Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is a U.S. public corporation, initially established as a privately held corporation in 1998, which designed and currently manages the Internet Google search engine. Google's corporate headquarters is at the "Googleplex" in Mountain View, California and employs almost 5,000 workers. Dr. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Novell, was named the Chief Executive Officer when co-founder Larry Page stepped down. The company's overview web page states that "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." http://www.googlebusiness.com/
Advertising
Most of Google's revenue is derived from advertising programs. For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported US$10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only US$112 million in licensing and other revenues. Google AdWords allows Web advertisers to display advertisements in Google's search results and the Google Content Network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. Google AdSense website owners can also display adverts on their own site, and earn money every time ads are clicked.
Web-based software
The Google web search engine is the company's most popular service. As of August 2007, Google is the most used search engine on the web with a 53.6% market share, ahead of Yahoo! (19.9%) and Live Search (12.9%). Google indexes billions of Web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators. Google has also employed the Web Search technology into other search services, including Image Search, Google News, the price comparison site Google Product Search, the interactive Usenet archive Google Groups, Google Maps, and more.
In 2004, Google launched its own free web-based e-mail service, known as Gmail (or Google Mail in some jurisdictions). Gmail features spam-filtering technology and the capability to use Google technology to search e-mail. The service generates revenue by displaying advertisements and links from the AdWords service that are tailored to the choice of the user and/or content of the e-mail messages displayed on screen.
In early 2006, the company launched Google Video, which not only allows users to search and view freely available videos but also offers users and media publishers the ability to publish their content, including television shows on CBS, NBA basketball games, and music videos. In August 2007, Google announced that it would shut down its video rental and sale program and offer refunds and Google Checkout credits to consumers who had purchased videos to own.
On February 28, 2008 Google launched the Google Sites wiki as a Google Apps component.
Google has also developed several desktop applications, including Google Earth, an interactive mapping program powered by satellite and aerial imagery that covers the vast majority of the planet. Google Earth is generally considered to be remarkably accurate and extremely detailed. Many major cities have such detailed images that one can zoom in close enough to see vehicles and pedestrians clearly. Consequently, there have been some concerns about national security implications. Specifically, some countries and militaries contend the software can be used to pinpoint with near-precision accuracy the physical location of critical infrastructure, commercial and residential buildings, bases, government agencies, and so on. However, the satellite images are not necessarily frequently updated, and all of them are available at no charge through other products and even government sources. For example, NASA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Some counter this argument by stating that Google Earth makes it easier to access and research the images.
Many other products are available through Google Labs, which is a collection of incomplete applications that are still being tested for use by the general public.
Google has promoted their products in various ways. In London, Google Space was set-up in Heathrow Airport, showcasing several products, including Gmail, Google Earth and Picasa. Also, a similar page was launched for American college students, under the name College Life, Powered by Google.
In 2007, some reports surfaced that Google was planning the release of its own mobile phone, possibly a competitor to Apple's iPhone. The project, called Android provides a standard development kit that will allow any "Android" phone to run software developed for the Android SDK, no matter the phone manufacturer. In October 2007, Google SMS service was launched in India allowing users to get business listings, movie showtimes, and information by sending an SMS.
Enterprise products
In 2007, Google launched Google Apps Premier Edition, a version of Google Apps targeted primarily at the business user. It includes such extras as more disk space for e-mail, API access, and premium support, for a price of US$50 per user per year. A large implementation of Google Apps with 38,000 users is at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada.
History
Beginnings
Google began as a research project in January 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford. They developed the hypothesis that a search engine based on analysis of the relationships between Web sites would produce improved results over the basic techniques then in use. (At the time, other search engines ranked results essentially based on how many times the search term appeared on a page.) It was originally nicknamed BackRub because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance. (A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.) 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 website with the domain google.stanford.edu (see the Internet Archive Wayback Machine search for http://google.stanford.edu). The domain google.com was registered on September 15, 1997. They formally incorporated their company, Google Inc., on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California.
