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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Lowe Gray (talk | contribs) at 09:26, 29 May 2006 (→‎Google Fansite). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

In an effort to shorten this page a bit, the talk related to the history & controversy has been moved to Talk:History of Google. Dr. Cash 17:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please note that MSN search and windows live search are still two seperate search engines. www.msn.com and www.live.com Sargontfo 10:49, 24 March 2006 (UTC)Sargontfo[reply]

controvsey is listed in the wiki's main page of most major companies, but ommitted in google's main page---there's no reference to the constrovsy in history of google, nor a summary of it. i suggest to revive a section on summarizing controvsey in the main page. After all, wiki is not a fan's page. Yau-- 1 May 2006
There is a 'see also' link in the history section to the 'recent criticisms and controversies'. This is sufficient. Previously, all of the controversies were listed in the main article, and these were getting WAY TOO LONG as every conspiracy theorist on the planet started adding their crap here, so they were moved to the History of Google article. Please do not add this back in. Thanks! Dr. Cash 00:28, 13 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Acquisitions

Anyone interested in seeing a list of acquisitions made by Google?

posted by 24.84.130.194, Jun 9,2005
I would --Hoovernj 1 July 2005 17:41 (UTC)
I came, I saw, and I added! --Phileo 18:54, 16 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
To shorten the page a little bit, and to provide for better organization, I moved this list to List of Acquisitions by Google, which is linked to under the 'See also' subheading. Dr. Cash 21:33, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New page

I made this page to help shorten the Google page. The data on this page currently replicates that on the google page. Once this page is done some links (refering to the company not the site) will be redirected and the extra info on Google wil be deleted. BrokenSegue 23:23, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think it would make more sense to have this at Google Inc. or Google Incorporated than Google (company), but it looks like a lot of things link to it here so I'm not going to move it myself (yet). Any objections to such a move? ~leif ☺ HELO 09:06, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)
no...I was going to do it myself at some point...I Only realised I named it poorly after the links had been moved. BrokenSegue
I agree, move it to Google Inc.. - Jerryseinfeld 23:22, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Evil?

This article states that the company code of conduct is "Don't be evil." I'm fairly certain it is actually "Do no evil." However, I can't find any online evidence for this (or the other one). Does anyone know the correct code of conduct? It seems like Google would have this posted somehwere... — Frecklefoot | Talk 16:23, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Here is quote from http://www.google.com/governance/conduct.html
"Our informal corporate motto is "Don't be evil." We Googlers generally relate those words to the way we serve our users – as well we should. But being "a different kind of company" means more than the products we make and the business we're building; it means making sure that our core values inform our conduct in all aspects of our lives as Google employees."
The phrase "You can make money without doing evil." is repeated in Google's in Google's ten things they found to be true [1] BrokenSegue 20:36, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, that's the kind of info I was looking for. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 14:29, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Is the conspiracy theory that Google is a front/in cahoots with the NSA still considered too whacko for inclusion amongst the criticisms and controversies section?

Hm...depends on just how many people actually put that idea forth. I think a more immediate problem right now we can flesh out in further detail is the criticism surrounding their caving-in to Chinese censorship. I can tell people are pretty upset by that.

rv. infobox removal

TakuyaMurata:

Replacing the infobox with an HTML table is nonsensical considering that all that needless code is precisely the reason why templates exist. If you're going to make nonsensical edits, you'll have to edit every article that uses a template and attempt your replacement. Go ahead. Try it. I dare you. Start with Harvard University. Let's see how far you get. Adraeus 01:11, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It actually has some point. The beauty of wiki is that you don't have to learn how to write a page. With the template, you first need to learn what parameters are and how they would be renderred. With a wiki-table (not that was not HTML one by the way), it is easy to see for newbies how the table is made. Anyway this is an explanation why I replaced the template by a table, I am not going to to convince you since I can now see a trend of an infobox. Incidentaly, fixing errors is always the way to go, regardless of whether it is hard to do or not. -- 18:12, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)


John D

Systems

253,088 GHz of processing power

Where does this number come from?--Jerryseinfeld 22:45, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I would say the same. Where does this come from? How did you find out?

Conference calls

I kind of want this one next to "management" and "analysts".--Jerryseinfeld 11:08, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if we should even be listing analysts. The conference calls seem to be extra information so I would think they should go at the end. BrokenSegue 22:52, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Analysts

I've removed the following listing of Research Analysts from the article. I cannot see why this is important to the company. None of these people actually work for google. If we add all the people that work for financial companies researching every corporation out there, wikipedia would quickly add a lot of useless information. The link to Imran Khan also did not even go to a financial analyst's page - the page says he's a cricket player. Dr. Cash 20:56, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Research analysts covering Google Inc. See also GOOG: Star Analysts for GOOGLE - Yahoo! Finance

Mixed units

The image resolution ranges from one foot to two meters

Metric or imperial, make up your mind!  :) The mixing of units here looks terrible in my opinion.

posted by 131.111.243.37
i can't find that sentence anywhere in the article. Nor can I find the word foot or meter. What are you talking about? BrokenSegue 23:21, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This post was probably in reference to the discussion of Keyhole which has been moved to List of Google services and tools.

