Google Spreadsheet for Small Business

Google is the poor man’s software. In the latest fact, Google has started free online spreadsheet feature.

Targetted users of this spreadsheet include:

1. Soccer moms
2. Little league baseball coaches
3. Church bazaar organizers
4. College students
5. Small businesses of less than 10 employees

This spreadsheet is not fortune for big companies, so is this spreadsheet making competition with Microsoft. Now Google is continuing to prove itself in 7-kind of office desktop software, which is likely to make immediate impact on source of income of Microsoft.
Analysts say that it will not work for big corporate sector and it will not be able to take over the customers of Microsoft but certainly, it will find its own audience.

Peter O’Kelly, an analyst for the Burton Group said,

I don’t think a Web-centric spreadsheet offering from Google will be a successful direct competitor to Excel or other traditional spreadsheet tools.

An analyst say that the real benefit of Google Spreadsheet is that reaches to all advertisers and generate almost Google’s revenues.

Joe Wilcox, a Jupiter analyst said,

Google may enjoy playing with Microsoft’s mind.

We can only expect that small companies will adopt the spreadsheets. This would be good to have occasional need of Web-based product.

Google to expand operations in Hyderabad

Andhra Pradesh government has decided to allot 20 acres of land on the city outskirts to Google for expanding its operations.

The land will be allotted in Kokapet village.
A Memorandum of Understanding was signed at Santa Clara in US by Andhra Pradesh officials and senior executives of Google in the presence of visiting Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.
A statement from the chief minister's office said the MoU was signed by Shailendra Kumar Joshi, secretary to the government, Information Technology and communications department, and Roy Gilbert, director online sales and operations, Google.
In Hyderabad, Google has the second largest operations in India, and is home to engineering, online sales and service, information systems, human resources and other support functions.
Google has about 1,088 employees operating from a leased facility.
The company is keen to expand its operations here by ramping up the employee strength to over 4,000 and constructing a fully owned techno complex.
Google is a public and profit-making company focused on search services. Founded in 1998, the company employs more than 10,000 people worldwide.
At the end of 2006, Google had global revenues of over $10,604.92 million, with market capitalization of about 1$50 billion.
The Googleplex in Mountain View, California, is the world headquarters for the Google organisation. Goole has more than 20 offices around the globe and is present across four locations in India - Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai.

US intelligence wants ability to censor satellite images

The head of a US intelligence agency told the Associated Press that commercial satellite services like Google Earth may need to be censored in the future in order to protect American interests.

Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, who heads the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, spends his days helping the government map the planet and studying imagery. Once the exclusive domain of the government, commercial satellite imagery has attained high-enough resolutions that the government is thinking about ways to restrict its use in times of war or other emergency situations.

"If there was a situation where any imagery products were being used by adversaries to kill Americans, I think we should act," he said in the interview. "I think we may need to have some control over things that are disseminated. I don't know if that means buying up all the imagery or not. I think there are probably some other ways you can do it."

The reference to "buying up all the imagery" refers to the government's practice of purchasing all commercially-available satellite data on Afghanistan during the early days of the conflict there. While buying up all available images may be one solution to the problem, the government may also be able to exert a different kind of pressure, as it provides nearly $1 billion in grants to major US imagery firms.

As the imagery market becomes international, though, the competing demands of local governments may be more difficult to sort out. The issue is already becoming tricky for companies like Google that offer popular products using satellite imagery. Google has already faced requests from Vice President Chaney to remove images of his residence and from the Indian government to blur sensitive military sites. Headlines in the UK have already claimed that Iraqi insurgents arousing Google Earth to attack British troops.

Certain disruptive technologies (peer-to-peer file sharing comes to mind) are difficult to stuff back inside the bag once they've been unleashed on the world, and and satellite mapping may someday be one of them. For now, though, the number of commercial satellites is still quite limited, and the companies that do the mapping well are few in number. As that changes, the US government—and all other governments—will find it harder and harder to control the information that is produced.

Google Earth Scares The Spooks

The director of a U.S. intelligence agency has cautioned that the government may have to censor satellite images that could be a potential security threat to the country and its armed forces.

The warning came from Vice Admiral Robert Murret, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which provides security information using satellite imagery.

In an interview with the AP he said," If there was a situation where any imagery products were being used by adversaries to kill Americans, I think we should act."

