Google

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This article is about the corporation. For the search engine, see  Google Search. For other uses,
see  Google (disambiguation).

Google Inc.

Type Public (NASDAQ: GOOG,FWB: GGQ1)

Industry Internet, Computer software

Founded Menlo Park, California(September 4, 1998)[1]

Founder(s) Sergey M. Brin

Lawrence E. Page

Headquarters 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway,Mountain

View, California,United States

Area served Worldwide

Key people Eric E. Schmidt

(Chairman & CEO)

Sergey M. Brin

(Technology President)

Lawrence E. Page

(Products President)

Products See list of Google products.

Revenue ▲US$23.651 billion (2009)[2][3]

Operating ▲US$8.312 billion (2009)[2][3]

income
 Profit ▲US$6.520 billion (2009)[2][3]

Total assets ▲US$40.497 billion (2009)[2][3]

Total equity ▲US$36.004 billion (2009)[3]

Employees 21,805 (2010)[4]

Subsidiaries YouTube, DoubleClick, On2

Technologies, GrandCentral,Picnik, Aardvark, AdMob

Website Google.com

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, FWB: GGQ1) is a multinational public cloud computing, Internet search,

and advertising technologies corporation. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services
and products,[5] and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWordsprogram.[2][6] The
company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, often dubbed the "Google Guys",[7][8][9] while the two
were attending Stanford University as Ph.D. candidates. It was first incorporated as a privately held
company on September 4, 1998, with its initial public offering to follow on August 19, 2004. The
company's stated mission from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally
accessible and useful",[10] and the company's unofficial slogan – coined by Google engineer Paul
Buchheit – is Don't be evil.[11][12] In 2006, the company moved to their current headquartersin Mountain
View, California.

Google runs over one million servers in data centers around the world,[13] and processes over one billion
search requests[14] and twenty petabytes of user-generated data every day.[15][16][17] Google's rapid growth
since its incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships beyond the
company's core search engine. The company offers online productivity software, such as its Gmail e-
mail software, and social networking tools, including Orkut and, more recently, Google Buzz. Google's
products extend to the desktop as well, with applications such as the web browser Google Chrome,
the Picasa photo organization and editing software, and the Google Talk instant messaging application.
More notably, Google leads the development of the Android mobile phone operating system, used on a
number of phones such as the Nexus One and Motorola Droid. Because of its popularity and numerous
products, Alexa lists Google as the Internet's most visited website. [18] Google is also Fortune Magazine's
fourth best place to work,[19] and BrandZ's most powerful brand in the world.[20] The dominant market
position of Google's services has led to criticism of the company over issues including privacy, copyright,
and censorship.[21][22]
History
Main article:  History of Google

Google's original homepage had a simple design since its founders were not experienced in HTML, the language for
designing web pages.[23]

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were
both PhD students at Stanford University in California.[24]While conventional search engines ranked
results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about
a better system that analyzed the relationships between websites. [25] They called this new
technology PageRank, where a website's relevance was determined by the number of pages, and the
importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site. [26] A small search engine called
Rankdex was already exploring a similar strategy.[27] Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new
search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a
site.[28][29] Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word
"googol",[30][31] the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was meant to signify the amount
of information the search engine was to handle. Originally, Google ran under the Stanford
University website, with the domain google.stanford.edu. The domain google.com was registered on
September 15, 1997,[32] and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998, at a friend's
garage in Menlo Park, California.
Financing and initial public offering

The first iteration of Google production servers was built with inexpensive hardware. [33]

The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of US$100,000 from Andy
Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was even incorporated.[34] Early
in 1999, while still graduate students, Brin and Page decided that the search engine they had
developed was taking up too much of their time from academic pursuits. They went to Excite CEO
George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer, and later criticized Vinod
Khosla, one of Excite's venture capitalistse after he had negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000.
On June 7, 1999, a $25 million round of funding was announced, [35] with major investors including
the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital.[34]

Google's initial public offering (IPO) took place five years later on August 19, 2004. The company
offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share. [36][37]Shares were sold in a unique online
auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal.[38]
[39]
 The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.[40] The vast
majority of the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google, and many Google employees
became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited because it owned
8.4 million shares of Google before the IPO took place. [41]

Some people speculated that Google's IPO would inevitably lead to changes in company culture.
Reasons ranged from shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions to the fact that many
company executives would become instant paper millionaires. [42] As a reply to this concern, co-
founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised in a report to potential investors that the IPO would
not change the company's culture.[43] In 2005, however, articles in The New York Times and other
sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy. [44][45][46] In an
effort to maintain the company's unique culture, Google designated a Chief Culture Officer, who also
serves as the Director of Human Resources. The purpose of the Chief Culture Officer is to develop
and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was
founded on: a flat organization with a collaborative environment. [47] Google has also faced allegations
of sexism and ageism from former employees.[48][49]

The stock's performance after the IPO went well, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on October
31, 2007,[50] primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market. [51] The
surge in stock price was fueled mainly by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional
investors andmutual funds.[51] The company is now listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under
the ticker symbol GOOG and under the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GGQ1.

