Reuters reported that the lawsuit alleged that Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai sought to keep the users unaware of this issue. On January 21, 2019, French data regulator CNIL imposed a record €50 million fine on Google for breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. In May 2024, a misconfiguration in Google Cloud led to the accidental deletion of UniSuper’s $135 billion Australian pension fund account, affecting over half a million members who were unable to access their accounts for a week. Google was grilled at a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on the project one month later. In June 2022, Google agreed to pay a $118 million settlement to 15,550 female employees working in California since 2013.
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In 2008, Google announced its “project 10100”, which accepted ideas for how to help the community and then allowed Google users to vote on their favorites. In December 2016, Google announced that—starting in 2017—it would purchase enough renewable energy to match 100% of the energy usage of its data centers and offices. In October 2006, the company announced plans to install thousands of solar panels on its Mountain View campus to provide up to 1.6 Megawatt of electricity, enough to satisfy approximately 30% of the campus’ energy needs. There is no official data on the number of servers in Google data centers; however, research and advisory firm Gartner estimated in a July 2016 report that Google at the time had 2.5 million servers. In September 2025 Google opened their £735m chicken road download AI Centre in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire and announced their plans for £5 bn investment in AI research, in the same month that Alphabet reached market capitalisation of $3 trillion.
The said data hub will add to the already operational center near Columbus, bringing Google’s total investment in Ohio to over $2 billion. In early May 2023, Google announced its plans to build two additional data centers in Ohio. In May 2022, Google announced that the company had acquired California based, MicroLED display technology development and manufacturing Start-up company Raxium. 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. In response, Google threatened to close off access to its search engine in Australia.
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It was ruled in 2025 by the Justice Department alongside 17 other states that Google operates a monopoly in online advertising technology. The DoJ also sought a ban on Google re-entering the browser market for five years and restrictions on its investments in rival search or AI technologies. On October 8, 2024, The U.S. government suggested it could request Google to divest parts of its business, such as the Chrome browser and Android, due to its alleged monopoly in online search. Another suit was brought against Google in 2023 for illegally monopolizing the advertising technology market. Later that month, both Facebook and Alphabet agreed to “cooperate and assist one another” in the face of investigation into their online advertising practices.
In October 2016, Google announced Daydream View, a lightweight VR viewer which lets the user place their smartphone in the front hinge to view VR media. In June 2014, Google announced Google Cardboard, a simple cardboard viewer that lets the user place their smartphone in a special front compartment to view virtual reality (VR) media. In July 2013, Google introduced the Chromecast dongle, which allows users to stream content from their smartphones to televisions. Google Earth, launched in 2005, allows users to see high-definition satellite pictures from all over the world for free through a client software downloaded to their computers. A job search product has also existed since before 2017, Google for Jobs is an enhanced search feature that aggregates listings from job boards and career sites.
You can also control what data is saved in your account with easy on/off controls, and even delete your data by date, product, and topic. Your Google Account helps you save time by automatically filling in passwords, addresses, and payment details using the information you’ve saved to your account. No matter which device or Google service you’re using, your account gives you a consistent experience you can customize and manage at any time. That company has taken over some of Google’s other projects, such as its driverless cars. Google Search is the default search engine for Chrome.
The new campus, reported to be the company’s largest outside the United States, will accommodate 13,000 employees. In November 2013, Google announced plans for a new London headquarter, a 1 million square foot office able to accommodate 4,500 employees. Called Google Hudson Square, the new campus is projected to more than double the number of Google employees working in New York City. In November 2018, Google announced its plan to expand its New York City office to a capacity of 12,000 employees. On January 25, 2020, the formation of an international workers union of Google employees, Alpha Global, was announced. As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy known as Innovation Time Off, where Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them.
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Héctor García-Molina and Jeffrey Ullman were also cited as contributors to the project. Many of these products and services are dominant in their respective industries, as is Google Search. It has been referred to as “the most powerful company in the world” by the BBC, and is one of the world’s most valuable brands.
- In February 1999, the company moved to 165 University Ave., Palo Alto, California, and then later moved to Googleplex.
- Google became Alphabet’s largest subsidiary and the umbrella company for Alphabet’s Internet interests.
- According to Google employees, the Israeli military could use this technology to expand its surveillance of Palestinians living in the occupied territories.
- 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.
- This will grow their green energy profile by 40%, giving them an extra 1.6 gigawatt of clean energy, the company said.
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The company opened on the NASDAQ National Market under the ticker symbol GOOGL with an offering of 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share. At that time Page, Brin and Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024. In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from Silicon Graphics, at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. He had been trying to find a CEO that Page and Brin would accept for several months, but they rejected several candidates because they wanted to retain control over the company. In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California, which is home to several prominent Silicon Valley technology start-ups. Terry Semel, Yahoo’s then-CEO, offered $3 billion to purchase the company, but Page and Brin reportedly held firm on a $5 billion valuation.
Google has a search engine called Google Search, and a browser called Google Chrome (or Chrome for short). Because more than half of people on the web use it, “google” has also been used to mean “to search the web”. Known for creating and running one of the largest search engines on the World Wide Web, also known as the (WWW).
