A Faster Way to Invite Contacts to Multiple Google Docs

If you have to frequently invite the same collaborators for your documents and spreadsheets, you'll find the process tedious. Fortunately, you can create groups and add all the contacts from a group in only 4 clicks.

You can create a group by going to the Contacts section of Gmail or using this rather new contact picker (screenshots 1-3). Search for the contacts you want to add and click on their name. There's also an "Add All" button that lets you add the contacts displayed in the current view. When you're done, click on "Save as group", type a name for the group and close the window. Groups can only be edited and removed from the standard Gmail interface.

The next time when you need to invite the collaborators, click on the "Choose from contacts" link from the Share tab, select your group from the list and "Add All" (screenshots 4-6).

Google Docs Integrates with Google Calendar

The most important feature of Google Docs is collaboration, but it's not very easy to manage the list of collaborators or to use it for other documents and outside Google Docs. One small feature that will help if you have a lot of collaborators is the possibility to create a Google Calendar event that invites everyone working on a document.

This only works for shared documents and lets you create events that includes all the collaborators and invited viewers as guests. The invitation also contains a link to the document and the collaborators don't have to use Google Calendar. "Anyone with an email address can receive invitations from Google Calendar. When your guest receives an invitation email and clicks on one of the attendance options, he'll be taken to the event page where he can check other guests' attendance status and he can leave comments."

It's easier than manually copy-pasting email addresses and Google Calendar keeps track of those who accepted the invitation, so you don't have to. "This feature is great for those of us who enjoy Google Docs & Spreadsheets as a collaborative resource for collaborative events -- think of all the times a document becomes a meeting -- scheduling a get-together to review a proposal, sending an agenda in advance, or just keeping score for your Wednesday night backgammon club," suggests a Google Docs guide.

Google Discontinues Click-to-Call and Related Links

Two small but useful Google services are no longer available. Click-to-call, the Google Maps feature that allowed you to call a business for free in the US, was removed. "This feature was a long-running experiment, and in the end it was decided to discontinue it. There are however lots of other features we're adding to maps in the hope of making it even more useful," says a Googler who recommends trying GOOG-411, an automated voice-based mobile search engine. You can also try Microsoft's local search engine, which continues to include a click-to-call feature.

Haochi Chen was reminded of that strange day from October 2006 when Google's Official Blog was hacked and somebody posted that "Google has decided not to continue with Google Click-to-call project". Apparently, he was right.

Another discontinued service is Related Links, that showed links to news, videos and searches related to the content of a page in a small box which looked similar to an AdSense unit. Many people were disappointed that they don't earn money for adding it to their sites and the links weren't very relevant, a problem that is also noticeable in the similar feature available in Gmail and Google Groups. A Google representative told Google Blogoscoped that "through our evaluation of the Labs product, we identified the most compelling functionalities of Related Links and integrated them into new and improved products, like the AJAX Search API and AdSense Link Units". Unfortunately, the most compelling functionality was to display dynamic content from the web that complements and enhances a page, but you don't get this using AdSense Link Units (ads) or AJAX Search API (you need to manually define the queries). Some alternatives for Related Links: Sphere widget, Findory's API.

One of the nine rules for innovation shared by Google's Marissa Mayer was "don't kill projects, morph them". Hopefully, they'll morph into something better.

Users Report Gaining Access to Random Google Accounts

There are many problems with Google's services lately. After Google Groups had some temporary glitches, some people report that Google switches them to random accounts.

Jvy Loh writes on his blog about the incidents:

"It started off when I was using gg docs and after closing 1 of my docs, I was returned to my 'doc home', however, someone else's email was reflected at the top instead of mine. It disappeared soon after before I could catch what was going on. (...) Lately, the google problem came up again. Nearly everytime I boot up my computer, and login to google toolbar or gmail, I began to notice that when I went further to click on other google services, e.g. gg reader, very often I went into someone else's reader. Not just their email id replacing mine at the top, it was literally someone's reader. I could read their feeds and so on. (...) The MOST SERIOUS thing so far is that you can accidentally made changes to other user's account while you think you are modifying your own. I realized that when I was making changes/adding items, like adding a bookmark, adding a feed into my reader, and adding notes to my notebook, adding gg gadgets to my igoogle, rearranging my igoogle layout, the changes all went to the other party, not mine, and hey this is scary!"

