What is Google?

Google is an Internet search engine from the US company of the same name, Google, which was launched at the end of the 1990s. The name Google is derived from the English term googol. This corresponds to the number 1 with 100 zeros and was chosen as the name to represent the endeavor to index as many websites as possible.

More than two trillion search queries are processed every year, making Google the market leader for search engines on the one hand and the most visited website on the other. In addition to the general search engine, Google also offers special search functions. These include, for example

• Google Books for a targeted search for authors, book titles and book texts
• Google Scholar for searching for scientific texts
• Google Earth for searching for planets and satellite images of the earth

Google offers both paid and free services and apps. Some of the most well-known services include

• Google Maps
• YouTube
• Gmail
• Google Chrome
• Google Ads
• Google Analytics
• etc.

Depending on the country, there are a number of other search engines that are in direct competition with Google, such as Baidu in China, Yandex in Russia or Qwant in Europe. There are also a number of other search engines, such as Bing from Microsoft or the ecological version Ecosia, which receives its search results and search ads from Bing.