Growth
In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California, home to several other
noted Silicon Valley technology startups.[52] The next year, against Page and Brin's initial opposition
toward an advertising-funded search engine,[53] Google began selling advertisements associated with
search keywords.[24] In order to maintain an uncluttered page design and increase speed,
advertisements were solely text-based. Keywords were sold based on a combination of price bids and
clickthroughs, with bidding starting at five cents per click. [24] This model of selling keyword advertising
was first pioneered by Goto.com, an Idealab spin off created by Bill Gross.[54][55] When the company
changed names to Overture Services, it sued Google over alleged infringements of the company's
pay-per-click and bidding patents. Overture Services would later be bought by Yahoo! and
renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing. The case was then settled out of court, with Google agreeing to
issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license. [56]

During this time, Google was granted a patent describing their PageRank mechanism. [57] The patent
was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. In 2003, after
outgrowing two other locations, the company leased their current office complex from Silicon
Graphics at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.[58] The complex has since come
to be known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol
zeroes. Three years later, Google would buy the property from SGI for $319 million. [59] By that time,
the name "Google" had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb "google" to be added
to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as "to use
the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet." [60][61]

Acquisitions and partnerships

See also:  List of acquisitions by Google
Since 2001, Google has acquired many companies, mainly focusing on small venture
capital companies. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc..[62] The start-up company developed a
product called Earth Viewer that gave a 3-D view of the Earth. Google renamed the service to Google
Earth in 2005. Two years later, Google bought the online video site YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.
[63]
 On April 13, 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, giving
Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies.
[64]
 Later that same year, Google purchased GrandCentral for $50 million.[65] The site would later be
changed over to Google Voice. On August 5, 2009, Google bought out its first public company,
purchasing video software maker On2 Technologies for $106.5 million. [66] Google also
acquired Aardvark, a social network search engine, for $50 million. Google commented in their
internal blog, "we're looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it". [67] And, in April
2010, Google announced it had acquired a hardware startup, Agnilux. [68]

In addition to the numerous companies Google has purchased, the company has partnered with other
organizations for everything from research to advertising. In 2005, Google partnered with NASA Ames
Research Center to build 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) of offices.[69] The offices would be used
for research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing,
and the entrepreneurial space industry. Later that year, Google entered into a partnership with Sun
Microsystems in October 2005 to help share and distribute each other's technologies. [70]The company
also partnered with AOL of Time Warner,[71] to enhance each other's video search services. Google's
2005 partnerships also included financing the new .mobi top-level domain for mobile devices, along
with other companies including Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson.[72] Google would later launch "Adsense
for Mobile", taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market. [73]Increasing their advertising
reach even further, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corp. entered into a $900 million
agreement to provide search and advertising on popular social networking siteMySpace.[74]

In October 2006, Google announced that it had acquired the video-sharing site YouTube for US$1.65
billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006. [75] Google does not provide
detailed figures for YouTube's running costs, and YouTube's revenues in 2007 were noted as "not
material" in a regulatory filing.[76] In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 YouTube
revenue at US$200 million, noting progress in advertising sales. [77] In 2007, Google began
sponsoring NORAD Tracks Santa, a service that pretends to follow Santa Claus' progress on
Christmas Eve,[78] using Google Earth to "track Santa" in 3-D for the first time,[79] and displacing former
sponsor AOL. Google-owned YouTube gave NORAD Tracks Santa its own channel. [80]

In 2008, Google developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing Google with
high-resolution (0.41 m monochrome, 1.65 m color) imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was
launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 6, 2008.[81] Google also announced in 2008
that it was hosting an archive of Life Magazine's photographs as part of its latest partnership. Some of
the images in the archive were never published in the magazine. [82] The photos
were watermarked and originally had copyright notices posted on all photos, regardless of public
domainstatus.[83]