Google's innovativeness and sense of humour

Google has a couple of innovations

  • Uncluttered interface at a time when sites wanted to add more links and more features, thus cluttering their webpages.
  • Built in calculator
  • Modifying the Google logo to signify certain events
  • I'm feeling lucky

Sense of humour

  • PigeonRank
  • Recruiting on the moon
  • GMail news released on Apr 1 was thought to be a joke
  • The link to lunar.google.com has been removed - it should be added in again (as it is pretty funny when you zoom all the way in to the surface)

-NOTE: This page is now situated at moon.google.com

These might be included in the article.

Whois says this is the expiry date on Google

14-sep-2011: Is this date relevant information for somewhere in the article? -- user:zanimum

No, that is just the date when they will have to re-subscribe for the google.com domain...
All commercial domains have to be renewed from time to time. This is no big deal. I have heard some funny stories about certain Fortune 100 companies forgetting to renew their domains because the person in charge of that left the company and neglected to ensure that someone else took over that particular responsibility. Fortunately, that's never happened to Google. --Coolcaesar 04:13, 23 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I love Google's sense of humour --dg 19:15, 11 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Salaries

yeah, i agree. 128.175.226.50 16:45, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sysadmins at Google make $33K a year? You've gotta be kidding. You couldn't hire a cleaner in the Bay Area for that salary.

... that number may have been true when stock options were worth bundles of money, but nowadays it's totally bogus I think.


I heard the founders of Google reduced their salaries to $1 per year. --Cuervo 22:49, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Guess this info is already in there. That's what I get for getting news from Slashdot. :-) --Cuervo 04:25, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Plagiarism?

They include a 'Reference' link at the end, but they just copied the text, I think: [JuiceNewsDaily]

If you mean that some other site is copying Wikipedia's content then...
.. big whup, they're allowed to do that. PeteVerdon 00:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

languages: Leet

Looking at the Google site, it doesn't seem that Leet is offered any longer as a language. For another joke language, Google currently offers Elmer Fudd ("I'm Feewing Wucky!").

'Googol' vs. 'Google'

I had added the story about the check being made out to 'Google, Inc.' back when they were looking for investors, and that is how the misspelling is now the name of the company. The story was deleted a few days later, saying it was false. I found the source so I'll be putting it back in...

"Unable to interest the major portal players of the day, Larry and Sergey decided to make a go of it on their own. All they needed was a little cash to move out of the dorm — and to pay off the credit cards they had maxed out buying a terabyte of memory. So they wrote up a business plan, put their Ph.D. plans on hold, and went looking for an angel investor. Their first visit was with a friend of a faculty member.

Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, was used to taking the long view. One look at their demo and he knew Google had potential — a lot of potential. But though his interest had been piqued, he was pressed for time. As Sergey tells it, "We met him very early one morning on the porch of a Stanford faculty member's home in Palo Alto. We gave him a quick demo. He had to run off somewhere, so he said, 'Instead of us discussing all the details, why don't I just write you a check?' It was made out to Google Inc. and was for $100,000."

The investment created a small dilemma. Since there was no legal entity known as "Google Inc.," there was no way to deposit the check. It sat in Larry's desk drawer for a couple of weeks while he and Sergey scrambled to set up a corporation and locate other funders among family, friends, and acquaintances. Ultimately they brought in a total initial investment of almost $1 million."

source: [2]

Why did you insert this story in the Etymology section of the article? Larry and his officemates already had come up with the name (and spelling) Google by mid-September 1997, prior to the visit with Bechtolsheim. Thus, this story has nothing to do with the etymology of the name Google.
I think there's been a misunderstanding of the point of the quoted passage - the non-existence of anything called "Google Inc" was not because that wasn't its name, but simply because it didn't exist yet. The section just above that quoted already mentions "Google, as it was now known" but the meeting with Bechtolsheim was to show their business plan and demo - not to ask for investment in a pre-existing company - so there was simply no account to pay a cheque into yet. Google was already the name of their project, but you can't pay a cheque into a project. [I'll fix the article in a sec] - IMSoP 17:38, 15 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A play on words by definition needs two sides to it. Despite what Google says, I don't see any play on words in the name Google -- it's just a misspelling. I haven't changed anything yet, but I think if we are to keep this 'etymology', it must be explained what the play on words is.JudahH 01:17, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I compromised by changing "a play on words" to "a reference to", which is true either way.JudahH 15:11, 1 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rename the April Fools section?

