Canon Inc, a multinational Japanese company is world leaders in imaging product and technologies. They specialize in optical and digital imaging products such as computer printers, digital cameras, multi functional peripherals, scanners, fax machines, digital camcorders, all-in-ones, multi media projectors and photocopier. The global head quarter of Canon Inc is Canon Inc, Tokyo. Canon Inc was established in 1937 with only a few employees and the determination to make the best high quality camera in the world. Canon has pioneered in five imaging engines technology, namely, Display, Bubble Jet, Semiconductor, Electro photography and Optical Engine. These high tech areas allows in the creation and launch of more than eighty products each year. More than six decades after it started, Fortune 500 has ranked it at 154th and canon has explored the various areas of digital imaging.

Canon Inc has set up over 184 companies throughout the world and has employed above 100,000 people in production, research & development and sales & marketing. Canon is devoted in producing pioneering technologies and products to be able to improve the efficiency at offices and home. Every year canon gives eight percent of its total revenue to R&D. canon offers the maximum range of products in digital imaging products and technologies having registered about 2300 original technologies in inkjet printers, 1100 in digital cameras, 200 in scanners and more than 5600 patented technologies in multifunctional printers. Canon is also a climate friendly company and seeks to conserve the natural resources with the use of environmental friendly manufacturing and research policies which help to reduce waste products and hence preserve the natural resources. According to a survey report by one of the England based environmental based organizations, canon toped the list of 56 companies in environment friendly organizations.

Canon India was set up in the year 1997. Since then, canon has gone on to become the pioneer organization in the imaging solutions and document management. It is an ISO 9001: 2000 certified company and has the customer base of over 10 lacs. Canon presence is expanding in India and is expected to reach the mark of 6000 partners by December 2008.

The iTunes Store by Apple provides music videos, TV programs, podcasts, iPod games, movies and audio books that can be downloaded by iTunes on Windows and Mac OS X and on the iPhone and the iPod touch. Apple’s best-renowned product is the iPod media player, the iPhone and the Macintosh line of the personal computers. The corporation that was incorporated on 3 January in the year 1977 was well-known as the Apple Computer, Inc. for the first thirty years. On 9 January in the year 2007, Apple dropped the Computer from its name in order to show its expansion and development into consumer electronics in addition to the personal computers. The company employs around 20,000 temporary and permanent workers globally with an awesome annual sale in the year 2007. For an assortment of reasons that ranges from its idiosyncratic advertising campaigns to its philosophy of ample aesthetic design, Apple has earned an exceptional reputation in consumer electronics business. This comprise of a customer base, mainly in the U S which is generally committed to the corporation and its brand.

Apple has a record of being one of the environmentally mindful companies. The four areas of scrupulous attention are product and wrapping design, energy efficiency, responsible manufacturing and recycling. Similar to the other flat pane displays, Apple eradicate over 2 pounds of lead, weigh half as compared to their CRT counterparts and consume around 80% less power in sleep mode.