In 2010, Google Energy made its first investment in a renewable-energy project, putting up $38.8

million into two wind farms in North Dakota. The company announced the two locations will generate
169.5 megawatts of power, or enough to supply 55,000 homes. The farms, which were developed by
NextEra Energy Resources, will reduce fossil fuel use in the region and return profits. NextEra Energy
Resources sold Google a twenty percent stake in the project in order to get funding for project
development.[84] Also in 2010, Google purchased Global IP Solutions, a Norway based company that
provides web-based teleconferencing and other related services. This acquisition will enable Google
to add telephone-style services to its list of products. [85] On May 27, 2010, Google announced it had
also closed the acquisition of the mobile ad network, AdMob. This purchase occurred days after
the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation into the purchase.[86] Google acquired the
company for an undisclosed amount.[87] Google signed an agreement with an Iowa wind farm to buy
114 megawatts of energy for 20 years.[88]

Products and services

See also:  List of Google products

Advertising
Ninety-nine percent of Google's revenue is derived from its advertising programs. [89] For the 2006
fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in
licensing and other revenues.[90] Google has implemented various innovations in the online advertising
market that helped make them one of the biggest advertisers in the market. Using technology from the
company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they are
relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them. [91][92] Google Analytics allows website
owners to track where and how people use their website, allowing in-depth research to get users to go
where you want them to go.[93] Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-
part program. Google's AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google
content network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service,
Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website, and earn
money every time ads are clicked.[94]

One of the disadvantages and criticisms of this program is Google's inability to combat click fraud,
when a person or automated script "clicks" on advertisements without being interested in the product,
to earn money for the website owner. Industry reports in 2006 claim that approximately 14 to 20
percent of clicks were in fact fraudulent or invalid. [95] Furthermore, there has been controversy over
Google's "search within a search", where a secondary search box enables the user to find what they
are looking for within a particular website. It was soon reported that when performing a search within a
search for a specific company, advertisements from competing and rival companies often showed up
along with those results, drawing users away from the site they were originally searching. [96]Another
complaint against Google's advertising is their censorship of advertisers, though many cases concern
compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. For example, in February 2003, Google stopped
showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ship's
sewage treatment practices. Google cited its editorial policy at the time, stating "Google does not
accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or
organizations."[97] The policy was later changed.[98] In June 2008, Google reached an advertising
agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on their
web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized due
to antitrustconcerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in
November 2008.[99][100]

Search engine

In 2010, Google updated its homepage with a new shadow-less logo.[101]

The Google web search engine is the company's most popular service. According to market
research published by comScore in November 2009, Google is the dominant search engine in
the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%.[102] Google indexes trillions of web pages, so
that users can search for the information they desire, through the use of keywords and operators. In
2003, The New York Times complained about Google's indexing, claiming that Google's caching of
content on their site infringed on their copyright for the content. [103] In this case, the United States
District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google.[104]
[105]
 Google Watch has also criticized Google's PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate
against new websites and favor established sites,[106] and has made allegations about connections
between Google and the NSA and the CIA.[107] Despite criticism, the basic search engine has spread
to specific services as well, including an image search engine, the Google News search site, Google
Maps, and more. In early 2006, the company launched Google Video, which allowed users to upload,
search, and watch videos from the Internet.[108] In 2009, however, uploads to Google Video were
discontinued so that Google could focus more on the search aspect of the service. [109] The company
even developedGoogle Desktop, a desktop search application used to search for files local to one's
computer.
One of the more controversial search services Google hosts is Google Books. The company began
scanning books and uploading limited previews, and full books where allowed, into their new book
search engine. The Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, filed a class action suit
in a Manhattan federal court against Google in 2005 over this new service. Google replied that it is in
compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books. [110] Google
eventually reached a revised settlement in 2009 to limit its scans to books from the U.S., the U.K.,
Australia and Canada.[111] Furthermore, the Paris Civil Court ruled against Google in late 2009, asking
them to remove the works of La Martinière (Éditions du Seuil) from their database.[112] In competition
with Amazon.com, Google plans to sell digital versions of new books.[113] Similarly, in response to
newcomer Bing, on July 21, 2010, Google updated their image search to display a streaming
sequence of thumbnails that enlarge when pointed at. Though web searches still appear in a batch
per page format, on July 23, 2010, dictionary definitions for certain English words began appearing
above the linked results for web searches.[114]