I think it would be appropriate to rename the April Fool's Day Jokes section of the article to Jokes by Google (or something like that). Why you ask? Becuase not all of the jokes that Google have done are on April Fools day - take today for example if you click here and zoom all the way in it shows "cheese". Also related to google moon are this, a FAQ about Google moon, and this a site about a new center Google is "building" on the moon. AfterSpencer 16:06, 20 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also if you search for "Paris Hilton isnt a whore", it returns a "Did you mean: Paris Hilton is a whore" Ablaze 20:48, 20 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
That also works, for example, if you use "cheese isnt a wine". But if you use the apostrophe in "isnt", the results are as one would normaly expect. Andy Mabbett 20:55, 20 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think its will work with just about anything, so the google servers don't reconise inst as a word without the apostrophe. Like if you searched for "George W. Bush isnt a Bad President" Ablaze 12:31, 21 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Edit

12:22, 27 July 2005 208.58.74.167 (Rewrite to clarify - not add to - original text.) by Kyle Andrew BrownKyle Andrew Brown 12:20, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

be more specific

07:20, 29 July 2005 entry states "recent". This needs to be factual date for an enclycopedia.Kyle Andrew Brown 12:19, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Salaries

the phrase "it is estimated that less than one job offer is made per thousand resumes submitted" reads more like a magazine article than an encylopedia. I suggest it be deleted.Kyle Andrew Brown 21:15, 29 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Content Query

After the External links is a magazine like history followed with what look like are copies of Google produced newsletters. I dont think I get it. Why would an encylclopedia have a company's newsletter and why would an encyclopedia entry evolve into a "user manual"?Kyle Andrew Brown 20:02, 30 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, you've made four comments now. You do realize that you can edit this page now, don't you? — David Remahl 03:30, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The changes were reverted long before your comment by an editor that correctly identified the content as vandalism. And it's common sense to ask the community's opinion before doing an edit. That's what my query was all about. I see you were out of the loop.Kyle Andrew Brown 13:45, 2 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Attribution

Some material on this page was merged in from "Google community", per Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Google community. -- BDAbramson talk 03:22, August 2, 2005 (UTC)

anyone think the search results are biased?

Heres why I think so, I did a search for; career and the least desired results is what I got.

1. 268,000,000- 271,000,000 results found

2. The first results on the first page was dispointing mostly big company based websites.. and i'm not very enthuastic to find a job through those sites.

After skipping forward about 98+ pages it reverted to 86 pages and the list was ommited with only 851 - 860 results shown. with 268,000,000 found.

The second time after ommited results were accepted It stopped at 100 with only 991 - 993 results shown. with 271,000,000 found.

So the about 271,000,000 million other pages were never shown. and quite frankly(I don't normally say that) I think google isn't as big as what they claim. I dont really know if more results is benificial or less is. Just a little obversation from using google daily

I think this bias is an inherent part of PageRank itself. To get answers to some of your queries regarding the comprehensiveness, I can ask you to read this. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 08:41, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

Number of employees

The article states that there are 4000 people working for google, whereas the factbox states that there are only 3000. Maybe this could be investigated further.

Well, if I remember right, one of the founders themselves wasn't too shure about the # of Googlers. --Jason McHuff 07:56, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling mistake?

Googol says the spelling of Google was a spelling mistake, and has a quote. However, this entry claims the spelling was a "play" on the word, implying that it was intentional. Which is right?

This [3] link at google's website says its a play on the phrase, but that may be an oversimplification or a cover up since there is some evidence that it was a mistkae. This link is Broken 01:27, 1 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I heard somewhere that, when the two founders of Google were trying to invent a name for their new search service, they struck on the word Googol, but misspelled it. When this was pointed out to them, they decided to keep the original (incorrect,) spelling, rather than change it to the less 'trendy' (i.e. slightly awkward,) Googol. In true Google fashion, spelling doesn't get in the way of anything!

I'm feeling lucky!(but am not.)

What is the "I'm feeling lucky!" thing about?-Darkmewham

it takes you directly to the first result. With some luck hopefully the first result will be what you wan't hence the i'm feeling lucky button title ;) Plugwash 01:56, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hardware

I added some additional information about the original hardware Google used. It may be incorrect as I was going off this site: http://web.archive.org/web/19990209043945/google.stanford.edu/googlehardware.html (which was the original google site)... however the images won't load.

If anyone knows the exact hardware they used, it would be interesting to note.

I also added the Google logos. If anyone knows of any other official logos and also year dates for the cutrrent logos, please add them.

I removed the logos which were added above because when I looked at googles site they had the said logos listed under "fan logos" so it seemed it was misleading to list them as previous versions of the official logo. In it's place there is now a link to the Google holiday logos. It feels an awkward place for it so it should probably be moved someplace else. Cheers, flyer_13 talk 03:18, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Logo's are Official Logos!

