Overview
If you have ever used the phrase “I googled….” or any variation thereof, you have unconsciously been using the company, Google Inc., as a word to describe searching on the Internet. In fact, Google, Inc. has unknowingly turned their brand into an actual verb defined in the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary as “to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.” Do not let this seemingly insignificant verb fool you. Google, in reality, represents the world’s largest Internet search engine, providing its users with the most useful and relevant information from over eight billion web pages (Hoover’s). Users may use www.google.com or dozens of Goggle’s other domains to perform free searches of anything from news bulletins, phone numbers, address locations or information on Saudi Arabia, Nordstrom or your neighbor next door.
Google generates revenue by providing cheap, yet cost effective online advertising for businesses wishing to promote their products or services. These ads, Google AdWords, are associated with the users’ search or keywords. In addition, Google sells ads “across a network of more than 200,000 affiliated Web sites,” called Google AdSense (Hoovers). Google offers a variety of other online services as well: Webmail, blogging, photo sharing, and instant messaging. They offer comparison shopping services (Froogle), an online image, video and book library (Google Images, Google Video, Google Books), general news stories (Google News), financial news (Google Finance), interactive maps (Google Maps) and Internet discussion groups (Google Groups) (Hoovers).
In a 2005 online poll conducted by Forbes entitled “Which Search Engine is the Best?” Google overwhelmingly exceeded its competitors in popularity. Google mainta ...