 Those were turbulent times. The British had just managed to ruthlessly crush the 1857 Revolt. Since the age of twenty-nine Jamshedji continued to work in his father’s firm. In 1868 he started a trading company on his own with a capital of Rs.21, 000/- His first step was to acquire a bankrupt oil mill and convert it into a cotton mill which he renamed Alexander Mill. Two years later he sold it with a good margin of profit. With this he set up a cotton mill in Nagpur in 1874. Queen Victoria had just been declared the Empress and in keeping with the times Jamshedji named it Empress Mill. 
Jamshedji was a unique personality. He did not just think of innovative ways of manufacturing textiles but he devised new labor practices that would satisfy the workers. In this way he was far ahead of his times. It was not just his own personal success but also of those who worked for him and his group. Jamshedji was in close contact with revolutionary thinkers and nationalists like Dadabhai Naoroji and Pherozeshah Mehta and strongly influenced by them. He came to the conclusion that economic self-sufficiency should go hand in hand with political independence. The former should be the base of the latter. Jamshedji had three key ideas in mind. He wanted to set up an iron and steel company, world class learning institution and a hydroelectric plant. Unfortunately during his lifetime none bore fruit but he had planted the seed, which later took roots and spread its branches under the care of his successors. The only achievement that he lived to see was The Taj Mahal Hotel. It was completed in December 1903 for a princely amount of Rs.4, 21, 00,000/-In this too he was inspired by nationalist thinking. In those days the locals, that is Indians, were not allowed into the best European Hotels. Taj Mahal Hotel was a befitting reply to this discrimination.
Tata Group is a private conglomerate with headquarters at Mumbai. The present Chairman is Ratan Tata who took over from J.R.D. Tata in 1991. A member of the Tata family is always the Chairman of the group. Its operations covers many fields related to industry and allied activities concerned with know-how and its application –engineering, information technology, communications, materials, automotive, chemicals energy, telecommunications, software, hotels, steel and consumer goods. 
The statistics and figures of Tata Group speak for themselves. Its revenue touches $967,229 million or $21.9 billion in 2005/06. This is equal to 2.8% of India’s GDP. There are about 246.000 employees in the Tata group as per records of 2004. Market capitalization figure is $57.6 billion. There are ninety-six companies operating in seven business sectors.  Only twenty-eight of the ninety-six in Tata Group are publicly listed. Tata operates in more than forty countries across six continents. It exports products and services to one hundred and forty nations. The Charitable Trust of Tata holds 65.8% of the ownership of Tata group
TISCO now called Tata steel set up in 1907 India’s first iron and steel plant in Jamshedpur, which is often called Tatanagar. Production actually started in 1912. It produces steel at the lowest cost in the world. This is mainly because it is assisted by group member concern that deals with the supply of raw material like coal and iron. In 1910 was set up Tata Hydro-Electric Power Supply Company. In 1917 the Tata group made its debut in the field of consumer goods industry with the setting up of Tata Oil Mill dealing in soaps, detergents and cooking oil. 1932 saw the establishment of Tata airlines. Tata Chemicals made its appearance in 1939. Telco now known as Tata Motors started to manufacture locomotive and engineering products from 1945. 
January 2007 is a watershed in the history of Tata Group. Tata steel made a successful bid for UK based Corus Group, which was one of the world’s leading steel and aluminum producers. After an unprecedented nine rounds of bidding Tata finally clinched the deal. Tata offered to buy 100% stake in Corus at 608p per share (all cash) totaling to a value of $12.04 billion. It has turned out to be the biggest acquisition by any Indian company. 
Tata Power is one of the largest private sector companies in India and supplies power to Mumbai and parts of New Delhi. Then there are Tata Chemicals and Tata Pigments. In the service sector there are Tata companies dealing with hotels, general insurance and life insurance. Tata offers management, economic and financial consultancy services. Tata is one of the best names in the world of investments and shares. In the area of education Tata’s publishing house of Tata McGraw Hill is a renowned name. Many renowned public sector companies and research organizations like Indian Institute of Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Tata Energy Research Institute and Air India (Tata Airlines) owe their origins to the name of Tata. Other educational institutes are Tata Institute of Science – now Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Tata Institute Of Fundamental Research – deemed University, Tata Management Training center, Pune, Tata Institute Of Social Science – deemed University and National Centre for the Performing Arts
 
The name of Tata is linked to consumer durables like tea, watches (Titan) Tata Trent (Westside) to Tata Sky and even gold and diamonds like Tanishq brand of jewellery.
In information systems and communications the Tata name comes with Computational & Research Laboratories, INCAT, Nelco, Nelito Systems, TCS and Tata Elxsi. There are software companies – Tata Interactive Systems, Tata Infotech, Tata Technologies Ltd, Tata Teleservices, Tatanet etc. Tata acquired VSNL, the Indian telecom giant from Bermuda based Canadian company named Teleglobe in 2005.
The aim of Tata Group is to improve the quality of life in the society by virtue of integrity, understanding, excellence, unity and responsibility. The entire family known as the Tata Group shares these values. Tata’s contribution to India’s education, science and technology has been widely documented and respected. 
The blue colored log of Tata speaks for fluidity as well as fountain of knowledge. It can also be seen as a tree under which all are welcome to take refuge.  