The logos I have had to add twice now because people have been removing them are actually the official logos which Google had used since their beginnings. Yes google has them listed under fan logos, but if you actually read the text, it says: Finally, here are progressively older versions of our logo, dating back to the days before we were Google... For God's Sake!

Logo's put back again, hopefully for the last time.

As you quoted these logos are simple tests did before the company even existed (they cannot therefore be offical logos). I really don't think that they have to mentioned since they are not notable. Matteo 08:23, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Internet Archive Wayback Machine: google.stanford.edu and Internet Archive Wayback Machine: www.google.com !! ... yes the logos were before the company was created, but it was still their logos back when they were developing the Google search engine at

stanford... I suggest you learn your google history

I don't say that they never designed them. The Google company never used it and even it had they are not notable enough to be included in an encyclopedic articleMatteo 08:58, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
hmmm, I thought the whole point of an encyclopedia is to provide all the information. (sarcasm) These logos are very interesting and are definately a part of Google's history and development into what they are now. Removing the logos will be a great disadvantage to this article.
Yes these do seem to deserve their place on the page as per Googles statement "Finally, here are progressively older versions of our logo, dating back to the days before we were Google..."(thanks for pointing that out to me Treeloveinhippie, I missed that part =) However I think it should be pointed out to people that these are from "the days before we were Google" so as not to confuse (like it did me, lol). Cheers, flyer_13 talk 13:57, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and by "the days before we were Google", the are referring to before they created the company called Google. They were still calling their search engine 'Google' when they were creating it and so the logos are a part of their history and development.
Very true. I am in concurrence. I may have not made that clear in my last post but that was my intent, sorry for the confusion. =) Cheers, flyer_13 talk 01:59, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

new google toy

http://www.google.com/reader/lens/

if anyone feels like writing about it ...

70.80.66.115 04:27, 9 October 2005 (UTC) --martin[reply]

Wow that works horrible. Everytime I found something I liked in the search, and clicked, it wouldn't load. -- user:zanimum

Google Worth US$100 Billion

Google is about to reach a US$100 Billion value. Worth more than the Coca Cola Co. Wow.

Google Video deletes broadcast content?

See talk:Google Video

google analytics

anybody adding Google Analytics here? 59.93.130.58 09:18, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

List of Google services and tools getcrunk juice 21:28, 18 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

publish

would you like to publish this article? -- Zondor 22:11, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Strange results

How many wikipedia.org pages on Google? 120 million? [4] --Henrygb 18:00, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What's your point? --pitr 16:44, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the following links to news articles from the external links section. For one, this is not a complete list of all news articles that mention google. Secondly, the purpose of an encyclopedia article is not to provide such a list - there are plenty of news sites out there that provide these services. If we were to keep adding news article links to every article on the net that mentioned google, this article would be way too long! I have kept the links here and provided them, as some of the information could be used by editors in referencing various info in the article. Dr. Cash 21:06, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why are there links to every google subdomain for every google project in the external links section. Since we already mention the various google projects elsewhere in the article, with a list of the projects and links to them, I see no reason why we need a huge linkfarm to every google project under the external links section. All that I can really see here are providing a link to the main google search page and perhaps the google.org philanthropy page. Dr. Cash 21:39, 8 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think Google Blogoscoped might be relevant within the external link sections, but don't want to enter it as creator. --Philwiki 22:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Blogs should generally not be linked to (see WP:EL). There are sooo many blogs on Google out there, it would also prove quite difficult to select which should be included over others. --mtz206 23:09, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

EU countries to fund research for a competitor to Google?

"BERLIN Germany and France are negotiating on plans to inject E1 billion to E2 billion over five years into a public-private initiative to develop a series of sophisticated digital tools including a next-generation Internet search engine, a project organizer said. " CaribDigita 06:30, 18 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Google Shuttle

Can someone include details of the google shuttle? How many busses, maybe some details of the routes, etc? Wireless internet onboard...

So the Internet thing might be relevant, but I don't see why the number of buses is interesting...

59.92.something.something

A person hiding under different IP addresses which start with 59.92 has been tampering with the links randomly for quite a while now, something if at all possible needs to be done about this issue

Etymology

I'm sure I heard the word "google" as a verb, meaning "to look at" before the search engine company came about. And, no, I'm not thinking of "to goggle". --Urbane legend 13:44, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I believe you are talking about "ogle" -

Nope. I'm talking about "google", believe me. --Urbane legend 09:55, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well then, you are mistaken. The word didn't exist before (except in some obscure British sense that meant somthing else) Broken S 13:25, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the 'etymology' section (previously under history) back to the opening paragraph. I believe that this information is important enough to warrant being mentioned up front. I also do not think it belongs as a sub-section under 'history' because, while it can be considered a part of the history of the company, it does not seem to fit in with the order of the story being told in that section.