In March 1999, the company moved into offices at 165 University Avenue in Palo Alto, home to a number of other noted Silicon Valley technology startups. Google received a big break in 1999 when one of the most popular search engines, AltaVista, relaunched itself as a user Web entry point, or portal. This unexpected change alienated part of AltaVista's user base. Google quickly outgrew its University Avenue home. After outgrowing two subsequent sites, the company settled into a complex of buildings (referred to by some as "The Googleplex") in Mountain View at 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, in 2003.
The Google search engine attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users. They were attracted to its simple, uncluttered, clean design — a competitive advantage to attract users who did not wish to enter searches on web pages filled with visual distractions. This appearance, while imitating the early AltaVista, had behind it Google's unique search capabilities. In 2000, Google began selling advertisements associated with the search keyword to produce enhanced search results for the user. This strategy was important for increasing advertising revenue, which is based upon the number of "hits" users make upon ads. The ads were text-based in order to maintain an uncluttered page design and to maximize page loading speed. It also only cost a very small amount per click to the websites that advertised this way. The model of selling keyword advertising was originally pioneered by Goto.com (renamed Overture, and now Yahoo! Search Marketing). While many of its dot-com rivals failed in the new Internet marketplace, Google quietly rose in stature while generating revenue.
U.S. Patent 6,285,999 describing Google's ranking mechanism (PageRank) was granted on September 4, 2001. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor.
In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of Blogger, a pioneering and leading weblog hosting Web site. Some analysts considered the acquisition inconsistent with Google's business model. However, the acquisition secured the company's competitive ability to use information gleaned from blog postings to improve the speed and relevance of articles contained in a companion product to the search engine, Google News.
At its peak in early 2004, Google handled upwards of 84.7 percent of all search requests on the World Wide Web through its Web site and through its partnerships with other Internet clients like Yahoo!, AOL, and CNN. In February 2004 Yahoo! dropped its partnership with Google in order to provide users at its site independent search results and to maintain their loyalty. Google lost user share of the search market. Yet Yahoo!'s move highlighted Google's own distinctiveness and today the verb "to google" has entered a number of languages first as a slang verb and now as a standard word meaning, "to perform a web search".
Google's declared code of conduct is "Don't Be Evil", a phrase which they went so far as to include in their prospectus (aka "red herring" or "S-1") for their IPO, noting "We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served — as shareholders and in all other ways — by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."
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| Google's Halloween 2005 Logo |
The Google site includes humorous features such as cartoon modifications of the Google logo to recognize special occasions and anniversaries, known as "Google Doodles". Not only may decorative drawings be attached to the logo, but as well the font design may mimic a fictional or humorous language such as the Star Trek Klingon and Leet. The logo is notorious among web users for April Fool's Day tie-ins and jokes about the company.
Analysts speculate that Google's response to Yahoo! will be to continue to make technical and visual enhancements to personalized searches, using the personal data that is gathering from Orkut, Gmail, and Froogle to produce unique results based on the user. Frequently, new Google enhancements or products appear in its inventory. Products and demos Google Labs, the experimental section of Google.com help Google maximize its relationships with its users by including them in the beta development, design and testing stages of new products and enhancements of already existing ones.
Original Hardware
The original hardware used by Google included:
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Sun Ultra II with dual 200MHz processors, and 256MB of RAM. This was the main machine for the original Backrub system.
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2 x 300 MHz Dual Pentium II Servers donated by Intel, they included 512MB of RAM and 9 x 9GB hard drives between the two. It was on these that the main search ran.
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F50 IBM RS6000 donated by IBM, included 4 processors, 512MB of memory and 8 x 9GB hard drives.
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Two additional boxes included 3 x 9GB hard drives and 6 x 4GB hard drives respectively (the original storage for Backrub). These were attached to the Sun Ultra II.
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IBM disk expansion box with another 8 x 9GB hard drives donated by IBM.
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Homemade disk box which contained 10 x 9GB SCSI hard drives
Etymology
The name "Google" is a play on the word "Googol", which was coined by Milton Sirotta, nine-year-old nephew of U.S. mathematician Edward Kasner in 1938, to refer to the number represented by 1 followed by one hundred zeros. Google's use of the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the Web. As a further play on this, Google's headquarters are referred to as "the Googleplex" — a googolplex being 1 followed by a googol of zeros, and the HQ being a complex of buildings (cf. multiplex, cineplex, etc).
