desktop application would be discontinued on March 15, 2016, followed by the closure of the Picasa Web Albums service on May 1, 2016. Google stated that the primary reason for retiring Picasa was that it wanted to focus its efforts "entirely on a single photo service"; the cross-platform, web-based Google Photos. In June 2016, Google updated Photos to include automatically generated albums. After an event or trip, Photos will group some of
2580-410: The exposé , "How Google Protected Andy Rubin , the 'Father of Android'". The company subsequently announced that "48 employees have been fired over the last two years" for sexual misconduct. On November 1, 2018, more than 20,000 Google employees and contractors staged a global walk-out to protest the company's handling of sexual harassment complaints. CEO Sundar Pichai was reported to be in support of
2666-497: The 1 billion user mark in 2019, four years after its initial launch. Google reports as of 2020, approximately 28 billion photos and videos are uploaded to the service every week, and more than 4 trillion photos are stored in the service total. Google Photos is the standalone successor to the photo features previously embedded in Google+ , the company's social network. Google launched the social network to compete with Facebook , but
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2752-602: The AI race, Google's senior management issued a "code red" and a "directive that all of its most important products—those with more than a billion users—must incorporate generative AI within months". In early May 2023, Google announced its plans to build two additional data centers in Ohio. These centers, which will be built in Columbus and Lancaster, will power up the company's tools, including AI technology. The said data hub will add to
2838-408: The Google content network, through a cost-per-click scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud , which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing
2924-448: The May 2015 release of Google Photos, reviewers wrote that the service was among the best of its kind. Walt Mossberg of Recode declared the service the best in cloud photo storage, against its competition from Amazon ( Amazon Drive ), Apple ( iCloud ), Dropbox , and Microsoft ( OneDrive ). Jacob Kastrenakes of The Verge wrote that the release made Google a major competitor in
3010-556: The People category. It can also track faces as they age. The Places category uses geotagging data but can also determine locations in older pictures by analyzing for major landmarks (e.g., photos containing the Eiffel Tower ). The Things category processes photos for their subject matter: birthdays, buildings, cats, concerts, food, graduations, posters, screenshots, etc. Users can manually remove categorization errors. Google Lens
3096-651: The Photos service allow recognition of photo contents, automatically generate albums, animate similar photos into quick videos, surface memories at significant times, and improve the quality of photos and videos. In May 2017, Google announced several updates to Google Photos, including reminders for and suggested sharing of photos, shared photo libraries between two users, and physical albums. Photos automatically suggested collections based on face, location, trip, or other distinction. Google Photos received critical acclaim after its decoupling from Google+ in 2015. Reviewers praised
3182-456: The Pixel 4, Pixel 4a, Pixel 4a (5G), and Pixel 5 offering a 3-month trial for the 100 GB Google One plan to new members instead. In November 2020, Google Photos announced that it would be ending its offering of free unlimited storage for photos uploaded in "High quality" or "Express quality" starting on June 1, 2021, due to rising demand for storage. On June 1, 2021, Google Photos changed
3268-515: The Stories feature in Instagram and Facebook which highlights past photos to give their users a nostalgic feeling. On June 25, 2020, Google Photos introduced a major redesign to the mobile and web apps, accompanied by a new, simplified logo. In March 2024, The New York Times reported that Google Photos was being used in a facial recognition program by Unit 8200 , a surveillance unit of
3354-475: The advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid. Google Search Console (rebranded from Google Webmaster Tools in May 2015) allows webmasters to check the sitemap, crawl rate, and for security issues of their websites, as well as optimize their website's visibility. Google had previously used virtual assistants and chatbots , such as Google Bard, prior to
3440-451: The album with other Google Photos users. The recipient "can join to add their own photos and videos, and also get notifications when new pics are added". Users can also save photos and videos from shared albums to add them to their own, private collection. Unlike the native Photos service within iOS, Google Photos permits full resolution sharing across Android and iOS platforms and between the two. On February 12, 2016, Google announced that
3526-466: The already operational center near Columbus, bringing Google's total investment in Ohio to over $ 2 billion. In August 2024, Google would lose a lawsuit which started in 2020 in lower court, as it was found that the company had an illegal monopoly over Internet search. D.C. Circuit Court Judge Amit Mehta held that this monopoly was in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act . In September 2024,
