Google

Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search or ask for information by entering keywords or phrases on a website page or in an installed application program. It uses algorithms to analyze and rank websites based on their relevance to the query and frequently uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) to respond to queries. It is the most-visited website in the world; and as of 2025, it has a 90% share of the global search engine market.

At the top of the presented search results is often a sponsored result section reflecting results sponsored by advertising revenue. Many search results are also prefixed by an "AI overview" response to the search query. The order of search results returned by Google is based, in part, on a priority rank system called PageRank which was originally developed in 1996 by Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Scott Hassan. As of mid-2016, Google's search engine has begun to rely on deep neural networks.

In June 2000, it was announced that Google would become the default search engine provider for Yahoo!, one of the most popular websites at the time, replacing Inktomi. Google's focus on search differentiated it from competitors like AOL and Yahoo which focused on creating portals and maximizing the time users spent in their walled garden.

In 2003 google entered into common language as a verb, and it was defined in Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary as: "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet".

Google launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which summarizes news articles from various websites. Google also hosts Google Books, which allows users to search books in its database and shows limited previews, or the full book when allowed. Google expanded its search services to include shopping (launched originally as Froogle in 2002), finance (launched 2006), and flights (launched 2011). Google Search began presenting AI Overviews in 2024.

News publishers have argued that Google should have to pay for its use of their content. In 2026 Australia created a law to force Google and other technology companies to pay Australian news sources.

In 2025, Google generated 73% of its revenues from advertising. This includes three principal methods, namely AdMob, AdSense, and DoubleClick AdExchange.

Google Adwords was introduced in October 2000, it originally only allowed advertisers to display text ads on searches of their choosing. Google charged per thousand ad-views which was similar to how existing advertising markets functioned. This was Google's only advertising stream through 2001. Brin and Page had originally opposed any advertising but as years went by without profit they became more open to opportunities for revenue. Page and Brin insisted that all advertising be relevant to the keywords, and only allowed ads to appear in 15 percent of all searches, which meant that Google was forgoing advertising dollars and placing more restriction of advertisers than they were used to.

In February 2002, AdWords was augmented with a cost per click model. This was a significant change in advertising models because it rewarded advertisers for making their adds relevant as measured by the click frequency on search terms selected by the advertiser. The prices were set by a Vickrey auction and ads had a syndicated display on many websites rather than websites selected by the advertisers.

In 2003, AdSense began as a way for Google and third party websites to make money. Keywords from search, emails, and websites were aggregated to select ads for display on the websites. Then the website and Google split the fee from the advertisers.

In 2007, Google launched "AdSense for Mobile", taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market.

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin with additional contribution from Scott Hassan. Page and Brin published their research, along with Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd, as the PageRank algorithm and Stanford owned the patent. PageRank determines a website's relevance by the pages that linked back to the original site. Page told his ideas to Hassan, who began writing the code to implement Page's ideas. Page and Brin would also use their friend Susan Wojcicki's garage as their office when the search engine was set up in 1998.

Eventually, they changed the name to Google; the name of the search engine was a misspelling of the word googol, a very large number written 10 (1 followed by 100 zeros), picked to signify that the search engine was intended to search a large number of websites.

Google was initially funded by an August 1998 investment of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. This initial investment served as a motivation to incorporate the company to be able to use the funds. Page and Brin initially approached the nearby David Cheriton for advice. Cheriton had recently sold Granite Systems, the company he co-founded with Andy Bechtolsheim, to Cisco for $220 million. Cheriton arranged a meeting at his home in Palo Alto with Page, Brin, and Bechtolsheim. After a brief meeting which included a demo of the website Cheriton and Bechtolsheim agreed to fund Page and Brin's company approximately $200,000 investment each.

Google received money from two other angel investors in 1998, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and entrepreneur Ram Shriram. Page and Brin had first approached Shriram, who was a venture capitalist, for funding and counsel, and Shriram invested $250,000 in Google in February 1998. Bezos asked Shriram to meet Google's founders and they met six months after Shriram had made his investment. Between these initial investors, friends, and family, Google raised approximately $1,000,000, to fund their original shop in Menlo Park, California. …

YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen who were all former employees at PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, it is the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google itself. In January 2024, YouTube had reached more than 2.7 billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of video every day. As of May 2019, videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of video per minute, and as of mid-2024, there were approximately 14.8 billion videos in total.

On November 13, 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for 1.65 billion USD (equivalent to $2.44 billion in 2025). Google expanded YouTube's business model from generating revenue through advertisements alone to paid offerings such as movies and exclusive programming explicitly produced for YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching videos without ads. YouTube incorporated the Google AdSense program, generating more revenue for both YouTube and approved users. In 2025, YouTube's advertising revenue was $40.4 billion.

Since its purchase by Google, YouTube has expanded beyond the core website, creating mobile apps, network television, games, and the ability to link with other platforms. Video categories on YouTube include music videos, video clips, news, short and feature films, songs, documentaries, movie trailers, teasers, TV spots, live streams, vlogs, and more. Most submissions are generated by individuals, including collaborations between YouTubers and corporate sponsors. Established media, news, and entertainment corporations have also created and expanded their visibility on YouTube channels to reach bigger audiences.

YouTube has had unprecedented social impact, influencing popular culture, internet trends, and creating multimillionaire celebrities. Despite its growth and success, the platform has been criticized for its facilitation of the spread of misinformation and copyrighted material, routinely violating its users' privacy, excessive censorship, endangering the safety of children and their well-being, and for its inconsistent implementation of platform guidelines.

Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google Ads allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through a cost-per-click scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud, which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing the advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid. Google Search Console (rebranded from Google Webmaster Tools in May 2015) allows webmasters to check the sitemap, crawl rate, and for security issues of their websites, as well as optimize their website's visibility.

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 March 2023, in direct response to the rapid rise of ChatGPT, Google released Bard, a generative AI chatbot. It was replaced by Gemini in March 2024.

An AI training program for Google employees was also introduced in April 2024. Google has created the text-to-image model Imagen, and the text-to-video model Veo. Google integrated AI Overviews into Google Search, and added an AI mode where the search results page is AI-generated. In 2025, Google announced SynthID Detector, a tool that uses watermarking to identify whether content such as text, images, audio, or video was generated using Google products. In 2023, Google released NotebookLM, an online tool for synthesizing documents using Gemini. In September 2024, it gained attention for its "Audio Overview" feature, which generates podcast-like summaries of documents. …