Hindi Version

By the Birla Group reference is made to one of the foremost business houses in India headed by the Birla family for generations. Its business interests are vast and varied ranging from petrochemicals and textiles to automobiles and Infocom as well as financial services.
The story of the Birla Group goes back to 1870 when Seth Shiv Narayan Birla, belonging to the Marwari community of West Rajasthan, set up a cotton and jute trading business in Pilani, Rajasthan. In the 19th century Baldeo Das Birla, son of Shiva Narayana Birla, moved to Calcutta. At that time Calcutta was the hub of activity of the British Empire and consequently the nascent Freedom Movement. The Birlas are proud of their closeness and support to the movement and was very near to Mahatma Gandhi. Even today, about two hundred years after the beginning of the Birla story, the name is identical with not only with wealth and power but also with dignity and respect. Business runs in their veins and each generation has been a credit to the legendary name of Birla.
In 1919 the Ghanashyam Das Birla, one of the four sons of Baldeo Das Birla, set up jute mills in West Bengal and thus laid the foundation for the beginning of the Birla industrial empire. In 1947 the Birlas set up Grasim weaving plant and from 1958 added rayon to the list.
Aditya Birla, grandson of Ghanashyam Das Birla, continued successfully with the legacy he had inherited. In 1969 he began to take giant strides outside India targeting international expansion. In Thailand the Birlas set up Indo-Thai synthetics. It was followed in 1978 by Carbon Black production also in Thailand. In 1988 Indo-Gulf was formed under the name of Hindalco for production fertilizers. Unfortunately in 1995 Aditya Birla died.
The son of Aditya Birla, Kumar Mangalam Birla, picked up the Birla flag. As part of the first step towards streamlining and restructuring AT &T was formed. In 1998 Indo-Gulf copper production started. In the same year Birla entered Canada with the purchase of Atholville Pulp Mill in New Brunswick. In 1999 Birla forayed into the financial arena and entered into a joint venture with Canada’s Sun Life. The beginning of the new century saw Birla AT&T merge with Tata Communications. Hindalco acquired Indal. In 2002 Indo Gulf fertilizers started and Anapurna Foils was acquired. In 2003 Nifty copper and Mt. Gordon copper mines in Australia are acquired by Birla. Liaonig Birla was started as the beginning of a joint venture with China in the field of carbon black. Indal merged with Hindalco the following year. A new aluminum venture was started in Orissa in 2005. In the same year St. Anne Nackawic Pulp Mill is acquired in Canada. Plans are now afoot to set up a new viscose stable fiber plant in Laos.
The Birla group has aptly laid out its objectives to be a premium international conglomerate with a clear focus on each and every business unit.  Birla’s mission is to deliver the very best to its customers, shareholders and employees bearing in mind its commitment to the welfare of society at large. Birla values are all about integrity, commitment, zeal, seamlessness and speed.
Kumar Mangalam Birla, born in 1967, the chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, is bearing the Birla torch with credit. Fortune magazine has listed him as the eighth youngest billionaire outside India. He is running major companies such as Grasim, Hindalco, UltraTech Cement, Aditya Biral Nuvo and Idea Cellular.  JV’s include Birla Sun Life (financial services) and Birla NGK (Insulators). He is the Chairman of the entire blue chip companies group in India and serves as director on the board of the group’s international companies stretching across Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Egypt. The wide circle includes Canada, China, Laos, USA, UK and Australia. Kumar Mangalam Birla is also on the board of G.D. Biral Medical research and education Foundation and member of the Board of the governors of BITS, Pilani. He is a member of London Business School’s Asia Pacific Advisory Board, which counsels on strategy and curriculum. He is honorary fellow of London Business School. The media has not been left behind in heaping him with accolades. Both NDTV and Hindustan Times have voted him as the Businessman of the Year.
Aditya Birla Management Corporation is worth $8 billion and operates in more than fifteen countries. It is one of the first of India’s truly multinational corporations. A vast force of 88,000 employees belonging to twenty different nations holds this $12 billion conglomerate together. More than 23% of its revenues come in from operations outside India. Apart from India, the manufacturing units are in countries like Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, Philippines, Egypt, Australia, China, USA, UK, Germany and Hungary. The listed products are viscose stable fibre, non-ferrous metals, cement, viscose filament yarn, branded apparel, carbon black, chemicals, fertilizers, sponge iron, insulators, financial services, telecom. BPO and IT services. The global position of Birla is worth noting. Birla is first in production of viscose stable fiber, third in insulators, fourth in carbon black, eleventh in cement and fourth in aluminum.  It claims to be the largest single location of custom copper smelting, and has the most energy efficient fertilized plant amongst fifteen to world’s top BPO companies. In this field India ranks among the top three.
Business runs through the blood and genes of the Birlas. The family has divided into many branches and of them another prominent name is that of M.P. Birla and his group of companies known as the M.P. Birla Group. M.P. Birla, the son of R.D. Birla, was another grandson of Baldeo Das Birla. This Birla group has over five hundred factories covering a wide range of industries – textiles, man-mad fibers, cables, woolens, automobiles, industrial and textile machines, sugar, paper, shipping, cement, jute, aluminum, copper, fertilizers, chemicals, power plants etc. the M.P. Birla Group carries on forty joint ventures and management contracts with Nigeria, Kenya, England, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Uganda, Ethiopia, The names of the M.P. Birla group of companies are Birla corporation Ltd, Universal Cables Ltd, Vindhya Telelinks Ltd, Birla Ericsson Optical Ltd and Optic Fibre Goa Ltd. These have headquarters in Calcutta, Satna, Rewa Salcete, Bhiwani and Mumbai.
Despite unavoidable doses of litigation and friction the Birla name continues to shine doing credit to India.