The name has also been interpreted as a merging of the words "Go ogle", though this is widely accepted to be coincidental. The term appears in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: "who thought him a Fonar all, feastking of shellies by googling Lovvey" [231.12]. To "throw a googly" means to ask a difficult or unanswerable question in British slang, a googly being a tricky ball in the game of cricket. Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary (1972) allows the verb "to google" from this, and the phrase has come to be synonymous with "to search for on the Internet".
Financing and IPO
The first funding for Google as a company was secured in the form of a $100,000 check from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, made out to a corporation which didn't yet exist. After a frantic few weeks, this was topped up to give an initial investment of almost $1 million. Around six months later, a much larger round of funding was announced, with the major investors being rival venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.
In October 2003, while discussing a possible IPO (Initial Public Offering of shares), Microsoft approached the company about a possible partnership or merger; no such deal ever materialized. In January 2004, Google announced the hiring of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group to arrange an IPO. That IPO (one of the most anticipated in history) was projected to raise as much as $4 billion. According to a banker involved in the transaction, the deal would yield an estimated $12 billion market capitalization for Google.
On April 29, 2004, Google made an S-1 form SEC filing for an IPO to raise as much as US$2,718,281,828 (with a touch of mathematical humor as e = 2.718281828...). April 29th was the 120th day of 2004, and according to section 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, "a company must file financial and other information with the SEC 120 days after the close of the year in which the company reaches $10 million in assets and/or 500 shareholders, including people with stock options. Google has stated in its Annual filing for 2004 that every one of its 3,021 employees, "except temporary employees and contractors, are also equity holders, with significant collective employee ownership", so Google would have needed to make its financial information public by filing them with the SEC regardless of whether or not they intended to make a public offering. As Google stated in the filing, their "growth has reduced some of the advantages of private ownership. By law, certain private companies must report as if they were public companies. The deadline imposed by this requirement accelerated our decision." The SEC filing revealed that Google turned a profit every year since 2001 and earned a profit of $105.6 million on revenues of $961.8 million during 2003.
In May 2004, Google officially cut Goldman Sachs from the IPO, leaving Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston as the joint underwriters. They chose the unconventional way of allocating the initial offering through an auction (specifically, a "Dutch auction"), so that "anyone" would be able to participate in the offering. The smallest required account balances at most authorized online brokers that are allowed to participate in an IPO, however, are around $100,000. In the run-up to the IPO the company was forced to slash the price and size of the offering, but the process did not run into any technical difficulties or result in any significant legal challenges. The initial offering of shares was sold for $85 a piece. The public valued it at $100.34 at the close of the first day of trading which saw 22,351,900 shares change hands.
Before Google initiated its initial public offering, Larry Page & Sergey Brin faced legal action for giving Playboy an interview about themselves and Google. The SEC (Security & Exchange Commission) forbids giving out information pertaining to a company's specifications before an IPO is launched.
After some initial stumbles, Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004. 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 (another mathematical reference as √2 = 1.4142135...) were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. The sale raised $1.67 billion, of which approximately $1.2 billion went to Google. The vast majority of Google's 271 million shares remained under Google's control. The IPO gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owns 2.7 million shares of Google. The company was listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GOOG.
On August 18, 2005 (one year after the initial IPO), Google announced that it would sell 14,159,265 (a mathematical joke, see pi) more shares of its stock to raise money. The move would double Google's cash stockpile to $7 billion. Google said it would use the money for "acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies or other assets".
Today
Since the IPO, Google's stock market capitalization has risen greatly. On August 19, 2004 the number of shares outstanding was 172.85 million while the "free float" was 19.60 million (which makes 89% held by insiders). In January 2005 the shares outstanding was up 100 million to 273.42 million, 53% of that was held by insiders which made the float 127.70 million (up 110 million shares from the first trading day). The two founders are said to hold almost 30% of the outstanding shares. The actual voting power of the insiders is much higher, however, as Google has a dual class stock structure in which each Class B share gets ten votes compared to each Class A share getting one. Page says in the prospectus that Google has "a dual class structure that is biased toward stability and independence and that requires investors to bet on the team, especially Sergey and me." The company has not reported any treasury stock holdings as of the Q3 2004 report.