"I could certainly foresee circumstances in which we would not want imagery to be openly disseminated of a sensitive site of any type, whether it is here or overseas".

Satellite images are widely available because of private companies like Digital Globe and Geoeye who have launched their own satellites and through services such as Google Earth and Google Maps.

Restricting satellite images also has other obstacles. If the area that is censored is too big it has the potential to become a freedom of the press issue, but if it is too narrow the government risks revealing strategic locations.

In addition Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert with the Federation of American Scientists, points out that with the number of commercial satellites growing it could be impossible to restrict satellite imagery.

"I can foresee circumstances where they might wish they could. There can be cases where imagery could jeopardize the security of U.S. military operations.

"But this cat may be out of the bag for good. It's just not clear that the legal or other tools needed to restrict disclosure are available".

Google Earth Satellite Images

Media Companies Viewing Google as the Enemy

Media companies have started sending a message that they view Google as the enemy. Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons described Google and its ilk as Custer in his last stand.

“The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation,” Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Richard Parsons said, referring to the Civil War American general George Custer who was defeated by Native Americans in a battle dubbed “Custer’s Last Stand”.

Custer fell in a massacre, overwhelmed by a better-equiped army. No doubt Google wants to avoid his fate.

“They will lose this war if they go to war,” Parsons added, “The notion that the new kids on the block have taken over is a false notion.”

It’s funny, all this over user copyright violations. The RIAA mismanaged their war, attacking the consumer directly and causing a lot of bad blood, but before that they attacked the networks, destroying company after company until all that was left was a weak, decentralized, trackable system.

The TV industry is going after the money, after Google, in a battle even the RIAA saw as a pointless game of whack-a-mole. The RIAA first destroyed the networks, although none of them were owned by a $146 billion company. In theory, a network could have had a chance, but none had the resources to defend themselves. Google does, and if it can beat back this charge, the TV industry will have managed to screw themselves worse than the recording industry did.

Still, the real news is: The media companies are pissed, and are hungry for this fight

Thailand to Sue Google Over Offensive YouTube Video

BANGKOK (mathaba) -- The Thai government is to sue Google in a criminal court over internet video clips which were insulting to the His Majesty the King and the Thai People and Nation. Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, the Minister for Information, Communications and Technology, said on Tuesday that the law suit will charge that YouTube, the video sharing website owned by Google, hosted video clips offensive to King Bhumibol Adulyadej. He said he would file the suit at the Bangkok criminal court on Friday. It was not clear whether the US-based internet giant would be charged with lese majeste (injuring the monarchy), defamation or a violation of laws governing internet use. "Those clips are very harsh to the feelings of Thai people and our culture, and foreigners will never understand," Sitthichai said. Neither YouTube nor Google has offices in Thailand, although the parent company does business with many Thai-based websites and businesses. Google does offer a Thai language portal to its popular search engine. It set up an office in Singapore last week to expand its advertising profile in South-East Asia. 'Playing a game' Commenting on the government's decision to proceed with a legal case against Google, Sitthichai said officials were examining whether a suit could be filed in an international court. He said a YouTube email request for the Thai government to "send it the controversial clips as evidence so it will remove them" showed that the company was "playing a game". YouTube never removed the video, it was the individual who posted the video who had removed it himself, whilst leaving behind a still image that was still offensive. Mathaba News Network has called for solidarity with Thailand in boycotting YouTube, due to the xenophobic arrogance displayed by the company throughout the incident, that showed near total ignorance of foreign cultures and sensitivities. The minister has argued that Google ignored Thailand's petition because it is a small country, while it had bowed to Chinese requests to block certain topics by deemed by Beijing to be politically sensitive, such as references to democracy. The ministry has blocked all access to YouTube from Thailand since April 4, shortly after the first offensive clip appeared on the popular website which relies on contributions from the public. But the publicity and lack of control by YouTube has led to more than a dozen further offensive video clips against the Thai People, Nation and King being uploaded to YouTube.