The Times of India reported on 5th May that [[Reliance]] Mutual Fund has kept its position as India’s largest fund house with assets crossing INR 48,000 crores. Reliance has the distinction of being the first Indian company to be named among the five hundred listed in Forbes.  How did all this come about? Let us dig into the rags to riches story of Reliance. The one name associated with it from its foundations is Dhirubhai Ambani.
 
What is Reliance? The Reliance Group is India’s largest business house with total revenues being more than $22.6 billion. This is equal to 3.5% of India’s GDP. Reliance contributes to 10% of India’s total indirect tax and 6% of her total exports. Reliance network of exports spread out to more than one hundred countries across the globe. 
What are the activities of Reliance?  It is involved in oil exploration and production, gas refining and marketing, petrochemicals, textiles, financial services, insurance, power, telecommunications and infocom initiatives. 
The names of Reliance and Dhirubhai Ambani go hand in hand. He was born on 28th December 1932, in Chorwad, Gujarat. He belonged to the Hindu Modh Bania community. Dhirubhai built India’s largest private sector empire, Reliance, and created an equity cult. His father was a schoolteacher. Dhirubhai started off by selling fried snacks to pilgrims in Mount Girnar during weekends. After school he became a dispatch clerk at A.Besse & Company. The latter became distributors of Shell and Dhirubhai was sent to manage an oil filling station at Aden. For sometime he also worked in Dubai. In 1958 he returned to India with INR 50,000/- in his pocket. With this he set up a textile trading company. 
This was the first chapter of the story of Reliance. Aptly helped by his wife and two sons Dhirubhai diversified his interests to petrochemicals, telecommunications and information, technology, energy, power, finance, capital markets and logistics. Reliance gave new dimensions to India’s equity culture. Till then the market had been dominated by financial institutions but with Reliance coming into the picture thousands of retail investors jumped into the fray by putting their trust in the name of Reliance. With innovative instruments like convertible debentures from the 1980’s Reliance became a hot favorite in the Stock Market. Reliance was the pioneer Indian company to raise funds in the international markets. Only India’s sovereign rating restricted its high credit taking in international markets.
The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry named Dhirubhai Ambani of Reliance The Indian Entrepreneur of the 20th century. The Times of India conducted a poll in which he was acclaimed to be the greatest creator of wealth in the 20th century. 
Thus we see that Reliance Industries Ltd was the brainchild and product of the labors of Indian business tycoon, Dhirubhai Ambani alias Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani.
The story of Reliance makes fascinating reading. During the 1950’s the administrators of Yemen discovered that a lot of their currency, the Rial, was disappearing through Aden because of a young man placing unlimited buy orders for Rials. The Rials, at that time, were made of pure silver and was greatly in demand in the London Bullion Exchange. Dhirubhai bought and melted the Rials and sold it to the London bullion traders. Within three months his work came to a halt but by that time he had made few lacs. 
In the 60’s Dhirubhai returned to India and started Reliance Commercial Corporation with a humble capital. The business was related to the import of polyester yarn and export of spices. 
The first address of Reliance was in Narsinathan Street in Masjid Bunder – a small 350 sq ft joint with a telephone, table and three chairs and only two assistants. The family too managed in a one room flat. 
The fortunes of Reliance soon began to change. In 1966 the first textile mill was set up at Naroda using polyester fibre. He branded his products Vimal and thanks to intensive marketing, Vimal became a household name. Financial retail outlets were set up where only Vimal brands were sold.  In 1975 a visiting World Bank team certified it to be excellent even by the standards of the developed world. 
The next step of Reliance was to enter the equity world. An equity cult came to be created. Nearly 60,000 investors from all parts of India placed their trust in Reliance IPO in 1977. Rural India and first time investors learnt to place its trust and money in the name of Reliance.