He also mentions that the users seem "to be originating from the same city, which is Singapore, and I suspect some of them are students, by browsing through the gg reader feeds presented to me, and supposingly 'my bookmarks'. (...) Not only did it appear in Singapore, those users seem to be from the same organization, which are local universities, 1 from NTU, and some may be from NUS, and fyi the 2 top universities in Singapore are located in the west of Singapore, and I am in the north-west, which is pretty near to each other."

Other Google user complains over at Google Groups: "Whenever I use Google Reader, I would 'cross-over' to another user's account."

And another one: "I've been login to other users today, seeing their feeds instead of mine. I login to gmail and google reader. While reading the feeds halfway I would see my feeds change into other user's [feeds], my account will also change to other google user account."

Other report from a regular reader of this blog: "While I was reading posts in Google Reader today, my account was switched to someone else's account. The account name on the upper right corner changed and I could see all his or her subscriptions in my Google Reader. I closed the Reader and open it again. Nice! I could read another person's subscriptions. I tried iGoogle and it was also changed."

It seems that this isn't an isolated incident and it may have something to do with Google cookies and Google Reader, but it's not very clear. If you had similar problems or you know what causes them, please let us know.

Update. Matt Cutts, from Google, posted this: "Given that most of these reports are coming from a single area (Singapore), it sounds like an ISP isn't handling their connections correctly. We've certainly seen ISPs mess up their proxies before. I'll still ask about this though."

Update 2. Jvy Loh writes: "Since last Saturday [July 22] after Google Reader was patched (need confirmation from Google whether the Google Reader or local ISP proxy/cache played a bigger part in this security problem), I have not noticed any more security glitches. Two other Singapore users who contacted me also reported no more security issues since then. So, we have enough reasons to think that the security issues related to what I have reported have been eliminated."

Earth at Night

Google Earth has three new layers from NASA (you can find them in the Featured Content folder): astronaut photos of the Earth, satellite imagery for geographic phenomena like the tsunami from 2004 that devastated countries around the Indian Ocean and Earth City Lights, a layer that shows the intensity of light at night for all the cities in the world. Here's a part of Europe and some context:



"The brightest areas of the Earth are the most urbanized, but not necessarily the most populated. (Compare western Europe with China and India.) Cities tend to grow along coastlines and transportation networks. Even without the underlying map, the outlines of many continents would still be visible. (...) Even more than 100 years after the invention of the electric light, some regions remain thinly populated and unlit. Antarctica is entirely dark. The interior jungles of Africa and South America are mostly dark, but lights are beginning to appear there," says NASA about the layer.

Google Reader Is More Podcast-Friendly

Hello and welcome to a new exciting post from Google Operating System. Stafford from Seoul writes to tell us about a new feature in Google Reader:

"I use Google Reader primarily to catch podcasts - it provides a nice Flash MP3 player within the post. Has anyone noticed that you can click on "popout" which will open the Flash player in a small window so you can keep moving through Reader without closing a post, thus stopping the audio?"


Well, I didn't notice the small link, but it's pretty useful if you subscribe to long podcasts. In fact, Google Reader adds the "popout" link next to each embedded audio or video and you can open more than one podcast in its own window. Now if only I could find some interesting podcasts...

Until next time, have fun and enjoy this summer wherever you are!

Custom YouTube Players: Here Comes YouTube TV

You can now create customized YouTube players, choose a color theme, a video playlist and share your favorite videos. My green player shows three collections of incredible places from Google Earth, but you can use it as your own TV channel: it's easy to control the look and the content. When you add new videos to the playlist, your custom player will automatically include them. I wonder if businesses will be able to completely customize the player when YouTube launches the corporate version, as part of Google Apps.

Google Print Ads, a Good News for the US Newspapers

While the newspapers are slowly dying and are trying to find good solutions to survive in the digital age, Google gives them some help.

"Last fall, newspaper executives and analysts were caught by surprise by the severity of a slump that took hold last summer. Since the beginning of this year, the rate of decline in advertising revenue has accelerated. Total print and online ad revenue was down 4.8% to $10.6 billion in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to the Newspaper Association of America, compared with its full-year decline in 2006 of 0.3%," says the Wall Street Journal.

Last year, Google started to test a program for delivering ads to 50 important US papers using the same AdWords front-end as for online ads. Yesterday Google announced that the program has been extended to 225 newspapers and is open to all the US advertisers. "Google Print Ads enables agencies and advertisers of all sizes to easily plan and buy traditional newspaper media in both national and local newspapers within a single, web-enabled interface. The platform enables marketers to reach new audiences in ways that are relevant for newspaper readers and cost-efficient for advertisers and publishers. And newspaper publishers can increase their bottom line by adding new customers from Google's network of advertisers, many of whom are new to newspaper advertising."

