Google News 2004

Google Search Information

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And on April 29, Google filed with the SEC for an initial public offering (IPO). In early May, Blogger rolled out an upgraded version of its free web-based publishing software that enables users to create, collect, and share opinions and experiences with a global audience. And in June, Google announced a new version of the Google Search Appliance, now with the capacity for more than 300 queries per minute and the ability to scale from 150,000 to 15 million or more documents.

What's a picture worth?

Google announced its acquisition of Picasa, Inc. on July 13. This Pasadena, Calif.-based digital photo management company helps users to organize, manage and share their digital photos. Picasa also makes Hello, a small application for posting photos to Blogger weblogs and sharing them with friends using instant messenger technology.

August 19 marked the initial public offering of GOOG on NASDAQ through a little-known Dutch auction process, which is designed to attract a broader range of investors than the usual IPO often does.

The second annual Code Jam, an event designed to attract the best and brightest among computer programmers, takes place on the Google campus with 50 finalists from around the world competing in a time-limited software coding contest. The top coder was Sergio Sancho, a computer science student from the University of Buenos Aires, who won the top prize of $10,000. On October 14 Google released the first version of Google Desktop Search, a small free downloadable application for locating one's personal computer files (including email, work files, web history, and instant message chats) using Google-quality search. That September we also passed the milestone of having more than 100 Google domains (Norway and Kenya are no. 102 and no. 103).

Google SMS became a new beta offering in October, enabling people who are away from their computers to quickly and easily get instant, accurate answers to queries (like local business listings, dictionary definitions, or product prices) through text messaging, using a cell phone or handheld device such as a BlackBerry, by sending a query to the 5-digit U.S. shortcode 46645 (also GOOGL on most mobile phones).

Also in October we announced our first quarterly results as a public company, with record revenues of $805.9 million, up 105 percent year over year. We also signed a new expanded alliance with AOL Europe to provide a comprehensive and relevant search and advertising experience to approximately 6.3 million members in the UK, France and Germany.

What's a picture worth? (part 2)

Towards the end of October, Google announced the acquisition of Keyhole Corp., a digital and satellite image mapping company based in Google's own headquarter town, Mountain View, Calif. The acquisition gave Google users a powerful new search tool to view 3D images across earth, and the ability to tap a rich database of roads, businesses and many other points of interest.

Our European operations moved into new Dublin headquarters, with an official welcome from the Deputy Prime Minister, Mary Harney. The 150 Googlers who work here come from 35 countries and speak 17 languages – imperative for doing business across Europe. And our founders received new honors: Larry Page was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, and he and Sergey Brin are named the 2004 Marconi Fellows, joining the august company of such previous winners as Tim Berners-Lee and Bob Metcalfe.

Expanding horizons

In a nod to Google's continuing international expansion, Nikesh Arora joined as senior executive overseeing Google's operations in the European market. Based in London, Arora, fresh from executive stints at T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom, became responsible for continuing to create and expand strategic partnerships in Europe. And elsewhere in the world – namely Tokyo – we announce a new R&D center to attract the best and brightest among Japanese and other Asian engineers. Further expansion occurs in Kirkland, Washington, where we open a new engineering center, which joins the others around the world. Also in November, the Google index of web pages now numbers 8 billion.

In December, launches included Google Groups, a new version of the venerable Usenet archive of 1 billion posts on thousands of topics that Google has managed since 2001. The new Google Groups enables users to create and manage their own email groups and discussion lists. And the Google Print program announced agreements with the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford, and The New York Public Library to digitally scan books from their collections so that users worldwide can search them in Google.
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