What is "google"

"to search (something) on the Google search engine," 2000 (do a google on was used by 1999). The domain google.com was registered in 1997. A verb google was an early 20c. cricket term in reference to a type of breaking ball.

Etymology 1 vb. 1 (context intransitive cricket English) To deliver googly. 2 (context intransitive cricket English) To move as a ball in a googly. Etymology 2

n. 1 An internet search, such as that which is performed on the Google search engine. 2 (context Internet English) A match obtained by a query in the Google search engine. vb. 1 (context transitive English) To search for (something) on the Internet using the Google search engine. 2 (context transitive by extension English) To search for (something) on the Internet using any comprehensive search engine. 3 (context intransitive Internet English) To be locatable in a search of the Internet. Etymology 3

num. (misspelling of googol English)

As a result of the increasing popularity and dominance of the Google search engine, usage of the transitive verb to google (also spelled Google) grew ubiquitously. The neologism commonly refers to searching for information on the World Wide Web, regardless of which search engine is used. The American Dialect Society chose it as the "most useful word of 2002." It was added to the Oxford English Dictionary on June 15, 2006, and to the eleventh edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in July 2006. The first recorded usage of google used as a participle, thus supposing an intransitive verb, was on July 8, 1998, by Google co-founder Larry Page himself, who wrote on a mailing list: "Have fun and keep googling!" Its earliest known use (as a transitive verb) on American television was in the " Help" episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (October 15, 2002), when Willow asked Buffy, "Have you googled her yet?"

Fearing the genericizing and potential loss of its trademark, Google has discouraged use of the word as a verb, particularly when used as a synonym for general web searching. On February 23, 2003, the company sent a cease and desist letter to Paul McFedries, creator of Word Spy, a website that tracks neologisms. In an article in the Washington Post, Frank Ahrens discussed the letter he received from a Google lawyer that demonstrated "appropriate" and "inappropriate" ways to use the verb "google". It was reported that, in response to this concern, lexicographers for the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary lowercased the actual entry for the word, google, while maintaining the capitalization of the search engine in their definition, "to use the Google search engine to seek online information" (a concern which did not deter the Oxford editors from preserving the history of both "cases"). On October 25, 2006, Google sent a request to the public requesting that "You should please only use 'Google' when you’re actually referring to Google Inc. and our services."

Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation specializing in Internet-related services and products.

Google or Googel may also refer to:

Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products that include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software. Most of its profits are derived from AdWords, an online advertising service that places advertising near the list of search results.

Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering (IPO) took place on August 19, 2004, and Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex.

In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its interests as a holding company called Alphabet Inc. When this restructuring took place on October 2, 2015, Google became Alphabet's leading subsidiary, as well as the parent for Google's Internet interests.

Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships beyond Google's core search engine ( Google Search). It offers online productivity software ( Google Docs) including email ( Gmail), a cloud storage service ( Google Drive) and a social networking service ( Google+). Desktop products include applications for web browsing ( Google Chrome), organizing and editing photos ( Google Photos), and instant messaging and video chat ( Hangouts). The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system and the browser-only Chrome OS for a class of netbooks known as Chromebooks and desktop PCs known as Chromeboxes. Google has moved increasingly into communications hardware, partnering with major electronics manufacturers in the production of its "high-quality low-cost" Nexus devices. In 2012, a fiber-optic infrastructure was installed in Kansas City to facilitate a Google Fiber broadband service.

Google has been estimated to run more than one million servers in data centers around the world (as of 2007). It processes over one billion search requests and about 24 petabytes of user-generated data each day (as of 2009). In December 2013, Alexa listed Google.com as the most visited website in the world. Numerous Google sites in other languages figure in the top one hundred, as do several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube and Blogger.

Google's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and its unofficial slogan was " Don't be evil". In October 2015, the motto was replaced in the Alphabet corporate code of conduct by the phrase: "Do the right thing".