Also, for some reason, the anonymous user 195.93.21.37 deleted this text from the opening paragraph with no explanation. I am not sure why? Dr. Cash 05:01, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Other Versions

The "Other Versions" section does mention Froogle, which is definitely real, but it also mentions "Elgoog" and "Googirl". I cannot find "www.elgoog.com" and "www.googirl.com" is a porn site. If in fact either of these does exist as a legitimate site, the name should have a link with the correct URL so that users are not sent to inappropriate material. Until this is added, I am removing Googirl and suggest Elgoog be removed as well. - Ian Burnet 1/25/06

Okay, I found Elgoog, and put a link to the wikipedia article about it. Googirl, though, has been removed. - Ian Burnet
Alas, I found googirl as well. However, as it says clearly on the site "Googirl.com.ar is in no way related to Google.com nor its creators. Googirl's name and layout were choosen as a mere tribute to what we consider to be the best search engine of the world, and represents our hope to become the best celebrity pictures search engine." It is unrelated to Google AND contain innapropriate material, so it should not be included in this article. - Ian Burnet

Too long

I realize that the subject is a big subject, however does anyone else other than me think that this article is a bit too long? Whispering 00:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I sorta agree. The article is a bit long. But a lot of the material seems relevant and I don't think I would want to delete it. I reorganized a few things a bit, mainly in the history and culture areas. It seems like there are two areas that could be shot off to new articles: possibly a History of Google and a Google Controversy article? These appear to be the two largest sections. What do others think? Dr. Cash 23:05, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good idea, although I'm not all that good at writing articles. I will be happy to edit anything anyone puts up. Whispering 05:45, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

fastest growing company ever?

I was reading an article today that said "...Google, which was founded in 1997 and is now worth $129 billion (£72 billion), making it the fastest growing company in the history of the world." [5] I think this is noteworty enough to warrent mention in the article, but I am not sure where. Cacophony 20:15, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

vandalism on sidebar?

It reads "Google Inc. Monstrous evil facist empire" on the sidebar describing Google. There is also the word "swastika" next to the Google logo. What up with this?

It's obviously vandalism. After all, Google's motto is, "Don't be evil." Dr. Cash 23:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Barney Google

After using Google for a while, I remembered the cartoon title "Barney Google and Snuffy Smith", which is usually shortened to "Snuffy Smith." Google "Barney Google" and a few web pages about the cartoon and derivative media (TV, movie, song) show up.

see Barney Google BrokenSegue 20:22, 10 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article Cleanup

I just finished a major clean-up of this article. The history section has been shorted, and much content has been moved to a new History of Google article. I also moved the entire controversy section over to the history of google article as well (after all, today's controversy is tomorrow's history, eh?).

The external links have also been cleaned up greatly, removing much of the linkspam, and moving many of the links to news articles to references within the text. The article now makes use of Wikipedia:Footnotes, so future news article references should now make use of that format. Any external links inserted without the footnote formatting should ideally be converted to this format. The primary reason for this is that, if we insert the author, title, publication, and date information into the reference, instead of just the link, if the site is later removed by the original publisher, we still have information regarding where the citation came from and can still track it down. Dr. Cash 03:58, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some dollar signs are links and some aren't. Should I remove the links or add them to all dollar signs? Maybe this should be asked in a more general area because it applies to all articles, but I don't want to go searching for the right one, and I haven't seen an inconsistency problem involving this anywhere else. -Barry- 02:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I actually prefer making the dollar signs as links to the United States Dollar article. One other alternative I have seen is, e.g. $1 million USD, or something similar (maybe USD 1 million, or USD $1 million). I think it looks better as $1 million. The USD part makes it look a bit odd. Dr. Cash 05:15, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Should there be some kind of formalized link to the "criticisms/controversies" section on the History of Google page? If a user comes to the main Google page looking for such information, there's nothing mentioned at all here about the various controversies, and its not really very obvious that the History page would be the place to go looking for it. (Also, I deleted Striver's incomplete entry about censorship; if that link is important, it should go on in the controversy section on the history page). --mtz206 16:55, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just removed the small sections regarding controversies from the page and added a 'see also' link to the criticism and controversy section of the History of Google article. Dr. Cash 07:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I came to this page specifically to read about the Google/China situation, and was disappointed when I couldn't find it. The link to this is certainly not as prominent as it should be. -anon

"Google and censur"

As I noted above, the section Striver is adding is incomplete and mentions an isolated event regarding alleged actions by Google. If this even deserves mention, it should be added to the criticism and controversy section of the History of Google page. (also, it should have a complete heading title, not whatever the abbreviated "censur" is meant to represent. --mtz206 02:26, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Striver has also been trying to add weird stuff to the Internet article. See Talk:Internet. --Coolcaesar 06:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pagerank patent