Privacy fears hit Google search

Google is increasingly in the spotlight over the issue of privacy A leading US digital rights campaign group has warned against using Google software which lets people organise and find information on their computers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation said the latest version of Google Desktop posed a risk to privacy. This is because a feature in the software lets Google keep personal data on its servers for up to 30 days. Google says it plans to encrypt all data transferred from users' hard drives and restrict access. Government snooping The new version of its desktop search software comes as Google is battling efforts by the US Department of Justice to force it to hand over data about what people are looking for. We think this will be a very useful tool, but you will have to give up some of your privacy Marissa Mayer, Google Google data request fears Some of Google's main competitors have already complied with the request for details about people's search habits. The case has focused attention on the issue of personal information held by internet companies. "Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about government snooping into Google's search logs, it's shocking that Google expects its users to now trust it with the contents of their personal computers," said EFF staff attorney Kevin Bankston. "Unless you configure Google Desktop very carefully, and few people will, Google will have copies of your tax returns, love letters, business records, financial and medical files, and whatever other text-based documents the desktop software can index. "The government could then demand these personal files with only a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to seize the same things from your home or business," he said. 'Useful tool' The EFF is concerned about a feature in Google Desktop 3 that lets users search their content on multiple computers. To do this, people have to let Google transfer the files to its own servers. The feature is optional and only works with certain types of files, such as Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and PDF files. The search giant has sought to reassure privacy advocates, saying it will not keep the information for more than 30 days and strictly limit who has access to the data. "We think this will be a very useful tool, but you will have to give up some of your privacy," said Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience. "For many of us, that trade off will make a lot of sense." The software package is widely seen as posing a challenge to Microsoft's dominance of the way people interact with computers. It is not known how many users there are of Google Desktop but it is thought to be a fraction of the hundreds of millions that use the search engine every day. As well as making data on a hard drive accessible on any computer, the software also lets people set up mini programs to keep track of information such as weather or news stories. Google Desktop 3 is currently only available for Windows XP or Windows 2000.

Google ordered to hand over data

Google said users of its search engine have a right to their privacy A federal judge has ordered internet search engine Google to turn over some search data, including 50,000 web addresses, to the US government. However, Judge James Ware denied a request that Google hand over a list of people's search requests. The Justice Department had wanted access to search records to help prevent access to online pornography. The judge said privacy considerations led him to deny part of the department's request. "This concern, combined with the prevalence of internet searches for sexually explicit material, gives this court pause as to whether the search queries themselves may constitute potentially sensitive information," he said in his ruling. Google lawyer Nicole Wong said it was reassuring that the judge's decision had "sent a clear message about privacy". "What his ruling means is that neither the government nor anyone else has carte blanche when demanding data from internet companies," she said. Public perceptions The ruling said the request for 50,000 web addresses, or URLs, was relevant for use in a statistical study the government is undertaking to defend the constitutionality of its child anti-pornography law. Earlier, the government had reduced its request to just 50,000 web addresses and roughly 5,000 search terms from the millions or potentially billions of addresses it had initially sought. "The expectation of privacy by some Google users may not be reasonable," Judge Ware wrote, "but may nonetheless have an appreciable impact on the way in which Google is perceived, and consequently the frequency with which users use Google." The case has focused attention on the issue of personal information held by internet companies. The US Government is seeking to defend the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which has been blocked by the Supreme Court because of legal challenges over how it is enforced. It wants the data from the search engines to prove how easy it is to stumble over porn on the net. Three of Google's competitors in internet search technology - AOL, Yahoo and MSN - have complied with subpoenas in the case.

Google increases US search share

Google was recently voted the UK's favourite online brand More than four out of 10 web searches conducted in the US are now done using the Google search engine, figures show. Google's share rose to 42% in February, up 6% on the same month in 2005, while rival Yahoo saw a 4% drop to 27%, according to tracking firm ComScore. Usage of MSN's search engine fell by 3% to 13% said ComScore, while Ask had a 1% rise to 6%. In a separate report, analysts Merrill Lynch said Google's advertising revenues was expected to rise. The Merrill Lynch report said: "We expect Google's increased market share in search queries, and better monetisation of queries to lead to increased share of ad dollars relative to its competitors." A report by RBC Capital Markets said Google could go on to capture a 70% market share. It said: "The question really comes down to how long it could take." Popular brand ComScore said the total number of search queries rose by 11% over the year. Google share prices rose by 1.4% after ComScore's results were announced on Tuesday, rising to $374.77 (£216), while Yahoo rose 1.5% to $31.93 (£18.40). Earlier this month, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt reiterated the firm's belief that it will continue to enjoy strong increases in its revenues. He spoke out two days after his chief finance officer George Reyes warned revenues were slowing, prompting a 10% dip in the share price. A federal judge ordered Google to turn over search data, including 50,000 web addresses, to the US government as part of the authorities' bid to prevent access to online pornography.

