Monday, 14 March 2011

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products,[4] and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program.[5][6] The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, often dubbed the "Google Guys",[7][8][9] while the two were attending Stanford University as Ph.D. candidates. It was first incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. At that time Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for twenty years, until the year 2024.[10] The company's mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful",[11] and the company's unofficial slogan – coined by Google engineer Paul Buchheit – is "Don't be evil".[12][13] In 2006, the company moved to its current headquarters in Mountain View, California.
Google runs over one million servers in data centers around the world,[14] and processes over one billion search requests[15] and about twenty-four petabytes of user-generated data every day.[16][17][18][19] Google's rapid growth since its incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond the company's core web search engine. The company offers online productivity software, such as its Gmail email service, and social networking tools, including Orkut and, more recently, Google Buzz. Google's products extend to the desktop as well, with applications such as the web browser Google Chrome, the Picasa photo organization and editing software, and the Google Talk instant messaging application. Notably, Google leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, used on a number of phones such as the Nexus One and Motorola Droid. Alexa lists the main U.S.-focused google.com site as the Internet's most visited website, and numerous international Google sites (google.co.in, google.co.uk etc.) are in the top hundred, as are several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube, Blogger, and Orkut.[20] Google is also BrandZ's most powerful brand in the world.[21] The dominant market position of Google's services has led to criticism of the company over issues including privacy, copyright, and censorship.

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005.[3]
The company is based in San Bruno, California, and uses Adobe Flash Video technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, BBC, Vevo and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.[4]
Unregistered users may watch videos, and registered users may upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos that are considered to contain potentially offensive content are available only to registered users 18 and older. In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google.

Myspace

Myspace,[6] stylized My_____[7] and previously MySpace, is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California[8] where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, News Corp. Digital Media, owned by News Corporation. Myspace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006.[9] According to comScore, Myspace was overtaken internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors.[10][11] Myspace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30% of its workforce in June 2009;[3] the company does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News Corporation. Quantcast estimates MySpace's monthly U.S. unique visitors at 43.2 million.[12]

Facebook

Facebook (stylized facebook) is a social network service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.[1] As of January 2011, Facebook has more than 600 million active users.[5][6] Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school, or college, or other characteristics. The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the USA to help students get to know each other better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be at least 13 years old to become a registered user of the website.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.[7] The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over.
A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social network service by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace.[8] Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"[9] Quantcast estimates Facebook has 135.1 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in October 2010.[10] According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% of the U.S. population had a Facebook account.