Google Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. The Google headquarters, the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View, California. As of March 31, 2009, the company has 20,164 full-time employees.

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 4, 1998. The initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004, raising US$1.67 billion, implying a value for the entire corporation of US$23 billion. Google has continued its growth through a series of new product developments, acquisitions, and partnerships. Environmentalism, philanthropy and positive employee relations have been important tenets during the growth of Google. The company was being identified multiple times as Fortune Magazine's #1 Best Place to Work"100 Best Companies to Work For 2007". Fortune Magazine (link published by CNN). 22 January 2007. Retrieved on January 8, 2007. and as the most powerful brand in the world, according to Millward Brown. The Company describes its mission as follows:

The unofficial company slogan, coined by former employee and Gmail's first engineer Paul Buchheit, is "Don't be evil". Criticism of Google includes concerns regarding the privacy of personal information, copyright, censorship and discontinuation of services.

History

main: History of Google

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 15 September 1997, and the company was incorporated as Google Inc. on 4 September 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California. The total initial investment raised for the new company

In March 1999, the company moved into offices in Palo Alto, home to several other noted Silicon Valley technology startups.Fried, Ian. "A building blessed with tech success." CNET. 4 October 2002. Retrieved on 25 February 2007. 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 2003.Olsen, Stefanie. "Google's movin' on up." CNET. 11 July 2003. Retrieved on 25 February 2007. The company has remained at this location ever since, and the complex has since come to be known as the Googleplex (a play on the word googolplex). In 2006, Google bought the property from SGI for US$319 million.Staff Writer. "Google to buy headquarters building from Silicon Graphics." Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal. 16 June 2006. Retrieved on 25 February 2007.