With Google's increased size comes more competition from large mainstream technology companies. One such example is the rivalry between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft has been touting its MSN Search engine to counter Google's competitive position. Furthermore, the two companies are increasingly offering overlapping services, such as webmail (Gmail vs. Hotmail), search (both online and local desktop searching), and other applications (for example, Microsoft's Virtual Earth competes with Google Earth). Some have even suggested that in addition to an Internet Explorer replacement Google is designing its own Linux based operating system called Google OS to directly compete with Microsoft Windows. Rumors of a Google browser are fueled by the fact that Google is the owner of the domain name "gbrowser.com". This corporate feud is most directly expressed in hiring offers and defections. Many Microsoft employees who worked on Internet Explorer have left to work for Google. This feud boiled over into the courts when Kai-Fu Lee, a former vice-president of Microsoft, quit Microsoft to work for Google. Microsoft sued to stop his move by citing Lee's non-compete contract (he had access to much sensitive information regarding Microsoft's plans in China).
While Google is the #1 search engine, the company struggles to keep up with rivals such as the well known Yahoo. Although Google and Yahoo differ greatly in the services they offer, Google is trying to redefine itself from an Internet search company to an Internet media company, similar to Yahoo!. Google is trying to become a jack of all trades for the Internet. They are foraying into other businesses which other companies have recently dominated. On June 21, 2005 Google announced it has plans to release a pay service and a classified ads service, to rival companies like eBay.
During the third quarter 2005 Google Conference Call, Eric Schmidt said, "We don't do the same thing as everyone else does. And so if you try to predict our product strategy by simply saying well so and so has this and Google will do the same thing, it's almost always the wrong answer. We look at markets as they exist and we assume they are pretty well served by their existing players. We try to see new problems and new markets using the technology that others use and we build."
Salaries
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A license plate seen in the Googleplex parking lot |
Prior to the IPO offering, typical salaries at Google were considered within the industry to be quite low. For instance, some system administrators earned no more than $33,000 — while $37,000 at that time was considered to be low by Bay Area employment market levels. Nevertheless, Google's excellent stock performance following the IPO has enabled these early employees to be competitively compensated by participation in the corporation's remarkable equity growth. In 2005 Google has implemented other employee incentives such as the Founder's award, as well making higher salary offers to new employees.
Beyond monetary compensation, Google's workplace amenities, culture, global popularity, stellar prospects (relative to most Bay Area companies), and strong brand recognition continues to attract far more applicants than there are positions available. (It is estimated that less than one job offer is made per thousand resumes submitted.) Google reportedly employs one in-house legal recruiter just to assist the legal department in evaluating the high volume of resumes from attorneys seeking to join the corporation.
Management
Position: name, age, compensation in USD (as of June 2005)
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CEO: Eric E. Schmidt, 50, $1
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CFO: George Reyes, 51, $781K
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President of Technology: Sergey Brin, 31, $1
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President of Products: Larry E. Page, 32, $1
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Sr. VP of Worldwide Sales: Omid Kordestani, 41, $572K
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VP of Corp. Development, Secretary and Gen. Counsel: David C. Drummond, 42, $776K
Founders Brin and Page reportedly earned $1 billion in 2004, but after the IPO in Aug 2004, their compensation is reported in SEC filings annually. Page, Brin, and Schmidt have all declined recent offers of bonuses and increases in compensation by Google's board of directors. Institutional Shareholder Services ranked Google's corporate governance dead last in the list of members of the Standard & Poor's 500.
According to the Forbes 400 list (2005), the combined net worth of Larry Page and Sergey Brin is $22 billion US. But due to the recent surge in stock price (April 2005-June 2005), their net worth is significantly higher. When recorded on the Forbes 400, Google's stock was around $111. In late 2005 Google shares were valued at $400. Page and Brin, however, had sold $2 billion before some of the largest stock gains.
Technology
Google's services are run on several server farms, each consisting of many thousand low-cost commodity computers running customized versions of Linux. While the company does not provide detailed information about its hardware, it was estimated in 2004 that they were using over 60,000 Linux machines.