Google Print Ads works in a very traditional fashion, without automatic targeting: "First, you select the newspapers you'd like to advertise in. Next, you can select which sections, days of the week, and ad sizes are the most appropriate for your target customer. Then, you simply name the price you're willing to pay for that insertion, choosing your own offer price instead of entering an AdWords-like auction. The publisher will consider each bid separately, based on a variety of factors including day-of-week, desired section, pre-established rates for the advertiser's industry, and available inventory for that particular day. If the newspaper accepts your offer, you upload your ad directly into the system, and your ad runs. If the newspaper does not accept your bid, you can easily start a dialogue with the newspaper to reach an offer that benefits both parties."

Google wants to build a complete advertising machine that lets you create a campaign and choose the mediums best adapted to your ad and budget (web, print, radio, TV, games, outdoor).

Google Reader as a Social News Aggregator

If you use Google Reader, you must know about its sharing feature. "Every Google Reader account comes with a public page which you can use to share items of interest with your friends and family. (...) Like any regular web page, your public page is viewable by anyone who knows its address."

Of course, the problem is that nobody knows that address and you need to email it to your friends or publish it to your site. So except for creating a link blog or filtering the news for some of your friends, the feature is not very useful.

But what if Google Reader showed you the top shared items by your Gmail contacts? Or the top shared items by Latvian people? Or the top shared blog posts labeled as "Google"? Some might say Google Reader will morph into a social news site like Digg, Reddit, Newsvine.

For Facebook users, the transformation is already visible thanks to a simple app that connects the dots between the shared pages. The list of top shared items by more than 4,000 Facebook users is available at the author's website. It's not perfect, but hopefully someone from Google Reader will realize the potential of this feature and will implement it.


Robert Scoble, who lives many hours a day inside Google Reader, where he builds a very interesting link blog, likes the Facebook app. "This is the beginning of something really killer. It's something I wanted Google to do — Google could put out a Digg-style killer that'd be a lot harder to game. Admittedly this isn't to the level of a Digg killer yet, but it is gathering steam at a very rapid pace. There's a lot of smart people using Google Reader — Eric Auchard at Reuters is on the list, for instance. That'll lead to a lot better news than Digg picks on an average day."

BlogRovR - A Guided Walk Through the Blogosphere

BlogRovR is a Firefox extension that lets you browse the web guided by your favorite blogs. After you install the extension, you'll have the opportunity to enter a list of blogs (there are also predefined bundles of blogs) or import an OPML file from your feed reader. Everytime you visit a new web page, you'll a small box with snippets from the blog posts included in your list that link to the current page. For example, if you visit Google Video, you might see two surprisingly similar posts from TechCrunch and Mashable that discuss the problem of copyright infringement in online video sites and link to full-length movies available at Google Video:


You can configure from the toolbar how often BlogRovR's list shows up and even disable it when you don't want to see it.

This is a great way to cluster blog posts: visit the source of a news and you'll see a list of blogs that link to that page. It's also a method to see if one your favorite bloggers linked to your site.

Note: If this extension gives you a déjà vu feeling, then you know about Blogger Web Comments, a Firefox extension created by Google that "makes it easy to see what bloggers are saying about a page you're viewing". The difference is that Google's extension doesn't let you restrict the blogosphere to your favorite blogs.

Social Gmail

Google has an emerging social network and it doesn't use it. No, I don't talk about orkut or Socialstream (which was only sponsored by Google). Gmail, Google's most successful project if we leave search aside, has the potential of gathering information from all the other Google services that can be easily shared with your contacts.

The Past
Contacts started to become actual links in a social network when Gmail added avatars, last year. The chat made it possible to see the online presence of some of your contacts.

In April, iGoogle added a surprising feature: wizards that let you build simple gadgets and share them with your friends: greetings, photo albums, counting the days until a special event. A smart man made this comment: "This reminds me of a Facebook profile page. You can share your favorite photos/videos, put up your status, and add friends to your community so you can look at each other's pages. Google is sort of jumping into the social networking realm with this one...".

The Present
Most Google services have a way to share content: you can share your favorite videos, photo albums, documents, blog posts, but there's no central place to manage how you share content or a simple way to expose the shared content.

Google Reader has a feature that lets you share feed items, but you need to explicitly send to your friends the link to your shared items. Facebook's app for Google Reader generates a list of the top shared items by your friends, and that's a great way to discover new content filtered by the people you know.