Productivity tools
In addition to its standard web search services, Google has released over the years a number of
online productivity tools. Gmail, a free webmail service provided by Google, was launched as an
invitation-only beta program on April 1, 2004,[115] and became available to the general public on
February 7, 2007.[116] The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009, [117] at which time it
had 146 million users monthly.[118] The service would be the first online email service with
one gigabyte of storage, and the first to keep emails from the same conversation together in one
thread, similar to an Internet forum.[115] The service currently offers over 7400 MB of free storage with
additional storage ranging from 20 GB to 16 TB available for US$0.25 per 1 GB per year.
[119]
 Furthermore, software developers know Gmail for its pioneering use of AJAX, a programming
technique that allows web pages to be interactive without refreshing the browser. [120] One criticism of
Gmail has been the potential for data disclosure, a risk associated with many online web
applications. Steve Ballmer (Microsoft's CEO),[121] Liz Figueroa,[122] Mark Rasch,[123] and the editors of
Google Watch[124] believe the processing of email message content goes beyond proper use, but
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. [125]

Google Docs, another part of Google's productivity suite, allows users to create, edit, and collaborate
on documents in an online environment, not dissimilar to Microsoft Word. The service was originally
called Writely, but was obtained by Google on March 9, 2006, where it was released as an invitation-
only preview.[126] On June 6 after the acquisition, Google created an experimental spreadsheet editing
program,[127] which would be combined with Google Docs on October 10. [128] A program to edit
presentations would complete the set on September 17, 2007, [129] before all three services were taken
out of beta along with Gmail, Google Calendar and all products from the Google Apps Suite on July 7,
2009.[117]
Enterprise products

Google's search appliance at the 2008 RSA Conference

Google entered the enterprise market in February 2002 with the launch of its Google Search
Appliance, targeted toward providing search technology for larger organizations. [24] Google launched
the Mini three years later, which was targeted at smaller organizations. Late in 2006, Google began to
sell Custom Search Business Edition, providing customers with an advertising-free window
into Google.com's index. The service was renamed Google Site Search in 2008. [130]

Another one of Google's enterprise products is Google Apps Premier Edition. The service, and its
accompanying Google Apps Education Edition and Standard Edition, allow companies, schools, and
other organizations to bring Google's online applications, such as Gmail and Google Documents, into
their own domain. The Premier Edition specifically includes extras over the Standard Edition such as
more disk space, API access, and premium support, and it costs $50 per user per year. A large
implementation of Google Apps with 38,000 users is at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario,
Canada. In the same year Google Apps was launched, Google acquired Postini[131] and proceeded to
integrate the company's security technologies into Google Apps [132] under the name Google Postini
Services.[133]

Other products
Google Translate is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate between 35
different languages. Browser extensions allow for easy access to Google Translate from the browser.
The software uses corpus linguistics techniques, where the program "learns" from professionally
translated documents, specificallyUnited Nations and European Parliament proceedings.
[134]
 Furthermore, a "suggest a better translation" feature accompanies the translated text, allowing
users to indicate where the current translation is incorrect or otherwise inferior to another translation.
Google launched its Google News service in 2002. The site proclaimed that the company had created
a "highly unusual" site that "offers a news service compiled solely by computer algorithms without
human intervention. Google employs no editors, managing editors, or executive editors." [135] The site
hosted less licensed news content than Yahoo! News, and instead presented topically selected links
to news and opinion pieces along with reproductions of their headlines, story leads, and photographs.
[136]
 The photographs are typically reduced to thumbnail size and placed next to headlines from other
news sources on the same topic in order to minimize copyright infringement claims. Nevertheless,
Agence France Presse sued Google for copyright infringement in federal court in the District of
Columbia, a case which Google settled for an undisclosed amount in a pact that included a license of
the full text of AFP articles for use on Google News. [137]

In 2006, Google made a bid to offer free wireless broadband access throughout the city of San
Francisco in conjunction with Internet service provider Earthlink. Large telecommunications
companies such as Comcast and Verizon opposed such efforts, claiming it was "unfair competition"
and that cities would be violating their commitments to offer local monopolies to these companies. In
his testimony before Congress on Net Neutrality in 2006, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist Vint
Cerf blamed such tactics on the fact that nearly half of all consumers lack meaningful choice in
broadband providers.[138] Google currently offers free wi-fi access in its hometown of Mountain
View, California.[139]

One year later, reports surfaced that Google was planning the release of its own mobile phone,
possibly a competitor to Apple's iPhone.[140][141][142] The project, called Android, turned out not to be a
phone but an operating system for mobile devices, which Google acquired and then released as
an open-source project under the Apache 2.0 license.[143] Google provides a software development
kitfor developers so applications can be created to be run on Android-based phone. In September
2008, T-Mobile released the G1, the first Android-based phone.[144] More than a year later on January
5, 2010, Google released an Android phone under its own company name called the Nexus One.[145]