Corporate culture
Philosophy
Google is known for its relaxed corporate culture, reminiscent of the Dot-com boom. Google's corporate philosophy is based on many casual principles including: "You can make money without doing evil", "You can be serious without a suit" and "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun." A complete list of corporate fundamentals is available on Google's Web site. The company encourages equality within corporate levels. Twice a week there is a roller hockey game in the company parking lot.
"Twenty percent" time
Every Google engineer is encouraged to spend 20 percent (20%) of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of these end up as Google services, notably Adsense/Adwords (which provide the majority of the company's revenue), as well as Gmail, Google News and Orkut.
Googleplex
Google's headquarters is called the Googleplex. The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, and a real-time projection of current search queries. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus, and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, Foosball, a baby grand piano, a pool table, and ping pong. In addition to the rec room, there are snack rooms stocked with various cereals, gummy bears, toffee, licorice, cashews, yogurt, carrots, fresh fruit, and dozens of different drinks including fresh juice, soda, and make-your-own cappuccino. After eating, people can relieve themselves on digital toilets similar to Japanese toilets.
IPO and culture
Many people have suggested that after Google's IPO the corporate culture will not be able to stay so "fun" and focused on the future. The company may be required to answer to its new shareholders who may press the company to reduce employee benefits and to focus on short term advances. Also, it may be more challenging for the company to maintain a collegial atmosphere when approximately 1,000 (30%) of the employees are paper-millionaires. In a report given to potential investors, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised that the IPO would not change the company's culture. Later Mr. Page said, "We think a lot about how to maintain our culture and the fun elements."
In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other news sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy. The New York Times article was headlined, "Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain".
Google partnerships
On Sept 28 Google announced a partnership with NASA which would involve Google building an R&D center at NASA's Ames Research Center. As reported by SearchEnginejournal.com, NASA and Google were said to be planning to work together on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry. The new building would also include labs, offices, and housing for Google engineers.
Google also has a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies. As part of the partnership Google will hire employees to help the open source office program OpenOffice.org.
Google has an unknown partnership with the Mozilla Foundation. They are looking for software engineers to join them (Google) in collaborative development on the FireFox browser. This is confirmed by a job listing posted on Google. They also offer a download of Firefox with the Google Toolbar pre-installed.
Google's Acquisitions
Since 2001, Google has acquired several small start-up companies, often consisting of innovative teams and products. One of the earlier companies that Google bought was Pyra Labs. They were the creators of Blogger, a weblog publishing platform, first launched in 1999. This acquisition lead to many premium features becoming free. Pyra Labs was originally formed by Evan Williams, yet he left Google in 2004. In early 2006, Google acquired Upstartle, a company responsible for the online word processor, Writely. The technology in this product was used by Google to eventually create Google Docs & Spreadsheets. In late 2006, Google bought online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. Shortly after, on October 31, 2006, Google announced that it had also acquired JotSpot, a developer of wiki technology for collaborative Web sites.
Google has also worked with large companies to improve production and services, including a long-term research partnership with NASA in a variety of areas, and a partnership with Sun Microsystems to help share and distribute each other's technologies. Recently, Google entered into partnerships with Time Warner's America Online, to enhance each other's video search services, and with News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media to provide search and advertising on the popular social networking site, MySpace.
Criticism and controversy
Copyright issues
A number of organizations have used the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to demand that Google remove references to allegedly copyrighted material on other sites. Google typically handles this by removing the link as requested and including a link to the complaint in the search results.
There have also been complaints that Google's Web cache feature violates copyright. However, Google provides mechanisms for requesting that caching be disabled (which Google respects; it also honors the robots.txt file which is another mechanism that allows operators of a website to request that part or all of their site not be included in search engine results).
On June 2005, Google Watch revealed the details of a contract between the University of Michigan and Google to create digitized copies of the copyrighted materials stored at the University's library. This contract is part of Google Print's effort to digitize millions of books and make the full text searchable. There are claims that it is a violation of copyright laws to use copyrighted material for profit by placing search ads beside the search results of these digitized books. Also, Google is setting a new precedent by making digital copies of copyrighted material on a wide scale without explicit permission from copyright holders. Meanwhile, Google claims that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books. The contract between Google and the U. of Michigan does make it clear that Google will provide only excerpts of copyright text in a search. The contract says that it will comply with "fair use", an exemption in copyright law that allows people to reproduce portions of text of copyrighted material for research purposes.