Many Google services ask you to create a profile: Google Groups, Blogger, orkut, dodgeball, Google Co-op, but all these profiles are distinct and difficult to manage.

The Future
Gmail can easily create a graph of the interactions with your contacts based on how fast you answer to someone's message, how much do you write, the analysis of messages. Instead of a static profile you need to build for each of your contact, you could see his live profile that contains information aggregated from different services.

All this data could make you communicate more efficiently because Gmail could prioritize messages based on previous patterns and show more context about a contact when you type your message.

Gmail could also separate your contacts into different groups and let you share different data for each group. You'll share photos, documents, web sites, notes from a single place.

Creating a mail application centered on conversations instead of messages was a smart move from Google, but now Gmail should focus on those who create the conversations and try to make the conversations better. After all, conversation comes from the latin conversari ("to associate with"), so conversations could update the associations from Gmail's social graph. That's Gmail 2.0, the social Gmail.

Finding Related Web Pages

Google is the only major search engine that offers a "similar pages" feature, but not too many people use it. Launched in September 1999 as GoogleScout (scout=explore, investigate), the feature shows around 30 web pages related to a search result.

For example, to find sites related to Google Reader, you can click on the "similar pages" link placed after the snippet and you'll discover other feed readers, Google Reader's blog, information about feeds, blog platforms.

The related pages are generated by analyzing the link structure of the web. A patent from 2000 explains how this feature works: "a first set of hyperlinked documents that have a forward link to the selected hyperlinked document is provided. Additionally, a second set of hyperlinked documents that are pointed to by the forward links in the hyperlinked documents in the first set is provided. A value is assigned to each forward link in each of the hyperlinked documents in the first set, with the value being reduced for a forward link if there are multiple hyperlinked documents from the same host as the hyperlinked document that includes the forward link. A score is generated for each hyperlinked document in the second set according to the values of the forward links pointing to the hyperlinked document. Accordingly, a list of related hyperlinked documents is generated from the second set according to the score of the hyperlinked documents."

Basically, you're expecting that many sites that link to Google Reader will also link to its competitors and to related information. This is very similar to Amazon's recommendations: "customers who bought this item also bought".

How to use this features?

• find the competitors of a company (e.g.: DaimlerChrysler)
• find similar music (e.g.: Regina Spektor)
• you like a site and want to find other similar sites (digg)
• explore a domain (like machine learning)
• refine the search results (search for bass and find the related pages for the first result about the fish)

Unfortunately, Google's implementation has a major flaw: because many pages link to popular sites like Blogger, Flickr, StatCounter, you'll sometimes find these sites in the list of related links even if they're completely unrelated. Gred Linden calls this "the Harry Potter problem", when talking about Amazon's recommendation system. "The first version of similarities was quite popular. But it had a problem, the Harry Potter problem. Oh, yes, Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a runaway bestseller. Kids buy it. Adults buy it. Everyone buys it. So, take a book, any book. If you look at all the customers who bought that book, then look at what other books they bought, rest assured, most of them have bought Harry Potter."

So even if GoogleScout doesn't work well all the time, it's a great tool for research and serependitious discoveries (add a bookmarklet to your browser to use this feature for any site you visit). Another way to find related pages is to search for a site in Google Directory and to click on its category. Similicio.us uses the bookmarks from del.icio.us to complete this sentence: "people who bookmarked this site also bookmarked...", while the untrustworthy Alexa fills in the blanks for "people who visit this site also visit...". Google also uses similar ideas to provide recommendations based on your search history.

Google Custom Search Business Edition

Google launched a business edition of the Custom Search program that will allow small businesses to add powerful search features for their sites. Google offers the same benefits as in the consumer edition, but also technical support, customization of search results using an XML API and no ads. The service is not very cheap: $100 per year for websites of up to 5,000 web pages, and $500 per year for websites of up to 50,000 pages, but it's much cheaper than other similar services or Google Search Appliance, a hardware solution that creates a local index and lets you search the intranet as well. The most affordable search appliance from Google costs $1,995 for 50,000 web pages. Here are the prices for other hosted site search solutions (* means that the product lets you control the crawling frequency, ** means the search tool also indexes password-protected pages):

Product	Price for a year (5,000 documents)
FusionBot**	$2,400
Spiderline**	$1,200
Freefind*	$948
SiteLevel*	$863.78
FindinSite*	$720
PicoSearch**	$498 (6,000 documents)
Mysitesearch*	$239.4
Innerprise*	$228
Google Custom Search	$100

Because Google uses its index to deliver results for the custom search engine, it can't guarantee it will index a web site or a certain page. Most other products try to completely index the site and let you control how often they re-index the pages.