In 1982 Reliance Industries came up against a rights issue about partly convertible debentures. It was rumored that Reliance was making all efforts to see that their stock prices did not fall by even an inch. Ready to strike, a Bear cartel consisting of a group of stockbrokers from Calcutta began to short sell Reliance shares. Another group, friendly towards Reliance began to buy the short sold shares on the Bombay Exchange. The Bears were confident that the Bulls would soon run out of cash and be prepared for an understanding under the ‘badla’-trading scheme prevalent in the Bombay Stock during that time. But the tables came to be turned in favor of Reliance. Dhirubhai himself provided the required cash when the Bulls demanded a physical delivery of shares. The net result was that Reliance shares shot up from INR 152/- to 180/- within a few minutes. The market was in uproar with Dhirubhai as the uncrowned king. The Bombay Stock Exchange came to be closed for three full days. Authorities intervened and brought down the unbadla rate to 2/- with a ruling that the Bear cartel would have to deliver the shares within the next few days. The Bears bought Reliance shares from the market at higher price levels and most probably Dhirubhai himself supplied these shares and earned a healthy profit from the great adventure. 
Questions naturally arose around Reliance. How could a yarn trader within a few years cough up such huge amounts of cash during a crisis? Parliament began to face queries. The Finance Minister gave the information that a non-resident Indian had invested nearly 220/- million INR in Reliance from 1982/83. These had been channelized through many companies – all registered in the Isle of Man. The peculiarity was that all the owners had the common surname or Shah. However, Reserve Bank investigations did not find anything wrong done by Reliance and its friends.
Keeping its core in petrochemicals – Reliance soon diversified its activities to telecommunications, information technology, energy, power, retail, textiles, infrastructure services, capital markets and logistics. BBC described it as ‘a business empire with an estimated annual turnover of $12bn, and an 85,000- strong workforce’. Reliance has the distinction of being the only public limited company whose many annual general meetings had to be held in stadiums with more than 350,000 shareholders in attendance.
Success creates jealousy. Reliance had to suffer its share. Nusli Wadia of Bombay Dyeing group was once the biggest competitor of Reliance. Wadia was known for his clout in political circles during the time when the economy had not been liberalized. Competition took an ugly turn when during the seventies Wadia got a permission from the then Janata Party ruled government to build a DMT (Dimethyl Terephthalate) plant. Then Ramnath Goenka of Indian Express turned his pen against Reliance. It seemed that Goenka was using a national newspaper for his own personal vendetta. But despite everything people did not lose faith in Reliance. Reliance ran into rough weather also with the V.P.Singh government. The license for importing Purified Terephthalic Acid was cancelled. This was essential as a raw material for manufacturing polyester yarn.
The first stroke had paralyzed Dhirubhai but the second stroke spelt out the death sentence for him. He died in 2nd July 2002 leaving behind at the helm of Reliance his two sons Mukesh and Anil, wife and two daughters. His funeral was attended not only by big business and politicians but also by thousands of ordinary folks. He is an example of what a common person can do to help himself as well as the economy of his country. 
At the time of his death the Reliance group had a gross turn over of INR 75,000 crores from 70 crores in 1976/77. In 20003 Government of India issued a postal stamp (denomination 5/- INR) in Dhirubhai’s honour. 
Reliance began to flow through two channels after the death of Dhirubhai. Differences broke out between his two sons over ownership issues as well as private matters. It was expressed that this would have no impact on the functioning of the company – it being a company managed aggressively by professionals. This is of great importance to the Indian economy as a whole. The wife of Dhirubhai, Kokilaben mediated for her sons.
Mukesh was awarded Reliance Industries and IPCL and this group came to be known, as Reliance Industries Ltd. Anil became head of Infocomm, Reliance Energy and Reliance Capital known as the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG). 
The pages of the book called Reliance thus continue to be written as it meanders through Time.
  