Multinational corporation
Google is a multinational corporation, having offices in over a dozen countries. In order to comply with the varying laws of these countries, several versions of Google restrict very specific keyword searches. According to American law, any copyright owner can require material to be removed via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, whereas under French and German law, for example, hate speech and Holocaust denial are illegal. Google complies with these laws by banning keyword searches related to these terms. Google's Terms of Service allow it to comply with the laws of any one country, providing information that was originated (or that Google stores) in another country. Any data stored on Google is therefore subject to being turned over to any country, including China.
Legal issues
Google's efforts to refine its database has led to some legal controversy, notably a lawsuit in October 2002 from the company SearchKing which sought to sell advertisements on pages with inflated Google rankings. In its defense, Google stated that its rankings are its constitutionally protected opinions of the web sites that it indexes. A judge subsequently threw out SearchKing's lawsuit in mid-2003 on precisely these grounds.
In late 2003 and early 2004, there were rumors that Google would be sued by the SCO Group over their use of the Linux operating system, in conjunction with SCO's lawsuit against IBM over the claimed ownership of intellectual property rights relating to Linux.
In May 2004, the Baltimore Sun interviewed Peri Fleisher, a great-niece of Edward Kasner, the mathematician whose nephew coined the word googol, who said Kasner's descendants were "exploring" legal action against Google due to its name.
Google recently settled a patent infringement lawsuit with Yahoo! by issuing 2.7 million shares. Yahoo! had earlier alleged that Google's AdSense program violated a patent held by Yahoo!'s Overture unit. The settlement cost Google around $275 million which resulted in the company posting a net loss in the third quarter of 2004.
Partiality
In February 2003, Google banned the ads of Oceana, a two-and-a-half-year-old non-profit organization, which was protesting the environmental effects of a major cruise ship operation's sewage treatment practices. Google claimed that their editorial policy states, "that Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations."
Offensive search results
In April 2004, Google received complaints that a search for "Jew" on its site listed the anti-Semitic website Jew Watch at or near the top of the list. Google responded that this was due to the content-neutrality of the PageRank algorithm, and the fact that racists used the specific word "Jew" (as opposed to "Jewish" or "Judaism") more often than others.
As a reaction, some webloggers launched a Google bomb to put the corresponding Wikipedia article at the top of the search results. As of December 2005, Jew Watch remains the #1 link.
There is also an option for Google account users, who are logged in, to remove offensive search results.
Privacy
Some have pointed out the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users' searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government, or any other government of a country which Google serves.
It has been claimed that Google infringes the privacy of visitors by uniquely identifying them using cookies which are used to track Web users' search history. The cookies possess notably distant expiration dates and it is claimed users' searches are recorded without permission for advertising purposes. In response Google claims cookies are necessary to maintain user preferences between sessions and offer other search features. The use of cookies with such distant expiration dates is not very uncommon.
Some users believe the processing of email message content by Google's Gmail service goes beyond proper use. The point is often made that people without Gmail accounts, who have not agreed to the Gmail terms of service, but send email to Gmail users have their correspondence analyzed without permission. Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder, and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements. Other popular email services such as Hotmail also scan incoming email to try to determine whether it is unsolicited spam email (which Gmail also does). Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, DC warned that "As courts become more frequent integrators of electronic records, there is a greater risk of Google ... becoming a serious privacy threat."
The PageRank system
Google's central PageRank system has been criticized. Some, such as Daniel Brandt, calling it "undemocratic". Common arguments are that the system is unfairly biased towards large web sites, and that the criteria for a page's importance are not subject to peer review. It must be stated in Google's defense that PageRank is a fully automated system which is impartial insofar as it knows no personal bias. However, it must also be stated that Google's system relies on human oversight, and use of company names on Adwords, or deletion of critical sites from Google results (for example, sites critical of Scientology), is decided by individual human beings according to company policy. It remains unclear whether any process could assert the importance of a page in a way that would draw less criticism than the current PageRank system.
The system is also susceptible to manipulation and fraud through the use of dummy sites, an issue which does, however, plague all search engines. See Google bomb.