The article says that the patent for Pagerank was assigned to Stanford U- but doesn't that mean they control it? If so, doesn't that mean Google would've needed to license it from Stanford? If so, for how much, and how? --maru (talk) contribs 05:35, 21 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting point. Though I suspect with all the money google has made, they probably have bought the rights to it from them by now. But this would definitely be something worth looking into,... Dr. Cash 07:06, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Here is the original patent application showing Stanford as the assignee. According to this article Google has an exclusive license of the patent. --mtz206 13:46, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think we need to arrive at some kind of consensus as to what kind of links belong in the "Other links" subsection of "External links." Should these be non-Google sites about Google? Sites offering deeper understanding of Google? Sites offfering critical views on Google? What kind of Other links would add value to an encyclopedic article about Google? Thoughts?

Meanwhile, there has been a minor revert war on whether www.google-watch.org or www.scroogle.org should be there. Often when these are deleted, the link to Google.vc (for "very cool") remains. IMO, if any of these should remain it would be Google Watch, with some kind of description like "site critical of Google." A link to Scroogle seems perhaps more appropriate for the Google and privacy issues article, although I'm not even sure about that. The Google.vc link seems entirely superfluous to an encyclopedic article about Google. --mtz206 20:23, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note: removed link to google-watch. It has been blacklisted and the link was preventing me from saving the page --Straif 17:33, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was also thinking that it might be a good spot to put a link to Google X Directory which is being archived Google X Directory It is a google portal and just as relative if not more than the Google Watch or Scroogle links.

I just looked at google-x, and I think I'm missing the point. The only relationship I can see with Google is that it uses Blogspot and Google's search engine results to sell advertising space. From what I've seen, I really don't think it belongs. As for other links, I agree completely with mtz206. --Straif 19:20, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So that it is clear what I've done (and to hopefully prevent future revert wars), I removed the link to Google.vc entirely; it didn't belong. There are wiki articles for Google Watch and Scroogle. As internal links are always preferable to external, I added them to the overly long See also: list, and removed the external links. --Straif 19:40, 10 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And I just removed the Google Watch and Scroogle links from the See also: list. The list is too long as it is, and there are links to those to articles in the Google Inc. box. There are probably several other links that could be safely removed from that list since they are in that box. --19:48, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Google searches

I know this article was recently 'cleaned' up, but I wonder why the section "Specific searches" (see [Feb. 18th version) is missing. There are now no links whatsoever from this article to Google Maps, Google Earth, and other google products. Seems to me, the brief section on google searches (products) should be readded, so those links are present in the article. -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 00:12, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The article at once had links to every single google subdomain and product that they offered, which I found to be cluttered and unnecessary. There is also a specific article, List of Google services and tools, which contains information (and links) to all of Google's products and services. This is where this information should go. Dr. Cash 04:23, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree on this. I looked through the article and missed List of Google services and tools buried at the bottom among all the "See also" links. Certainly a list of products isn't the right format. But we should be using summary style and give a brief summary of their products and services in prose form. Like maybe, discuss when the *key* products were introduced and their impact/significance. Some like Google Maps had a major impact, with their use of Ajax and on market share versus MapQuest (AOL), Yahoo!, etc. Google Print sparked some heated debate between Google and the publishing industry over copyright issues. Gmail, Froogle, and Google News are also in my opinion, worth a brief mention. Do we need to list every Google product in this main article? No, but a brief summary with a {{main|List of Google services and tools}}? Yes. Certainly discussion of their products and services is more noteworthy for inclusion here than discussion of "April Fool's Day jokes". -Kmf164 (talk | contribs) 15:20, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I see your point. This is actually somewhat important information. Though I don't really like the name 'specific searches'. I've added a 'Products and Services' section, right under the 'History' section. I don't really want this to end up as merely a list of links and sorts, and I've added a main link to List of Google services and tools. Dr. Cash 22:04, 31 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking feedback on Google Groups article

Hello. I wrote an article about a related topic, Google Groups. As a new Wikipedia writer, I would appreciate any feedback on my article. Please help me by posting your feedback at the Wikipedia:Article Feedback Desk. If you wrote an article and are seeking feedback on it, please post your article at the Article Feedback Desk as well. If you could suggest better ways for me to seek feedback on my article, do leave a note at my talk page. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:05, 3 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Following a suggestion from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam, I added the following comment to the external links section:

<!-- ATTENTION! Please do not add links without discussion and consensus on the talk page. Undiscussed links will be removed. -->

Openly discussing the merits of a particular link is a good thing. --Straif 15:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

