What is Google?

Internet is no longer reserved for scientists. Nowadays millions of users add content to billions of web pages every day. It has became fast growing medium with over 1,173,109,925 users. There is more than 100 million registered domain names and about 8 billion pages. The information became the most valuable possession. But how, among so many different pages find what you are interested in? Without search engines it would be extremely hard task. Fortunately search engines, such as Google, help users to successfully and easily find what they are looking for.

Search engines are tools that, thanks to built-in mechanisms and used algorithms crawl through internet, collect data, classify and catalog the information and present it in a logical and user-friendly way. Thanks to their job, the number of 8 billion pages is minimized to only those, that are related to the search term entered by the internet user.

Google now is not only search engine. The company have many different projects. Such as:

· Google Desktop - search application, that indexes e-mails, documents, music, photos, chats, Web history and other files. It allows the installation of Google Gadgets.

· Google Earth - virtual globe that uses satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS over a 3D globe.

· Picasa - photo organization and editing application, providing photo library options and simple effects.

· Google AdSense - Advertisement program for Website owners. Adverts generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis, and are adverts shown are from AdWords users, depending on which adverts are relevant.

· AdWords - Google’s flagship advertising product, and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads.

· Blogger - Weblog publishing tool. Users can create a custom, hosted blogs with features such as photo publishing, comments, group blogs, blogger profiles and mobile-based posting with little technical knowledge.

· YouTube - popular free video sharing Web site which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. In October 2006, Google, Inc., announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion USD in Google’s stock. The deal closed on 13 November 2006.

· Google maps - mapping service that indexes streets and satellite imagery, providing driving directions and local business search.

· Google Analytics - traffic statistics generator for defined websites, with strong AdWords integration. Webmasters can optimize their ad campaigns, based on the statistics that are given. Analytics is based on the Urchin software and the new version released in May 2007 integrates improvements based on Measure Map.

I think now you get the idea how big Google really is. If you still feel doubts visit this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products

It’s a comprehensive list of all Google projects with short descriptions. I’m sure you will find many interesting things there.