 

 [[Pepsi]]-Cola is a soft drink manufactured by PepsiCo. Pepsi-Cola was first made by pharmacist Caleb Bradham in 1890s in New Bern, North Carolina in United States. The drink was initially known as “Brad’s drink” and was renamed as “Pepsi-Cola” in 1898. The name was trademarked on June 16, 1903. There are several theories regarding the origin of name “Pepsi”. According to one theory, Bradham bought the name “Pep Kola” from a local competitor and changed it to “Pepsi-Cola”. Another theory is that “Pepsi-Cola” is anagram of “Episcopal”, a large church just across the street from Bradham’s drugstore. Even though there is a plaque at the site of original drugstore stating this, PepsiCo has denied this theory. Some say that the name “Pepsi” was chosen because it sounded good and it had “pep”, it being a carbonated drink. Pepsi was first intended to cure stomach pains, and many thought that Bradham coined the name “Pepsi” from “dyspepsia”, stomach ache, or maybe from the fact that pepsin was used to treat upset stomachs. Pepsi initially consisted carbonated water, vanilla, rare oils, and kola nuts.    

Bradham moved bottling of Pepsi-Cola from his drugstore into a rented warehouse. The same year he sold 7,968 gallons of the Pepsi syrup. After Pepsi introduced six-ounce bottles next year, sales increased and reached 19,848 gallons. The logo of Pepsi was redesigned in 1905 for the first time since the original logo was designed in 1898. the logo was designed again in 1906.