Google realized that the ad-supported model, that works very well for consumers, isn't an option for businesses, that want technical support, custom-tailored solutions and are willing to pay for this.

Google to Launch a Search Engine for Ringtones

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google works on a search engine for mobile media content that will include ringtones and games.

"With the new system, users would search for a piece of content -- such as ringtones -- and would get back a list of companies that provide it, with links letting them easily purchase the material. (...) The company has been working for months with content providers -- including large entertainment companies and smaller mobile media aggregators -- to index their material and make it available via mobile search. (...) The Internet company has considered including a social-networking component that would let users of Google's Gmail email service exchange content, one person familiar with the initiative said. Google declined to comment."

Google has launched mobile versions for most of its services, including search, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube and it's now testing AdSense for mobile content. But a search engine for ringtones and games could jeopardize Google's partnerships with many carriers that want to keep the customers inside their "walled gardens". There aren't many good services in this space (Mogmo comes to my mind), so Google's search engine will actually fill a void. Until some carriers decide to block it.

The Ultimate Search for Bourne with Google

One year after the partnership with Sony Pictures to promote The Da Vinci Code movie, Google has a new campaign, this time for The Bourne Ultimatum. Searching for [Bourne Ultimatum] or [Jason Bourne], you'll find an undisclosed ad for the Ultimate Search for Bourne with Google, a competition that starts today in 7 countries: U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, the U.K. and France.

It's up to you to track down Jason Bourne across three continents. With Google tools at your fingertips, you're well equipped for your mission. And you'll have the chance to win fantastic prizes, including:

* The VW Touareg 2 as seen in The Bourne Ultimatum
* Destination vacations
* iPhones, cash, and DVDs

You'll probably find intriguing that "Google must provide Universal Pictures with the primary email address associated with your Google account for verification purposes". Besides the integration with Google accounts, a Google search box will help you find clues and a gadget for iGoogle will keep track of your scores.


Apparently, the partnership between Universal Pictures and Google didn't involve money. It's just a way to create more awareness for Google's services. "This is a great opportunity for us to bring the power of Google search products to help players across the globe hunt for Bourne online. We're always looking for creative and engaging ways to connect people with the information they're seeking, and this collaboration is a terrific example of that," said Dylan Casey, product manager at Google.

It's interesting to see a media giant and a technology company as partners in a viral marketing campaign that blurs the borders between advertising and real content.

{ via SE Roundtable }

Download Published Documents and Spreadsheets

If someone sends you a read-only version of a Google document or spreadsheet and you want to download it as a PDF and link to that PDF from your site, there's an easy way to do it.

For spreadsheets

A published spreadsheet has an address that looks like this: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=[ID]. To get the address for a different format, you need to append &output=, followed by the extension of the format. For example, http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=[ID]&output=xls for Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Other valid output formats: pdf, ods (for OpenOffice spreadsheets), csv, txt.

Update (October 2010): In the new version of Google Spreadsheets, the URL is: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=[ID]&output=xls.

For documents

Published documents have a similar URL: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=[ID]. To obtain the address for another format, you'll have to use the docid parameter:
http://docs.google.com/MiscCommands?command=saveasdoc&
exportformat=[FORMAT]&docID=[ID], where [FORMAT] can have one of these values: pdf, doc, oo (for OpenOffice documents), rtf, txt.

Update (October 2010): In the new version of Google Docs, the URL is: http://docs.google.com/document/export?format=[FORMAT]&id=[ID].

Another way to download the files is to go to Google Docs homepage and open the files from there, but, at least for spreadsheets, the method described above lets you actually link to the file in a different format and people that click on the link don't need to have a Google account. For documents, a visitor of your site has to log in to his/her Google account before clicking on the link.

{ From an idea of DPic. }

Google's Evolution as Seen on Wikipedia

Wikipedia's page for Google changed a lot as Google morphed from a search engine to an Internet company. The Wayback Machine is a good way to see how a web page evolved over time and it's easier to browse than Wikipedia's own history service. I only included the introduction of each version of the article and Google's homepage from the same period.

December 2003



Google is an Internet search engine that not only indexes the World Wide Web, but also caches the web pages themselves. It also indexes pictures on the web, Usenet newsgroups and news sites. As of 2003, it was the most popular search engine, handling upwards of 80% of all internet searches through its website and clients like Yahoo! and AOL.