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3612-454: The announcement of Gemini in March 2024. None of them, however, had been seen as legitimate competitors to ChatGPT , unlike Gemini. An artificial intelligence training program for Google employees was also introduced in April 2024. Google Photos Google Photos is a photo sharing and storage service developed by Google . It was announced in May 2015 and spun off from Google+ ,
3698-497: The code to implement Page's ideas. Page and Brin would also use their friend Susan Wojcicki 's garage as their office when the search engine was set up in 1998. Page and Brin originally nicknamed the new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Hassan as well as Alan Steremberg were cited by Page and Brin as being critical to the development of Google. Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd later co-authored with Page and Brin
3784-466: The company Willow Garage in 2006. While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, they theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships among websites. They called this algorithm PageRank ; it determined a website's relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages that linked back to the original site. Page told his ideas to Hassan, who began writing
3870-455: The company was purchased for $ 400 million, yet the source of the information was not disclosed. A Google spokesperson declined to comment on the price. The purchase of DeepMind aids in Google's recent growth in the artificial intelligence and robotics community. In 2015, DeepMind's AlphaGo became the first computer program to defeat a top human pro at the game of Go. According to Interbrand's annual Best Global Brands report, Google has been
3956-745: The company's former social network . Google Photos shares the 15 gigabytes of free storage space with other Google services, such as Google Drive and Gmail . Users can upload their photos and videos in either quality setting, original or compressed (photos and videos up to 16 megapixels and 1080p resolution , respectively), that will count towards the free storage tier (compressed items uploaded before June 1, 2021, along with items uploaded via Pixel phones released before that date, are unlimited). Users can expand their storage through paid Google One subscriptions. The service automatically analyzes photos, identifying various visual features and subjects. Users can search for anything in photos, with
4042-533: The deal. The sale of $ 1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $ 23 billion. On November 13, 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $ 1.65 billion in Google stock, On July 20, 2007, Google bids $ 4.6 billion for the wireless-spectrum auction by the FCC. On March 11, 2008, Google acquired DoubleClick for $ 3.1 billion, transferring to Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies. By 2011, Google
4128-419: The development of micro-optics, monolithic integration, and system integration. In December 2022, Google debuted OSV-Scanner, a Go tool for finding security holes in open source software , which pulls from the largest open source vulnerability database of its kind to defend against supply chain attacks. In early 2023, following the success of ChatGPT and concerns that Google was falling behind in
4214-451: The first paper about the project, describing PageRank and the initial prototype of the Google search engine, published in 1998. Héctor García-Molina and Jeffrey Ullman were also cited as contributors to the project. PageRank was influenced by a similar page-ranking and site-scoring algorithm earlier used for RankDex , developed by Robin Li in 1996, with Larry Page's PageRank patent including
4300-476: The grounds the company had abused a monopoly position in the search and search advertising markets. In December 2019, former PayPal chief operating officer Bill Ready became Google's new commerce chief. Ready's role will not be directly involved with Google Pay . In April 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic , Google announced several cost-cutting measures. Such measures included slowing down hiring for
4386-741: The information they desire through the use of keywords and operators . According to comScore market research from November 2009, Google Search is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%. 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 launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which summarizes news articles from various websites. Google also hosts Google Books ,
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#17328010663744472-481: The launch of a new company, called Calico , on September 19, 2013, to be led by Apple Inc. chairman Arthur Levinson . In the official public statement, Page explained that the "health and well-being" company would focus on "the challenge of ageing and associated diseases". On January 26, 2014, Google announced it had agreed to acquire DeepMind Technologies , a privately held artificial intelligence company from London . Technology news website Recode reported that