The Pepsi-Cola Company suffered financial losses due to the fluctuating prices of sugar around World War I and in 1929 the company was bankrupt. Roy C. Megargel bought the Pepsi trademark. The company went bankrupt again after eight years and this time Pepsi’s assets were bought by Charles Guth. Charles Guth was president of Lofts Inc. Loft owned retail stores and had soda fountains. After Coke refused to give Loft a discount on its syrup, he wanted to replace Coca-Cola at his store’s fountains. Loft employed chemists as he was candy manufacturer and his chemists reformulated the Pepsi-Cola formula.
Pepsi gained popularity during The Great Depression after the introduction of 12-ounce bottle in 1934. Sales soared when the bottle’s price, initially 10 cents, was slashed to 5 cents as Coca-Cola was being sold at six ounces for a nickel (five cents). Pepsi marketed the new bottle with the jingle “Pepsi cola hits the spot / Twelve full ounces, that’s a lot / Twice as much for a nickel, too / Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you”. The move to give more to consumer and effective marketing yielded results and Pepsi’s profits doubled during 1936 to 1938.
When Loft Company was almost bankrupt, the company sued Guth for possession of the Pepsi Cola Company as he had used Loft’s finances and facilities to establish Pepsi. Guth lost the case after a long legal battle and Loft was the new owner of the company. Walter Mack became the new President of Pepsi-Cola.
Due to rising prices after the war Pepsi could no longer sell 12 ounces for a nickel. Some bottlers reduced quantity to 8 or 10 ounces while keeping the prices constant while some bottlers sold 12 ounce bottles at a higher price.
When Pepsi had Alfred Steele as its new President in early 1950s, the formula was slightly changed by removing a small amount of sugar. The marketing of Pepsi also went for a major overhaul as it was no longer referred to as an “economic” drink, but was marketed as “The Light Refreshment” and an affluent drink. Pepsi had considerable marketing success with the youth market when it launched the “Think Young” campaign in 1961 and again in 1963 with their “Pepsi Generation” campaign. After the success of a diet cola of a competitor, Royal crown Company, Pepsi introduced Diet Pepsi in 1964. Same year Pepsi bought Mountain Dew from Tip Corporation. In 1965, the company became PepsiCo. after merger with Frito-Lay.
In 1975 a blind testing between Pepsi-Cola and rival Coca-Cola was done by Pepsi under name of “Pepsi Challenge”. In these blinds tests, Pepsi was choice of majority of participants. The reason for participants favoring Pepsi is attributed to the higher sugar content present in Pepsi. PepsiCo used the results of the blind test by coming out with commercials reporting the test results.
Pepsi has many variants of which Diet Pepsi is the most popular and contains no sugar and has zero calories. Pepsi Max, Pepsi ONE, Caffeine-Free Pepsi and Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi are the other popular low calorie variants of the drink. Pepsi also came out with many fruit variants of the drink like Wild Cherry Pepsi (1988), Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi (2005), Pepsi Lime (2005), and Diet Pepsi Lime (2005). It also came out with Pepsi Jazz diet cola with Strawberry and Cream flavor and Black Cherry French Vanilla in 2006. Pepsi Twist was introduced so as to give competition to Coca-Cola’s lemon flavored products. Crystal Pepsi, a transparent cola devoid of caffeine, sodium and any preservative was introduced in 1992 only to be phased very next year. Pepsi-Blue, a blue-colored berry cola, was introduced in 2002 and withdrawn from the market in 2004. Pepsi Gold has been recently released in the market recently. Pepsi has also launched some coffee-flavored versions of Pepsi. In 2005 Pepsi Cappuccino was launched in Romania and Bulgaria, Pepsi Tarik in Malaysia and Pepsi Cafechino in India.  