Google sells $2.07bn of its stock

US search engine company Google has raised $2.07bn (£1.2bn) through its second share sale in seven months.

Google, which first listed on the stock market in August 2004, sold 5.3 million shares priced at $389.75 each.

The shares were sold to funds that track the Standard & Poor's 500 index because Google has replaced oil firm Burlington Resources in the benchmark.

Google is planning to use the cash from the sale to fight off stiff competition from rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft.

Price growth

A recent report found that four out of 10 web searches conducted in the US are now done using the Google search engine, giving the company a 42% market share in February.

That makes Google the world's most-used search engine and rivals have renewed efforts to eat into its market share.

To stay ahead of the competition, Google is expanding into new areas and has bought other companies to broaden its access to the online advertising market.

Google's share price has suffered in recent weeks - the stock has lost more than 6% this year - as investors questioned whether it could keep revenues growing as quickly as it has done in the past.

However, despite the concerns, Google's shares have performed remarkably well since it listed on the stock market and have doubled in value during the past 12 months.

On Friday, Google shares closed $1.56 higher at $390.

Google's quarterly profits soar

Internet search firm Google has said first-quarter profit rose 60% to $592m (£333m), from $372m a year ago.

Revenue was up 79% to $2.25bn, ahead of analysts' forecasts, as the firm showed it was responding to the challenge from Microsoft and Yahoo.

Google, listed on the stock market in August 2004, saw its shares rise by 6% after the ball trading in New York.

Meanwhile an Arkansas judge approved a preliminary settlement of $90m between Google and disgruntled advertisers.

They had claimed the search provider overcharged them for their adverts, and that they were billed for false customer leads.

Google has to pay up to $60m in future advertising credits, and up to $30m is available to pay lawyers for those making claims against Google.

"We are pleased that we were able to reach an agreement and are pleased the judge has granted preliminary approval," Google's lawyer Daralyn Durie said.

Commenting on the results figures, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said the California-based company had an "exceptional quarter with strong growth and profitability".

Analyst Martin Pykkonen of Hoefer and Arnett said: "They're still spending pretty heftily on marketing expenses but strategically it's the right thing to do and the underlying reason why revenue growth was so strong."

Google targets mobile future

If you use Google, the chances are that you search its index via the internet.

But the company's ambitions do not begin and end with its online presence. For some time now, it has been establishing ways for people to use its roster of services via mobile devices.

The man in charge of the Google mobile mission is Dipchand "Deep" Nishar. He believes that when people are out and about, they want very different answers from Google than they would if they were sat in front of a PC.

For instance, he said, the first result that comes up after typing "film" into a PC browser is the Internet Movie Database.

"But type 'films' into a mobile browser and you are most likely going to see a movie," he told the BBC News website.

Handy helper

"The same search query, because of the context, means very different search results," said Mr Nishar. "Search on mobiles is about finding not browsing.

"It's a smaller form factor and you are not going to sit at it for three hours. Most people in the developed world are within 20 or 30 minutes of broadband and a screen, and that's when they will browse.

"On a mobile it's important that you find it right away."

This means that Google has to slice its huge corpus of data differently for mobile users and tailor results to where people are sitting or standing when they make the query.

There are many emerging markets where people do not have a PC and will never have one Deep Nishar, Google

What is also important to realise about mobile devices, said Mr Nishar, is that they are far more personal than a home computer.

"A PC is much more of a shared device," he said. "But a mobile is not something I share with anyone."

So far the bits of Google you can reach via your mobile are fairly limited.

You can use a browser on your phone to send queries to the search site as you would on a PC. You can also search for images or just search those sites created just for mobile phones.

It is also possible to read your GMail account via a mobile and, in the UK, you can search Google via text messages.

In California it is possible to get Google maps on your handset to help if you are looking for a particular place.

Using many of these services requires a web browser on a phone but, said Mr Nishar, only about 50% of the world's phones are powerful enough to run that software.

Culture shock

Google does not make all its mobile services available in all locations because different cultures make very different uses of their phone.