Other projects Google has worked on include a new collaborative communication service, a web
browser, and even a mobile operating system. The first of these was first announced on May 27,
2009.Google Wave was described as a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the
web. The service is Google's "email redesigned", with realtime editing, the ability to embed audio,
video, and other media, and extensions that further enhance the communication experience. Google
Wave was previously in a developer's preview, where interested users had to be invited to test the
service, but was released to the general public on May 19, 2010, at Google's I/O keynote. On
September 1, 2008, Google pre-announced the upcoming availability of Google Chrome, an open-
source web browser,[146] which was then released on September 2, 2008. The next year, on 7 July
2009, Google announced Google Chrome OS, an open-source Linux-based operating system that
includes only a web browser and is designed to log users into their Google account. [147][148]
Google has partnered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to enable free access to
information about patents and trademarks. The beta website is Google Patents.

Corporate affairs and culture

Google CEO Eric E. Schmidt with Sergey Brin and Larry Page (left to right)

Google is known for having an informal corporate culture. On Fortune Magazine's list of best
companies to work for, Google ranked first in 2007 and 2008 [19][149] and fourth in 2009 and 2010.[150]
[151]
 Google's corporate philosophy embodies such casual principles as "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."[152]

Employees

New employees are called "Nooglers", and wear a joke hat for a brief while.
Google's stock performance following its IPO has enabled many early employees to be competitively
compensated.[153] After the company's IPO, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric
Schmidtrequested that their base salary be cut to $1. Subsequent offers by the company to increase
their salaries have been turned down, primarily because their main compensation continues to come
from owning stock in Google. Prior to 2004, Schmidt was making $250,000 per year, and Page and
Brin each earned a salary of $150,000.[154]

In 2007 and through early 2008, Google has seen the departure of several top executives. In October
2007, former chief financial officer of YouTube Gideon Yu joined Facebook[155] along with Benjamin
Ling, a high-ranking engineer.[156] In March 2008, Sheryl Sandburg, then vice-president of global
online sales and operations, began her position as chief operating officer ofFacebook[157] while Ash
ElDifrawi, formerly head of brand advertising, left to become chief marketing officer of Netshops, an
online retail company that was renamed Hayneedle in 2009.[158]

As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy often called Innovation Time Off, where Google
engineers are encouraged to spend twenty percent of their work time on projects that interest them.
Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from
these independent endeavors.[159] In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice
President of Search Products and User Experience, showed that half of all new product launches at
the time had originated from the Innovation Time Off. [160]

Googleplex

The Googleplex, Google's original and largest corporate campus

Main article:  Googleplex

Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California is referred to as "the Googleplex", a play of words

on the number googolplex and the headquarters itself being a complex of buildings. The lobby is
decorated with a piano, lava lamps, old server clusters, and a projection of search queries on the wall.
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 foods and drinks. [161] In 2006, Google moved into
311,000 square feet (28,900 m2) of office space in New York City, at 111 Eighth Ave. in Manhattan.
[162]
 The office was specially designed and built for Google, and it now houses its largest advertising
sales team, which has been instrumental in securing large partnerships. [162] In 2003, they added an
engineering staff in New York City, which has been responsible for more than 100 engineering
projects, including Google Maps, Google Spreadsheets, and others. It is estimated that the building
costs Google $10 million per year to rent and is similar in design and functionality to its Mountain
View headquarters, including foosball, air hockey, and ping-pong tables, as well as a video game
area. In November 2006, Google opened offices on Carnegie Mellon's campus in Pittsburgh.[163] By
late 2006, Google also established a new headquarters for its AdWords division in Ann Arbor,
Michigan.[164]Furthermore, Google has offices all around the world, and in the United States, including
Atlanta, Austin, Boulder, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.
Google is taking steps to ensure that their operations are environmentally sound. In October 2006, the
company announced plans to install thousands of solar panelsto provide up to 1.6 megawatts of
electricity, enough to satisfy approximately 30% of the campus' energy needs. [165] The system will be
the largest solar power system constructed on a U.S. corporate campus and one of the largest on any
corporate site in the world.[165] In addition, Google announced in 2009 that it was deploying herds of
goats to keep grassland around the Googleplex short, helping to prevent the threat from seasonal
bush fires while also reducing the carbon footprint of mowing the extensive grounds. [166][167] The idea of
trimming lawns using goats originated from R. J. Widlar, an engineer who worked for National
Semiconductor.[168] Despite this, Google has faced accusations in Harper's Magazine of being
extremely excessive with their energy usage, and were accused of employing their "Don't be evil"
motto as well as their very public energy saving campaigns as means of trying to cover up or make up
for the massive amounts of energy their servers actually require. [169]

Google's NYC office building houses their largest advertising