July 2004



Google is the most popular search engine on the World Wide Web. Through its website and client websites, such as AOL, Google receives roughly 200 million search requests per day. Google has its headquarters (called the "Googleplex") in Mountain View, California, USA.

In addition to web pages, Google also provides services for searching images, Usenet newsgroups, news sites, and items for sale online. As of June 2004, Google contained 4.28 billion web pages, 880 million images and 845 million Usenet messages in its index; a total of 6 billion items. It also caches much of the content that it indexes.


December 2004



Google is a U.S.-based search engine owned by Google Inc. whose mission "is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The largest search engine on the web, Google receives over 200 million queries each day through its various services.

In addition to its tool for searching webpages, Google also provides services for searching images, Usenet newsgroups, news websites, and items for sale online. As of November 2004, Google has indexed 8.05 billion webpages, 880 million images, and 845 million Usenet messages — in total, over 9.5 billion items. It also caches much of the content that it indexes. Some of the other programs that operate under Google control include Blogger, Picasa, Keyhole, Froogle, and Google Desktop Search.


March 2005



Google, Inc. is a U.S.-based corporation, established in 1998, that manages the Google search engine. Google is headquartered at the "Googleplex" in Mountain View, California, and employs over 3,000 workers. Google's CEO Dr. Eric Schmidt, formerly CEO of Novell, took over when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.


March 2006



Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is a U.S. public corporation, first incorporated as a privately held corporation in September, 1998, that designs and manages the Internet Google search engine. The company employs approximately 5,700 employees and is based in Mountain View, California. Eric Schmidt, formerly chief executive officer of Novell, was named Google's CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.

The name "Google" is a play on the word "googol," which refers to the number represented by 1 followed by one hundred zeros. As a further play on this, Google's headquarters, located in California, are referred to as "the Googleplex" — a googolplex being 1 followed by a googol of zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf. multiplex, cineplex, etc).

Google's services are run on several server farms, each consisting of many thousand low-cost commodity computers running stripped-down versions of Linux. While the company does not provide detailed information about its hardware, it was estimated in 2005 that they were using more than 100,000 Linux machines. See Google platform for more details on their technology.


July 2006



Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American multinational software corporation, first incorporated as a privately held corporation in September, 1998, that specializes in search engine, information retrieval technology and online advertising. With a market capitalization of US$118.32 billion as of June 2006, Google is the largest internet search company in the world, almost twice as large as rival Yahoo! The company employs approximately 6,800 employees and is based in Mountain View, California. Eric Schmidt, formerly chief executive officer of Novell, was named Google's CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," which refers to 10^100 (a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Google has become well known for its corporate culture and innovative, clean products, and has a major impact on online culture. The verb "to google" has come to mean "to perform a Web search", usually with the Google search engine.

Google's services are run on several server farms, which, in 2004, consisted of over 30 clusters of up to 2,000 PCs per cluster. Each cluster contains one petabyte of data with sustained transfer rates of 2 Gbps. Combined, over four billion web pages, averaging 10 Kb each, have been fully indexed.


November 2006



Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American public corporation and search engine, first incorporated as a privately held company on 7 September 1998. The company had 9,378 full-time employees as of September 30, 2006 and is based in Mountain View, California. Eric Schmidt, former chief executive officer of Novell, was named Google's CEO when co-founder Larry Page stepped down.

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," which refers to 10^100 (a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Google has had a major impact on online culture. The verb "google" was recently added to both the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."

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


June 2007



Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG and LSE: GGEA) is an American public corporation, specializing in Internet searching and online advertising. The company is based in Mountain View, California, and has 12,238 full-time employees (as of March 31, 2007). Google's mission statement is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google's corporate philosophy includes statements such as, "You can make money without doing evil," and, "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun," illustrating a somewhat relaxed corporate culture.

Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University, and the company was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 7, 1998. Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising USD1.67 billion, making it worth $23 billion. Through a series of new product developments, acquisitions and partnerships, the company has expanded its initial search and advertising business into other areas, including web-based email, online mapping, office productivity, and video sharing, among others.

Like most large corporations, Google's businesses have drawn some controversy, such as copyright disputes in its book search project, or censorship by Google of search results as it works with countries such as France, Germany, and China -- each of whom have laws requiring the company hide information from Google users in their country. Additionally, in the post September 11 era, several governments and militaries have raised concerns about the national security risks posed by vivid geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging. However, it should be noted that all of the images and details visible in Google Earth are available through other public, free sources; Google Earth does, however, make it easier to access.