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Page and Brin originally nicknamed the new search engine “BackRub” because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Page and Brin would also use their friend Susan Wojcicki’s garage as their office when the search engine was set up in 1998. Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California, United States. The company has received criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns, tax avoidance, censorship, search neutrality, antitrust, and abuse of its monopoly position. Google’s other ventures outside of internet services and consumer electronics include quantum computing (Willow), self-driving cars (Waymo), and transformer models (Google DeepMind). After the success of its original service, Google Search (often known simply as “Google”), the company has rapidly grown to offer a multitude of products and services.
- In 2020, the FBI used a geofence warrant to request data from Google about Android devices near the Seattle Police Officers Guild building following an arson attempt during Black Lives Matter protests.
- This AI hub is projected to contribute up to $71 billion to Saudi Arabia’s economy by advancing AI-driven solutions tailored to the region’s specific needs and training local talent.
- 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.
- Google provided anonymized location data from devices in the area, which raised privacy concerns due to the potential inclusion of unrelated protesters.
- In May 2015, Google announced its intention to create its own campus in Hyderabad, India.
As of September 30, 2020,update Alphabet Inc. had 132,121 employees, of which more than 100,000 worked for Google. In 2007, Google announced a free Internet service called TiSP, or Toilet Internet Service Provider, where one obtained a connection by flushing one end of a fiber-optic cable down their toilet. Its first on April 1, 2000, was Google MentalPlex which allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web.
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 In April 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Google announced several cost-cutting measures. Later in 2019, some workers accused the company of retaliating against internal activists. Google CEO Sundar Pichai accused Damore of violating company policy by “advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace”, and he was fired on the same day. Google became Alphabet’s largest subsidiary and the umbrella company for Alphabet’s Internet interests.
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Following the success of ChatGPT and concerns that Google was falling behind in 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 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. Even with the new policy, Google may remove information from only certain but not all search queries. In 2022, Google began accepting requests for the removal of phone numbers, physical addresses and email addresses from its search results. 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 2021, the Alphabet Workers Union was founded, composed mostly of Google employees.
In March 2024, a former Google software engineer and Chinese national named Linwei Ding was accused of stealing confidential artificial intelligence information from the company and handing it to Chinese corporations. On September 14, 2022, Google lost the appeal of a €4.125 billion (£3.5 billion) fine, which was ruled to be paid after it was proved by the European Commission that Google forced Android phone-makers to carry Google’s search and web browser apps. EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Google had violated EU antitrust rules by “imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites” that required them to exclude search results from Google’s rivals. According to Google employees, the Israeli military could use this technology to expand its surveillance of Palestinians living in the occupied territories.
Google Search can find pictures, videos, news, Usenet newsgroups, and things to buy online. By June 2004, Google had 4.28 billion web pages on its database, 880 million pictures and 845 million Usenet messages—six billion things. In April 2018, thousands of Google employees, including senior engineers, signed a letter urging Google CEO Sundar Pichai to end this controversial contract with the Pentagon. Google provided anonymized location data from devices in the area, which raised privacy concerns due to the potential inclusion of unrelated protesters. In 2020, the FBI used a geofence warrant to request data from Google about Android devices near the Seattle Police Officers Guild building following an arson attempt during Black Lives Matter protests. In August 2024, Google sent an email to users informing them of its legal obligation to disclose certain confidential information to U.S. government authorities.
On March 19, 2019, Google announced that it would enter the video game market, launching a cloud gaming platform called Google Stadia. The company subsequently announced that “48 employees have been fired over the last two years” for sexual misconduct. In June 2000, it was announced that Google would become the default search engine provider for Yahoo! Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd later co-authored with Page and Brin the first paper about the project, describing PageRank and the initial prototype of the Google search engine, published in 1998. 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.
The wind energy comes from two power plants in South Dakota, one in Iowa and one in Oklahoma. The commitment will make Google “the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy”. The corporation exercised this authorization in September 2013 when it announced it would purchase all the electricity produced by the not-yet-built 240-megawatt Happy Hereford wind farm. An average search uses only 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, so all global searches are only 12.5 million watts or 5% of the total electricity consumption by Google. Total carbon emissions for 2010 were just under 1.5 million metric tons, mostly due to fossil fuels that provide electricity for the data centers.
The company’s fourth cable, named Grace Hopper, connects landing points in New York (US), Bude (UK) and Bilbao (Spain), and is expected to become operational in 2022. In May 2015, Google announced its intention to create its own campus in Hyderabad, India. Recognized as one of the biggest ever commercial property acquisitions at the time of the deal’s announcement in January, Google submitted plans for the new headquarter to the Camden Council in June 2017. It also has product research and development operations in cities around the world, namely Sydney (birthplace location of Google Maps) and London (part of Android development). The same December, it was announced that a $1 billion, 1,700,000-square-foot (160,000 m2) headquarters for Google would be built in Manhattan’s Hudson Square neighborhood.