What is google?

Google is a collection of search engines developed and maintained by Google Inc. A search engine is a computer program that answers questions by generating hyperlinks from Web pages to other Web pages. Sites are then ranked by relevance according to user ratings. The various search engines with free search functionality, known as Google searches, make up the Googleplex search engine empire which is in the process of expanding through the acquisition of various small companies and the launching of various spin-off search engines. Just as it's possible to use Google to search the Internet, it is possible to search Google, or 'google' (the noun form), as a verb. This is also true of any search engine, but particularly Google. The following is a sample query of a search term 'google' entered into Google. The results vary greatly by country (in the 'Include in results' section) and language and are sometimes inconsistent within a country. Google searches in non-English speaking countries typically rely on a translation system to return translated results, with some examples of the most frequently searched words: 'Wikipedia' in various languages, 'kakao' (Korean for 'telegram') and 'koi' (Japanese for 'cat' in Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Italian, etc. ), 'cloud' (Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, etc. ), 'google' and 'chrome' (English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, etc. ), 'netflix', 'motorola', 'swizzels', 'o2', 'watch', 'pst' (Russian for 'picture' in German, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Estonian, Czech, etc. ), 'dansk' (Denmark), 'euro' (French for 'européen' in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, etc. ), 'plasa' (Portuguese for 'placet' in French, etc. ), 'tiscali', 'taobao', 'www.pampers.com', 'varanasi' (Devanagari script for 'Tibetan' in Hindi and Nepali), 'goldfinger5' (a reference to the video game Goldfinger which is being referred to as a gambling site), 'rerun111', 'jpeg', 'romphim', 'house of cards', 'puma', 'govdel, and 'pandora'. The popularity of the color green is reflected in the result set shown by Google and many other search engines, where the first result is the color, and the second is often a picture of a greenhouse. Google will typically only show the first result, so sometimes the third result is the same as the second. In contrast, Bing displays the first result, and will often show an image of a greenhouse next to it, in addition to a smaller text 'for quick reference. On 20 December 2006, Google became an Associate Member of the Alliance for Open Media, a consortium dedicated to advancing freedom of digital content through interoperability and collaboration. In response to concerns over Google's links to other web portals and applications, Google stated that it "...[w]ould allow anyone to create a domain name, use it to run a server and host Web pages, then invite other Web sites and Web developers to use the Web site." On 16 April 2008, Google was one of nine companies to sign an "Open Letter to President Bush and Congress to Protect Intellectual Property and Encourage Innovation", a lobbying campaign in support of SOPA (Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act) and the Protect IP Act. In early May 2008, Google was criticized for the way it handled its search results after Rolling Stone published a front-page article that said Google planned to start tracking the searches conducted by its users. In May 2009, Google started deleting links to ProPublica from the index of its search results. In November 2009, Google and other leading search engines began removing Google Book Search results from the results pages of books they index and displayed. In April 2010, Google removed some "pirate" websites from the index. On 20 November 2010, Google announced that it would be improving its search results by utilizing information previously held on users' personal computers and delivering them to Google in a more compressed format (currently 3–4 KB), so as to save bandwidth and improve its Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on users' computers. This step, called Local Suggestions, resulted in the removal of information about anti-piracy companies such as Rightscorp. Google also took down the official U.S. Chamber of Commerce page because of the Chamber's criticism of Google's removal of the website from the search index. The move would allow the search engine to present better results to users when performing a search for a local business. Google has a system in place to improve image and text recognition on mobile devices. However, sometimes the location databases used by Google are not updated in a timely fashion and the proper recognition may be significantly off. This would cause the device to return a "not available" or "not searchable" error. However, Google's search results are often much better than what can be achieved with Web cameras alone. In the days before large-scale video sharing, even low-end DSL cameras could produce at least respectable results. Recent research has found that search engines often present links to third-party sites in a manner that may be damaging to the latter. This information is intended to be used by law enforcement officials, not as a vehicle for disseminating commercial or political messages. The term "censorship" is often used in such instances. In some cases, these third parties are working with law enforcement to investigate criminal activity. There is often concern that this is illegal due to the ban on a "for-profit" commercial entity conducting activities that could be considered illegal by a particular jurisdiction. Third parties with such concerns are permitted to contact the individual seeking help and to file a complaint with the individual or the prosecuting authorities. Third-party requests for redress are usually honored unless there is a specific reason for rejecting a plea for help. Google is currently under fire from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for ignoring the Federal Trade Commission's request to remove thousands of websites from its search results that have been reported as allegedly infringing. Many of the URLs were published by the copyright holder itself or its lawyers as part of the "takedown" process, others are hosted on other sites with expired copyright status, some are forked off of other sites, some are duplicate, some are protected by their home server terms of service.