For instance, said Mr Nishar, text messaging is huge in Europe and China. By contrast, almost no-one in Japan uses it.

But the Japanese do make very heavy use of e-mail on mobile devices. They also do a huge amount of net surfing via handsets.

In many nations, mobiles are far more popular than computers

In many nations outside the West phones are also hugely important ways of going online largely because they are so much cheaper than a desktop computer.

In China, said Mr Nishar, there are three times as many mobiles as PCs. In nations like Nigeria, people prefer mobiles because power supply problems in running a computer.

"There are many emerging markets where people do not have a PC and will never have one," he said.

Add in the moves towards using net phone services via wi-fi and you can understand why Google is dedicating a lot of time and resources to mobile developments.

Eventually, the thinking goes, most people will be accessing Google most of the time via a mobile device.

"It's going to get better, faster, cheaper thanks to Moore's Law and become a better experience in the long run," said Mr Nishar. "It's going to be a very important channel."

Search giant Google has launched an online payments system which aims to compete with auction giant eBay.

Dubbed Google Checkout, the system is designed to boost Google's main source of revenue - selling advertising.

The service offers some free order processing to Google's millions of advertisers, but will initially be available only to stores in the US.

EBay unit Paypal is the market leader in online payments. EBay stock slipped ahead of Checkout's launch.

Checkout's long testing process - it has been in the works for a year or more - has meant that rumours have been rife about the service, which many had dubbed "Gbuy" .

Simple system

Google says it will enable shoppers to set up a single account with all their credit card and delivery details, allowing online merchants to sell through their Google advertising.

For every dollar they spend on advertising, merchants will get $10 off the cost of processing orders they receive.

It's not going to kill Paypal Greg Sterling, analyst Check eBay's shares See Google's shares Other Google services

"It's a really smart move by Google, a wonderful way to close the loop with its advertisers," said Charlene Li of Forrester Research.

But she pointed out that since Google would be hanging onto information about customers, large retailers might be reluctant to give up the chance of collecting valuable marketing information themselves.

And others said that Paypal's position was strong enough to resist the Google onslaught.

"It's not going to kill Paypal," said Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence, saying that there was room in a market long dominated by Paypal for several such services.

Commentators pointed out that the two services would not strictly be in direct competition, as Checkout relied solely on credit card payments.

The Google service will simply act as a transferring house, whereas Paypal has the facility for users to set up their own accounts to pay into - as well as offering credit card payments.

Competition heats up

Commentators have also warned that the move puts Google in direct competition with one of its biggest advertisers - eBay.

EBay's shares have suffered as a result, dropping some 7% in the past week.

In a pre-emptive strike against the plans, last month eBay signed a deal with Google rival Yahoo.

Under the deal, Yahoo, the largest internet media firm, will be the exclusive provider of branded advertising on eBay's site while Yahoo will use PayPal to let its customers pay for Yahoo services.

Of the names to sign up to Checkout so far, Starbucks and Buy.com have also retained Paypal as a method of payment as well.

Google could face Brazil lawsuit

Google could face legal action in Brazil for failing to provide details of site users allegedly involved in pornography and crime.

Brazilian prosecutors say that Google's community website Orkut - popular in Brazil - contains information promoting crime and child pornography.

Federal prosecutors want a judge to order Google in Brazil to disclose users' information or be closed down.

They also want Google to pay $61m (£32.2m) as a fine for damages.

The prosecutors say this fine stems from Google's failure to obey former judicial orders.

By withholding information about Orkut users, Google is thwarting a separate criminal investigation, the prosecutors argue.

User information

However, in reaction to news of the prosecutors' complaint last week, Google said that it had met all requirements.

"We have obeyed all the judicial orders that requested we remove undue content," said Google spokesperson Nicole Wong at the time.

"Some orders demanded that we turn over user information for investigation and we complied," she said.

Google also said Brazilian officials should request information from the US, since that is where Orkut pages were hosted.

The search engine said it did not hold information about its users or any of Orkut's online communities in Brazil.

Based on Google information, Orkut has about 16 million users, of which nearly three-quarters are Brazilian.

Google to target software market

Search engine Google is to let firms run its email, calendar and other services on their own domains, to build on its offerings for individuals.

The move places Google, whose focus has been searching and advertising, in direct competition with Microsoft, as it updates its Office package.