4558-913: The launch of the service, Google announced that Google Photos had 100 million users, who had uploaded 3.72 petabytes of photos and videos. In May 2016, one year after the release of Google Photos, Google announced the service had over 200 million monthly active users . Other statistics it revealed was at least 13.7 petabytes of photos/videos had been uploaded, 2 trillion labels had been applied (24 billion of those being selfies), and 1.6 billion animations, collages and effects had been created based on user content. In May 2017, Google announced that Google Photos has over 500 million users, who upload over 1.2 billion photos every day. In November 2020, Google announced that more than 4 trillion photos are stored in Google Photos, and every week 28 billion new photos and videos are uploaded. At
4644-573: The most popular websites at the time, replacing Inktomi . In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from Silicon Graphics , at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California . The complex became known as the Googleplex , a play on the word googolplex , the number one followed by a googol of zeroes. Three years later, Google bought the property from SGI for $ 319 million. By that time,
4730-722: The name "Google" had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb " google " to be added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary , denoted as: "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet". The first use of the verb on television appeared in an October 2002 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer . Additionally, in 2001 Google's investors felt
4816-563: The name of "High quality" to "Storage saver". The move was part of an effort to reduce Google's reliance on ad-based revenue and increase subscriptions. Existing photos will remain unaffected, and new photos will count towards the user's storage quota shared across Google Drive , Gmail , and Google Photos. Owners of the Google Pixel smartphones up until the Pixel 5 will remain exempt from this change. In October 2015, five months after
4902-538: The need to have a strong internal management, and they agreed to hire Eric Schmidt as the chairman and CEO of Google. Eric was proposed by John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins. He had been trying to find a CEO that Sergey and Larry would accept for several months, but they rejected several candidates because they wanted to retain control over the company. Michael Moritz from Sequoia Capital at one point even menaced requesting Google to immediately pay back Sequoia's $ 12.5m investment if they did not fulfill their promise to hire
4988-429: The new policy, Google may remove information from only certain but not all search queries. It would not remove content that is "broadly useful", such as news articles, or already part of the public record. In May 2022, Google announced that the company had acquired California based, MicroLED display technology development and manufacturing Start-up Raxium. Raxium is set to join Google's Devices and Services team to aid in
5074-409: The new sharing features announced in May began rolling out to users. In December 2018, Google doubled the number of photos and videos users can store in a private Google Photos Live Album. The number increased from 10,000 to 20,000 photos, which is equivalent to the capacity for shared albums. In September 2019, Google Photos introduced a new social media -like feature called "Memories" similar to
5160-707: The original resolution and quality of the photos and videos. Express quality includes photo and video storage for photos up to 3 megapixels and videos up to 480p resolution. For the first three generations of the Google Pixel phones, Google Photos offers unlimited storage at "Original quality" for free. The original Pixel had no limits to this offer, while the Pixel 2 and 3 only offered unlimited storage at "Original quality" for photos and videos taken before January 16, 2021, and January 31, 2022, respectively, with all photos and videos taken after those dates being uploaded at "Storage saver" instead. The Pixel 3a and onwards do not offer unlimited storage at "Original quality", with
5246-438: The photo storage market, and that its pricing structure obsoleted the idea of paying for photo storage. Sarah Mitroff and Lynn La of CNET wrote that the service's phone and tablet apps were particularly good, and that Google Photos had a more streamlined design than Yahoo 's Flickr and more organizing features than Apple's iCloud photo service. Kastrenakes described the service's May 2015 release as evidence that Google
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#17328010663745332-416: The photos together and suggest creating an album with them, alongside maps to show geographic travel and location pins for exact places. Users can also add text captions to describe photos. In October, Google announced multiple significant updates; Google Photos now surfaces old memories with people identified in users' recent photos; it occasionally highlights a subset of photos when a user has recently taken
5418-578: The protests. Later in 2019, some workers accused the company of retaliating against internal activists. On March 19, 2019, Google announced that it would enter the video game market, launching a cloud gaming platform called Google Stadia . On June 3, 2019, the United States Department of Justice reported that it would investigate Google for antitrust violations. This led to the filing of an antitrust lawsuit in October 2020, on