POV

Googleplex seems to make out Google is a great place to work. POV. 212.135.1.49 08:30, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Are any of the stated facts in dispute? It is a rather glowing description (makes me want to work there), but how does that make it POV? What are the drawbacks to working at the Googleplex (are they specific to Googleplex, or are they about working for Google--if the latter, then perhaps the tag should be moved). The description does seem a little unbalanced, but is there good, verifiable information that could be added to moderate the tone? Basically, what I'm saying here is that saying the section "seems to make out Google is a great place to work" doesn't convince me that it it is POV. I need more explanation than that. --Straif 12:28, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. I don't think it's POV at all. Providing information about a companies corporate headquarters is ok for articles. And what are you going to say that's negative anyway, "the bathrooms stink and the basement is filled with rats?" I do think that it would help to add a reference to this text, which would back up the claims. Most of the information in the paragraph seems to have been taken from Google's own Corporate Culture page. I would think an independent reference from another publication or website would be a better reference, however. Dr. Cash 20:40, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It also only cost a very small amount per click to the websites that advertised this way. ... Compared to what? I've advertised with Google's service. Some search terms sell for over $10. How is that a small amount. I'm removing this. --66.87.184.227 13:32, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Several weeks ago, the Time magazine cover story had a lot of good things to say about the Googleplex. The Mercury News has also said many good things in various articles in the past. I don't have the time to dig up the citations right now, though. --Coolcaesar 02:08, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's POV, but I agree that references must be made in order for the section to survive.--Sheeo 08:59, 9 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]


  • Please read: Wikipedia:External links
  • Can anyone explain to me what value the link to http://www.google.vc/ adds? Don't get me wrong, it is a nifty site, but I'm not clear if it really adds any value to what is already a long article (especially since it already overwhelming with all the wikilinks). I've removed it a couple times, giving my reasoning both in the summary, and once in talk. It is promptly replaced without comment. I'm not the first one to remove it (and have it quickly replaced). I'm not interested in getting in an edit war, and clearly there is at least one person that feels this link belongs. That being said; without so much as an edit summary, I have no idea why that person feels the link belongs.
  • There are two other links, www.google-watch.org and www.scroogle.org, that I've removed only to see them reappear, and again it looks like this is an ongoing trend. They both have Wikipedia articles (Google Watch and Scroogle) and the Google article links to them. It seems to me like an unnecessary duplication. Does this redundancy add value? Also where the person/organization that runs both sites is extremely critical of Google, I think that if one or both links do stay, that bias should be clearly noted--honesty is good. --Straif 14:42, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note: removed links to google-watch and scroogle. They have been blacklisted and the links were preventing me from saving the page --Straif 17:33, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note: I took the liberty of reformatting a reply that was embedded in my original comment to make it more readable, and make it clear who wrote what. --Straif 15:44, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Can anyone explain to me what value the link to http://www.google.vc/ adds? Reply: http://thegooglist.blogspot.com/2006/02/googlevc-is-unofficial-google.html -- 219.95.14.230
That still doesn't answer my question. What value does it add to this article? --Straif 15:44, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think Google.vc is very creative. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.115.116.213 (talk • contribs) .
The issue isn't if it is creative or not. It is clearly a labor of love, and I'm sure that many people find it useful. There are undoubtedly hundreds on other sites related to Google that are also creative. Clearly, it would be unwieldy to list them all. What makes this site important enough to be included when others aren't? More importantly, how does it expand on the article? Links to Google and its various projects are, of course, important as they are directly related to the facts discussed. Sites with verifiable sources of information (such as pertinent journal articles) might be useful (although it is generally better to add the information, no plagiarism ;), and site the article). However, I don't see any information on the google.vc page that isn't available through official (and verifiable) channels. --Straif 23:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Google Template Box

There's a problem with the template for Google that appears on the bottom of many Google products - it lists many programs and services that were not created by Google - some in fact violate Google's terms of use.

I suggest taking out all non-Google pages from that template and keeping only articles on subjects which are directly related to Google.

Kungming2 23:07, 17 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I concur. --Coolcaesar 04:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've created a new box at Template:Google_services - pending corrections and some changes, it will be submitted to replace the template at Template:Google Inc.. Kungming2 01:10, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That one is much better! Dr. Cash 05:08, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Issue resolved! All Google pages that link to the new Template:Google_services have been changed! Whether or not Template:Google Inc. should be up for deletion is up to the Wikipedia community. Thanks, Dr. Cash for the help. :) Kungming2 07:39, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete Template:Google Inc.

I am conducting a poll of Wikipedians to see whether this particular template, Template:Google Inc. should be nominated for deletion. Please note that the navigational functions it provides have been superseded by Template:Google_services and that the template itself provides links to unnecessary information - for example, the links to the Google Hacks book and the miserable failure article, which have nothing to do with the company itself. So vote - should it be nominated for deletion? –- kungming·2 05:23, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Support deletion of the template. I know the Wikipedian who created it, and I don't know why he did what he did, but I know his intentions were good. Nonetheless, it's unnecessary. (Oh, and please change your sig in your prefs so that it subst's the template.) --M@thwiz2020 20:30, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 20:44, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

controversy / Advert

The article is biased in that it does not contain any reference to the contoversy to do with google china. Also, it does read like it's an advert for google ltd.