Google says it is answering a demand from firms for entire systems rather than individual services.

Later this year, Google will offer a paid-for version of the software.

The price of such a version, which would not hold any advertisements, has yet to be set.

Simplicity

The search giant's initial "Google Apps for Your Domain" service initially offers email, shared online calendars, chat and a rudimentary web page-building system.

It is widely predicted that Google's Office-style online applications - word processor Writely and Google Spreadsheet - will follow.

Google will host the software, a process that is often expensive and time-consuming for firms.

"If we do it right, we get the best of both worlds - very consumer friendly software, but also low-cost business applications," said Dave Girouard, Google's general manager of applications.

Analysts say one of the main virtues of Google over Microsoft has been its user friendly character.

"For all the complexity of Microsoft software and how long Vista has taken, a lot of corporate executives are going to be wary," said Martin Pyykkonen, an analysts at Global Crown Capital.

"Do you update to the complexity of Vista or would you be better off just using something simple like Google Apps (applications)."

But Girouard stressed that Google's latest offering was "not by any means an alternative to Windows", and said the firm was not aiming to "eliminate any applications".

The announcement comes as Google teams up with auction site eBay to offer exclusive advertising, on its international website.

Both firms are planning on combining their so-called "click-to-call" services, which enables consumers to directly phone a firm through its advertisement, via eBay's Skype and Google Talk.

Google makes novels free to print

Search engine Google plans to offer consumers the chance to download and print classic novels free of charge.

The firm's book search tool will let people print classics such as Dante's Inferno or Aesop's Fables, as well as other books no longer under copyright.

Until now, the service has only let people read such books on-screen.

Google's book search service stems from a wider project to put books online in a searchable format, which it is undertaking with major universities.

Working with Google on the Books Library project are Oxford University, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the University of California, as well as the New York Public Library.

"How many users will find, and then buy, books they never could have discovered any other way? Eric Schmidt, Google Q&A: Free books and music online

Volunteers working for a project known as Gutenberg have for some years copied out-of-copyright books as text files, which can then be used for printing, reading or piping into a programme for editing.

In contrast, Google is offering the books in a "print-ready" format, as have several other - albeit much smaller and less well-known - firms.

Online shopping site Amazon has offered limited online access to the contents of its huge bookstore.

More services

Google's book searching device does not access books still under copyright, for which only bibliographies are available along with limited extracts.

The news comes as the search engine is expanding its empire to offer a wider spectrum of services.

Earlier this week, Google announced plans to target the software market for companies.

The firm said it would offer companies the chance to run their email, calendar and other services on their own domains, to expand on the service it offers to individuals.

This service puts Google, whose focus has been searching and advertising, in direct competition with software giant

Web giant Google is further expanding its online empire with the launch of the Google News Archive Search.

The web-based tool allows users to explore existing digitised newspaper articles spanning the last 200 years and more recent online content.

People using the search are shown results from both free and subscription-based news outlets.

Partners in the project include the websites of US newspaper the New York Times and the Guardian from the UK.

Other sources include news aggregators, websites which collect and display news stories from multiple sources.

"The goal here is to be able to explore history as it unfolded," said Anurag Acharya, an engineer at Google and one of the team behind the project.

"It's fascinating to see how people's attitudes and emotions have changed through time."

History lesson

The new service searches hundreds of different news sources to answer a user's query. The exact number of sources is confidential.

Results are presented in similar fashion to a Google News search, with "related" articles about the same event grouped together. Free and charged-for articles are displayed side by side.

The ability to browse this historical overview allows users to identify key time periods and get some sense of the flow of events Anurag Acharya Google's empire

With pages from commercial websites, the cost of viewing them is also shown. Google says search results are based on relevance, not partnerships with companies.

Users can also view articles using a timeline that displays key dates associated with a story.

So the first Moon landing would highlight 1969 as a key date, but also identify other years when lunar landings took place or when the topic was in the news.

"The ability to browse this historical overview allows users to identify key time periods and get some sense of the flow of events," said Mr Acharya.

The earliest known searchable story is, he said, from "somewhere in the mid-1700s" - considerably older than the current 30-day archive offered through Google News.

The service is accessed through the news archive website or the Google news page. It is also activated when it can provide relevant results to a user's search on google.com.

