At the start Page and Brin named their search engine BackRub, but they decided to switch to Google, what a misspelling of the word googol, the number one followed by a hundred zeros. It was running on Stanford University’s website with the domains google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu. Today Google is way more than just a search engine, they offer all kinds of services and on multiple platforms. They have their own browser, Chrome, that became the most popular browser for a short time in 2012, they also have their own mail service Gmail, their own social network that still lacks the numbers that Facebook has, but they are trying to improve of course. They even have their Nexus line of devices that include phones, tablets and in near future player Nexus Q.

There have been some incidents lately with Google that could put a stain on this celebration, first they refused to remove an anti-islam video that created a lot of rage in some Muslim communities, they were blocked it for India, Indonesia, Egypt and Libya. Also in Brazil the head of the operations Fabio Jose Silva Coelho was arrested after refusing to remove a YouTube video that allegedly slandered a mayoral candidate. They grow larger every day even with the competition pumping up, and if they want to stay dominant they should work a bit on this bad PR, before they meet with some serious consequences.

[Ed – Google has been under fire on many occasions and from all sides. Not that long ago they took made a stand against SOPA and are still recovering from that. Now they are under fire from some of the same people that they worked to defend with that stand due to the way they are caving to Hollywood pressure to censor sites. On top of this they have several privacy investigations going on in the EU and possibly here in the US. It really looks like Google just cannot win.]
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