Information about the Google China controversy is here (in the History of Google (Criticism and controversy) section. The link to this is at the bottom of the History section in the main article (this article). Having all the controversies and criticisms in this article was making it a bit too long, so it was moved. Dr. Cash 19:17, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Should the entry contain an external link to Google's conference call transcripts? Google's quarterly conference calls and analyst day are the only occasions when the company discusses its own business and answers analysts questions about its business and strategy. The transcripts are now available for free here: http://seekingalpha.com/transcripts/for/goog

Arguably, there should also be a link to Google's SEC filings.

Vandalism in History Section

In the history section of the page, every occurence of the word Google has been replaced with "Boob Hull."

Now it seems okay. Check it anyway. Feanor981 16:01, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More complete list of products and services.

I am building a minimalistic but comprehensive list of Google products and services (intended to be more complete than the specific article). It can be found at User:Tacvek/Google. While I will try to keep it up to date, I would appricate having others look over that page, and updating it as nessisary. Please do read the notes at the top of the page before editing. Thanks. Tacvek 22:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Google and Wikipedia

I stumbled upon a website that said Google donated bandwidth and servers to the Wikipedia. [6] There is a lot of speculation from the announcement, but I couldn't find what was actually donated. Does anyone know of a reference? Might be a good thing to add to the partnerships section. I found it interesting, but maybe it's not really notable. Mattedm 23:45, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I'd call it a true "partnership", but more of a, "sponsorship", or actually, a corporate donation would be more appropriate. It might be useful to the article to have a section on corporate donations and philanthropies,... Dr. Cash 21:50, 8 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

About Google Australia

Google has employed a lot of people in Australia google. The stages are difficult. But the payment is good.

http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~xji/xiaonanji.html

First paragraph sentence is ambiguous

With a market cap of 117.16 billion as of early 2006, Google is the largest Internet search company in the world.

What's 117.16 bil mean? Dollars? Reletive size? I have no idea what exactly it does mean. Can anyone who has a clue fix it (btw. I don't think their market capitalisation is actually anywhere near $117b atm) -- drrngrvy tlk @ 00:25, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ATM it's 111 billion dollars see [this. BrokenSegue 00:34, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. It's all better now :) -- drrngrvy tlk @ 02:32, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Employee work percentages

The article does briefly mention that employees are supposed to spend 20% of their time on other projects, but it doesn't mention the rest of the time breakdown (70% on main work, 20% on relevant but tangential stuff, and 10% for fun random stuff that might work out to be something important). The way it's written, actually, it seems like that 20% is referring to the 10% fun stuff. Delta Echo Romeo 17:54, 16 May 2006 (UTC) Delechrom[reply]

Google Fansite

It is allowed to have one fansite per page. I would like to add http://googlefansite.com at google external link page. Lowe Gray 09:42, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Who says that is allowed? (ESkog)(Talk) 04:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding googlefansite.com , here is the rule for listing fansite : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links . Fan sites: On articles about topics with many fansites, including a link to one major fansite is appropriate, marking the link as such. Thanks. Since im an avid google fan we have made a site for google fans. Lowe Gray 05:22, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure this qualifies as a "major fansite" quite yet. SubSeven 05:34, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Its true that its not yet a major fansite, but since there are no fansite for google, then http://www.googlefansite.com can be the default, if there are other major fansite for google in the future then it can easily be replaced. Lowe Gray 05:49, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here are a few others. The first two get quite a bit of traffic. [7] [8] [9] SubSeven 17:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The links are all blogs, which is very different from a fansite see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fansite . A fansite normally have boards, news, polls, pictures taken from various sources, media downloads, links to other, similar fansites, and the chance to talk to other fans. Lowe Gray 00:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Heh. I'm familiar with fansites, but thanks. I'll make one more point on this. Just the mere existence of a fansite doesn't mean it should be linked in the article. If the site is considered a valuable resource, it will find its way in there. You now know of course from reading WP:EL that you shouldn't add links to your own site. Nominating it on the talk page is the right thing to do. SubSeven 08:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well can I seek your help to kindly include the Google fansite http://googlefansite.com as one of the external link. Thanks you for any help. Lowe Gray 09:26, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Video Google

Can any of you answer this question? If you do not have a "gmail" account may you still upload videos onto www.video.google.com? Please respond if you know the answer to my question, much appreciated Max.pwnage 22:00, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Power

Isn't 10 to the power of one hundred ten with 101 zeroes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.166.99.99 (talk • contribs)

Nope. 10 to the second power is 100 (two zeroes), 10 to the third power is 1,000 (three zeroes), and so forth. SubSeven 23:52, 27 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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