In this case, links to the most relevant historical news articles are displayed separately above the normal search results.

Historical challenge

The launch of the news archive search extends Google's influence over how the world's information is indexed, searched and accessed.

The way we access information is changing

According to online research firm Nielsen/NetRatings, more than 380 million people used the search engine every month in 2005.

The company is also expanding into areas other than search. In August it announced plans to offer consumers the chance to download and print classic novels free of charge.

"I'm strongly in favour of the democratisation of access to historical documents, but also cautious about how much information Google now controls," said Professor Roy Rosenzweig, a historian from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in the US.

He says that increasingly the model of how we access information and what information we have access to is changing, as public archives such as libraries are replaced by private companies. But, he says, he is "extremely excited" about Google's latest offering.

"As a scholar and historian I want as much information as possible, accessible to as many people as possible at the least cost, and the extent to which Google is doing that is compelling."

Google says it plans to launch the news archive search service on other international Google sites soon.

Google Growth

While the company's primary market is in the web content arena, Google has begun to experiment with other markets, such as radio and print publications. On January 17, 2006, Google announced that it had purchased the radio advertising company dMarc, which provides an automated system that allows companies to advertise on the radio.[26] This will allow Google to combine two niche advertising media—the Internet and radio—with Google's ability to laser-focus on the tastes of consumers. Google has also begun an experiment in selling advertisements from its advertisers in offline newspapers and magazines, with select advertisements in the Chicago Sun-Times.[27] They have been filling unsold space in the newspaper that would have normally been used for in-house advertisements.

Google was added to the S&P 500 index on March 30, 2006. Google replaced Burlington Resources, a major oil producer based in Houston which was acquired by ConocoPhillips.

Financing and initial public offering

he first funding for Google as a company was secured in the form of a USD100,000 contribution from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given to a corporation which did not yet exist.[21] Around six months later, a much larger round of funding was announced, with the major investors being rival venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.[21]

Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004. 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of USD85 per share.[22] Of that, 14,142,135 (another mathematical reference as √2 ≈ 1.4142135) were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. The sale raised USD1.67 billion, and gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.[23] The vast majority of Google's 271 million shares remained under Google's control. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owns 2.7 million shares of Google.[24]

Google's post-IPO stock performance has been very good as well, with shares surging to USD500 by 2007, due to strong sales and earnings in the advertising market, as well as the release of new features like the desktop search function and personalized home page.[25] The surge in stock price is fueled primarily by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds.[25]

The company is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG.

Google history

Google began as a research project in January 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California.[4] They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better results than existing techniques, which essentially ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page.[5] Their search engine was originally nicknamed, "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance.[6] A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy.[7]

Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. Originally the search engine used the Stanford University website with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on September 14, 1997, and the company was incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. The total initial investment raised for the new company eventually amounted to almost USD1.1 million, including a $100,000 check by Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems.[8]

The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol,"[9][10] which refers to 10100 (the number represented by a 1 followed by one-hundred zeros). Having found its way increasingly into everyday language, the verb, "google", was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006, meaning, "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet."[11][12]

In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[13] After quickly outgrowing two other sites, the company leased a complex of buildings in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway from Silicon Graphics (SGI) in 1999.[14] The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since become known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex, a 1 followed by a googol of zeros). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for USD319 million.[15]

The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[16] In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords.[4] The ads were text-based to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed.[4] Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bid and clickthroughs, with bidding starting at $.05 per click.[4] This model of selling keyword advertising was pioneered by Goto.com (later renamed Overture Services, before being acquired by Yahoo! and rebranded as Yahoo! Search Marketing).[17][18][19] While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.[4]

A patent describing part of Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on September 4, 2001.[20] The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.

Google.com

Type : Public (NASDAQ: GOOG), (LSE: GGEA)

Founded : Flag of United States Menlo Park, California (September 27,1998)

Headquarters :Mountain View, California, USA

Key people : Eric E. Schmidt, CEO/Director
Sergey Brin, Co-Founder, Technology President
Larry E. Page, Co-Founder, Products President
George Reyes, CFO

Industry : Internet, Computer software

Products : See list of Google products

Revenue : 10.604 Billion USD (2006)[1]

Net income : 3.077 Billion USD (2006)[1]

Employees : 12,238 (March 31, 2007)

Website : www.google.com