On September 10, 2024, Europe’s top court imposed a €2.4 billion fine on Google for abusing its dominance in the shopping comparison market, marking the conclusion of a case that began in 2009 with a complaint from British firm Foundem. Upon discovering Ding had been in contact with Chinese state-owned companies, Google notified the FBI, who carried on the investigation of the data breach. Ding had allegedly stolen over 500 files from the company over the course of 5 years, having been hired in 2019.
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.
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One of its first projects was to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 miles per gallon. Google continued to monetize and profit from sites propagating climate disinformation even after the company updated their policy to prohibit placing their ads on similar sites. The company also actively funds and profits from climate disinformation by monetizing ad spaces on most of the largest climate disinformation sites. In October 2020, the company pledged to make the packaging for its hardware products 100% plastic-free and 100% recyclable by 2025. The wind energy comes from two power plants in South Dakota, one in Iowa and one in Oklahoma.
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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.
- It is a public company that trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbols GOOG and GOOGL.
- Google expanded its search services to include shopping (launched originally as Froogle in 2002), finance (launched 2006), and flights (launched 2011).
- In an effort to maintain the company’s unique culture, Google designated a Chief Culture Officer whose purpose was to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on.
- It has a special group known as the Partner Solutions Organization (PSO) which helps make contracts, helps to make accounts better and gives engineering help.
- One of its first projects was to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 miles per gallon.
In September 2021, the Australian government announced plans to curb Google’s capability to sell targeted ads, claiming that the company has a monopoly on the market harming publishers, advertisers, and consumers. In April 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google ran a years-long program called “Project Bernanke” that used data from past advertising bids to gain an advantage over competing for ad services. 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.
The project was canceled in December following the backlash it garnered both externally and internally within the company. In 2017, three women sued Google, accusing the company of violating California’s Equal Pay Act by underpaying its female employees. It was ruled in 2025 by the Justice Department alongside 17 other states that Google operates a monopoly in online advertising technology.
- It does this with Google Analytics, which sends data back to Google whenever someone visits a website.
- 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 February 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project, with experimental plans to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities.
- Responding to the humanitarian crisis after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Google announced a $15 million donation to support Ukrainian citizens.
- Its first on April 1, 2000, was Google MentalPlex which allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web.
- Google reportedly paid Apple $22 billion in 2022 to maintain its position as the default search engine on Safari.
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Google had previously been accused of surveilling and firing employees who were suspected of organizing a workers union. The formation of the union is in response to persistent allegations of mistreatment of Google employees and a toxic workplace culture. In a lawsuit filed January 8, 2018, multiple employees and job applicants alleged Google discriminated against a class defined by their “conservative political views, male gender, and/or … Caucasian or Asian race”. In 2013, a class action against several Silicon Valley companies, including Google, was filed for alleged “no cold call” agreements which restrained the recruitment of high-tech employees. In an effort to maintain the company’s unique culture, Google designated a Chief Culture Officer whose purpose was to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on. Some of Google’s services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense, originated from these independent endeavors.
In August 2023, Google became the first major tech company to join the OpenWallet Foundation, launched earlier in the year, whose goal was creating open-source software for interoperable digital wallets. In April 2015, Google announced Project Fi, a mobile virtual network operator, that combines Wi-Fi and cellular networks from different telecommunication providers in an effort to enable seamless connectivity and fast Internet signal. Following Google’s corporate restructure to make Alphabet Inc. its parent company, Google Fiber was moved to Alphabet’s Access division. Among other things, the suite is designed to help “enterprise class marketers” “see the complete customer journey”, generate “useful insights”, and “deliver engaging experiences to the right people”. 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.
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For example, flight confirmations in your Gmail inbox will automatically sync with your Google Calendar and Google Maps to help you get to the airport on time. When you sign in to your Google Account, all the Google services you use work together to help you get more done. Your account helps you do more by personalizing your Google experience and offering easy access to your most important information from anywhere. Sign in to your Google Account, and get the most out of all the Google services you use. Google uses this word because the company wants to make lots of stuff on the Web easy to find and use. From this and other data, Google makes a profile about the person and then uses this profile to figure out which advertisements to show.
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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 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.
In addition to its 100,000+ full-time employees, Google used about 121,000 temporary workers and contractors, as of March 2019.update For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues. In February 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project, with experimental plans to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities. Jack Marshall of The Wall Street Journal wrote that the suite competes with existing marketing cloud offerings by companies including Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce, and IBM. In 2007, Google launched “AdSense for Mobile”, taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market. Google expanded its search services to include shopping (launched originally as Froogle in 2002), finance (launched 2006), and flights (launched 2011).
In March 2025, Google agreed to acquire Wiz, a New York-based cybersecurity startup focusing on cloud computing, for US$32 billion. The initiative focuses on creating localized AI technologies, with an emphasis on integrating Arabic language capabilities and enabling pin up online casino widespread cloud adoption. 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. In November 2024, Google announced the establishment of a new AI hub in Saudi Arabia, aiming to support the Kingdom’s economic growth and technological development as part of its Vision 2030 initiative.
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.
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On March 11, 2008, Google acquired DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, transferring to Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies. The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. Shares were sold in an online auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal. 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.