From Ultimatewiki
Google Inc. is an American public corporation, specializing in Internet search and online advertising. The company had 10,674 full-time employees as of December 31, 2006, and is based in Mountain View, California. Google's mission statement is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
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 $1.67 billion, making it worth $23 billion. The company grew rapidly since its IPO, acquiring smaller companies such as Writely, JotSpot, and online video sharing site YouTube in 2006, and moving into the office software market with the release of its Google Apps Premium Edition in 2007. Additionally, Google is also involved in many cooperational partnerships with other corporations, such as NASA, Sun Microsystems, Time Warner's America Online, and NewsCorp's MySpace
Like most large corporations, Google's businesses have drawn some controversy, such as copyright disputes in its book search project, or accusations of censorship of search results as it works with countries such as France, Germany, and China. Additionally, in the post September 11 era, several governments have raised concerns about the security risks posed by geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging.
Google is particularly known for its relaxed corporate culture. Their corporate philosophy is based on many casual principles including, "You can make money without doing evil", "You can be serious without a suit," and "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun." This relaxed culture can also be seen externally through their holiday variations of the Google logo, as well as their various hoaxes and April Fool's Day jokes.
The name "Google" originated from a misspelling of "googol," 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."