5504-609: The region's specific needs and training local talent. The partnership between Google and Saudi Arabia includes collaboration with key stakeholders, such as the Public Investment Fund (PIF), to develop AI applications that will benefit sectors like healthcare, finance, oil and gas, and logistics. The initiative focuses on creating localized AI technologies, with an emphasis on integrating Arabic language capabilities and enabling widespread cloud adoption. Google indexes billions of web pages to allow users to search for
5590-689: The remainder of 2020, except for a small number of strategic areas, recalibrating the focus and pace of investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel. Most employees were also working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the success of it even led to Google announcing that they would be permanently converting some of their jobs to work from home The 2020 Google services outages disrupted Google services: one in August that affected Google Drive among others, another in November affecting YouTube , and
5676-461: The search context and the user history. In 2007, Google launched " AdSense for Mobile ", taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market. Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google Ads allows advertisers to display their advertisements in
5762-565: The second most valuable brand in the world (behind Apple Inc.) in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, with a valuation of $ 133 billion. On August 10, 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate named Alphabet Inc. Google became Alphabet's largest subsidiary and the umbrella company for Alphabet's Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructuring, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page, who became CEO of Alphabet. On August 8, 2017, Google fired employee James Damore after he distributed
5848-495: The service never became as popular as Facebook for social networking and photo sharing. Google+ offered photo storage and organizational tools that surpassed Facebook's in power, though Google+ lacked the user base to use it. By leaving the social network affiliation, the Photos service changed its association from a sharing platform to a private library platform. In December 2015, Google added shared albums to Google Photos. Users pool photos and videos into an album, and then share
5934-465: The service returning results from three major categories: People, Places, and Things. The computer vision of Google Photos recognizes faces (not only those of humans, but pets as well), grouping similar ones together (this feature is only available in certain countries due to privacy laws); geographic landmarks (such as the Eiffel Tower ); and subject matter, including birthdays, buildings, animals, food, and more. Different forms of machine learning in
6020-453: The service's new image analysis to technology unveiled by Flickr earlier in the same month. Mossberg thought the face grouping feature was "remarkably accurate", but was most impressed by the subject-based grouping. He was surprised that a search for "boats" found both Cape Cod fishing boats and Venetian gondolas , but also noted errors such as a professional photograph registering as a screenshot. PC Magazine 's John C. Dvorak
6106-481: The updated Photos service for its recognition technology, search, apps, and loading times. Nevertheless, privacy concerns were raised, including Google's motivation for building the service, as well as its relationship to governments and possible laws requiring Google to hand over a user's entire photo history. Google Photos has seen strong user adoption. It reached 100 million users after five months, 200 million after one year, 500 million after two years, and passed
6192-463: The user wants to keep using features requiring those missing pieces of data. Google Photos has three storage settings: "Storage saver" (formerly "High quality"), "Original quality" and "Express quality" (unavailable in certain locations). Storage saver includes photo and video storage for photos up to 16 megapixels and videos up to 1080p resolution (the maximum resolutions for average smartphone users in 2015). Original quality preserves
6278-458: The work, with no user interaction required. In November, Google released a separate app – PhotoScan – for users to scan printed photos into the service. The app, released for iOS and Android, uses a scanning process in which users must center their camera over four dots that overlay the printed image, so that the software can combine the photographs for a high-resolution digital image with the fewest possible defects. Later that month, Google added
6364-540: The world as measured by market share. On the list of most valuable brands, Google is ranked second by Forbes and fourth by Interbrand. It has received significant criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns , tax avoidance , censorship , search neutrality , antitrust and abuse of its monopoly position. On August 5, 2024, D.C. Circuit Court Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled that Google held an illegal monopoly over Internet search. Google began in January 1996 as
6450-759: The world" and is one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance , data collection , and technological advantages in the field of AI. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. , is one of the five Big Tech companies, alongside Amazon , Apple , Meta , and Microsoft . Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by American computer scientists Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University in California . Together, they own about 14% of its publicly listed shares and control 56% of its stockholder voting power through super-voting stock . The company went public via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google
6536-543: Was Shriram who told Bezos about Google. Bezos asked Shriram to meet Google's founders and they met six months after Shriram had made his investment when Bezos and his wife were on a vacation trip to the Bay Area. Google's initial funding round had already formally closed but Bezos' status as CEO of Amazon was enough to persuade Page and Brin to extend the round and accept his investment. Between these initial investors, friends, and family Google raised around $ 1,000,000, which
6622-513: Was concerned about the service's privacy. He was particularly concerned about Google's motivation for building the service, the company's relationships with existing governments, and potential laws that would require Google to provide a user's entire history of photos upon request. Dvorak compared such a scenario to inviting others to "scrounge through your underwear drawer". He criticized the service's sync functions, and preferred folders of images over an unsorted "flat database". Dvorak also highlighted
6708-569: Was fined by Russia with 2.5 decillion dollars for allegedly blocking pro-Kremlin propaganda. In November 2024, Google announced the establishment of a new artificial intelligence (AI) hub in Saudi Arabia, aiming to support the Kingdom's economic growth and technological development as part of its Vision 2030 initiative. This AI hub is projected to contribute up to $ 71 billion to Saudi Arabia's economy by advancing AI-driven solutions tailored to
6794-422: Was fired on the same day. Between 2018 and 2019, tensions between the company's leadership and its workers escalated as staff protested company decisions on internal sexual harassment, Dragonfly , a censored Chinese search engine, and Project Maven , a military drone artificial intelligence, which had been seen as areas of revenue growth for the company. On October 25, 2018, The New York Times published
6880-409: Was from clicks (cost per clicks), amounting to US$ 109,652 million in 2017. This includes three principal methods, namely AdMob , AdSense (such as AdSense for Content, AdSense for Search, etc.) and DoubleClick AdExchange. In addition to its own algorithms for understanding search requests, Google uses technology from its acquisition of DoubleClick , to project user interest and target advertising to
6966-489: Was handling approximately 3 billion searches per day. To handle this workload, Google built 11 data centers around the world with several thousand servers in each. These data centers allowed Google to handle the ever-changing workload more efficiently. In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed one billion for the first time. In May 2012, Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $ 12.5 billion, in its largest acquisition to date. This purchase
7052-540: Was initially funded by an August 1998 investment of $ 100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim , co-founder of Sun Microsystems . This initial investment served as a motivation to incorporate the company to be able to use the funds. Page and Brin initially approached David Cheriton for advice because he had a nearby office in Stanford, and they knew he had startup experience, having recently sold the company he co-founded, Granite Systems, to Cisco for $ 220 million. David arranged
7138-629: Was made in part to help Google gain Motorola's considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies, to help protect Google in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies, mainly Apple and Microsoft , and to allow it to continue to freely offer Android. In June 2013, Google acquired Waze for $ 966 million. While Waze would remain an independent entity, its social features, such as its crowdsourced location platform, were reportedly valuable integrations between Waze and Google Maps , Google's own mapping service. Google announced
7224-459: Was reorganized as a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet's largest subsidiary and is a holding company for Alphabet's internet properties and interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google on October 24, 2015, replacing Larry Page, who became the CEO of Alphabet. On December 3, 2019, Pichai also became the CEO of Alphabet. The company has since rapidly grown to offer
7310-445: Was spinning out the "best features" of its Google+ social network. He stated that the Photos service was "always excellent", and liked that users would be able to use the service "without signing up for a new social network". Mossberg described the release as "liberation day" for the photos features that were "effectively hidden" in the "widely ignored social network". The service's strategy, as described by Josh Lowensohn of The Verge ,
7396-438: Was to put all data on Google's servers so that it can be accessed universally. Mossberg liked the service's search function, writing that a search for "Massachusetts" "instantly brought up loads of photos of subjects". Lowensohn noted the service's speed and intelligence, especially in its ability to sort unorganized photos, as well as its photo loading times, search speeds, and simple photo editing tools. Kastrenakes compared
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