Hindi Version

Jerry Yang and David Filo, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University created a web site called “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”. Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web was a directory of web sites organized in a hierarchy rather than being organized in a searchable index of pages. In April of 1994, “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” was renamed “Yahoo!”. The name Yahoo! is usually taken to be as an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle” but Filo and Young insisted that they chose the name Yahoo! as they liked the general definition of Yahoo!: “rude, unsophisticated, uncouth”. Initially Yahoo! resided on Yang’s workstation “Akenbono” while the software was stored on Filo’s computer “Konishiki”; both computers were named after famous sumo wrestlers. The first URL for Yahoo! was http://akenbono.stanford.edu/yahoo .
Soon the word spread about Yahoo! and hundreds of people were accessing Yahoo! and were becoming regular users of the service. By fall of 1994, Yahoo! received more than a million hit and had close to 100 thousand unique visitors. After observing the success of Yahoo!, Yang and Filo knew that the website had a big business potential. On 2nd March, 1995 Yahoo! was incorporated. Yahoo was already used by other companies as their trademark, so in order to get the trademark the exclamation mark was added to Yahoo. The founders met with many Silicon Valley venture capitalists to get some funding to start their own company. Sequoia Capital, the firm which had invested in Apple, Atari, Oracle and Cisco agreed to fund Yahoo! with an initial investment of around $2 million. Jerry and David hired Tim Koogle, an alumnus of Stanford and working in Motorola, as Chief Executive officer of Yahoo! and Jeffrey Mallett of Novell as Chief Operating Officer. After receiving another funding in 1995 from Softbank and Reuters Ltd., Yahoo! came out with its initial public offering (IPO) on 12th April, 1996. At tat time Yahoo! had only 49 employees. Yahoo! raised $33.8 million from the IPO by selling 2.6 million shares at $13 each.
Yahoo! started diversifying into Web portal just like other search engines and web directories were doing. The Web portal providers were acquiring companies to increase the number of services being offered by them. This was being done so that the user spends maximum time possible on the portal. Yahoo! acquired “Four11” in 1997 and the mail service being provided by Four11, Rocketmail, became now famous Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! Games was a result of acquisition of “ClassicGames.com”. In 1998 Yahoo! acquired Yoyodyne Entertainment Inc., a direct marketing company and acquired “GeoCities” which is a web hosting provider. “eGroups” became Yahoo! Groups after being acquired by Yahoo! in 2000. Yahoo! messenger was launched by Yahoo! on 21st July, 1999. Most of the acquisitions by Yahoo! were controversial and didn’t go down well with the users of the existing service as Yahoo! often changed the terms of service.
Success of Yahoo! was evident when in early 2000 Yahoo! stocks climbed an all time high of $475 per share. In February 2000 Yahoo.com temporarily stopped working for a few hours and the failure was attributed to an attack by hackers rather than blaming an internal problem. In an agreement signed on 26th June, 2000 between Yahoo! and Google the searches made on yahoo.com were powered by Google.
Yahoo! was one of the few large Internet companies that survived the dot-com bubble burst. Still it had effect on the stock of the company which fell to an all time low of $8.11 on September 26, 2001. To enhance the search services being provided by it, Yahoo! started acquiring other search engines. It acquired “Inktomi” in December 2002, “Overture Services Inc” and its subsidiaries “AltaVista” and “AlltheWeb” in July 2003. In February 2004 Yahoo! decided not to use searches powered by Google and decided to use its own technology to provide search results.
Google forced Yahoo! on back foot after it released Gmail, its own web mail service which offered 1 GB storage space, on 1st April 2004. Yahoo! in a desperate bid to retain users upgraded the storage space of all Yahoo! mail accounts from 4 MB to 100 MB and of all Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts to 2 GB. Yahoo! acquired “Oddpost”, an email provider, to add an Ajax interface to Yahoo! mail Beta. After Google again gave Yahoo! a run for its money by launching Google Talk, an instant messaging and Voice over IP service on 24th August 2005, Yahoo! announced that Yahoo! messenger and MSN messenger would become interoperable.
In an effort to expand the services provided by it, Yahoo! kept on acquiring companies with a clear emphasis on Web 2.0 based services. In February 2005, Yahoo! Launch became Yahoo! Music. Yahoo! purchased the photo sharing service “Flickr” on 20th March, 2005. The company forayed into blogging business by launching Yahoo! 360°, a blogging and social networking service, on March 29th 2005. Yahoo! acquired “blo.gs”, a RSS feed based service. “Upcoming.org”, a social event calendar site was bought by Yahoo! on 4th October, 2005. Yahoo! took acquisition of “del.icio.us”, a social bookmark site on 9th December and acquired playlist sharing community “webjay” in 2006 January.
Yahoo! Next contains forums where users can give feedback on the next generation Yahoo! technologies being developed. Currently, Yahoo! mail is the largest e mail service in the world and Yahoo! Search is the second largest search engine on the internet. Yahoo! Mobile provides Yahoo! services such as email, instant messaging, and search on the mobile phones. CNBC had reported during the dot-com boom that Yahoo! and eBay were thinking about 50:50 merger between the two companies. Though the said merger never took place, both companies decided to form a marketing and advertising partnership in 2006.
On March 20, 2007, Yahoo! introduced a new Internet search system called oneSearch specifically developed for mobile phones. Yahoo! stated that using this too users can get relevant data such as for a particular movie you will get the list of theatres screening that particular movie along with the ratings. To use oneSearch, a zip code or a city name is required for local search results. The results are listed on a single page and listed in categories.
Yahoo! also has online commerce services such as Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Auctions. Yahoo! also provides services to small business owners which include Yahoo! Domains, Yahoo! Web Hosting, and Yahoo! Store etc. Yahoo! provides job services through HotJobs.
Yahoo! earns its major revenue by online advertising. The major segment of the revenue comes from search advertising. In search advertising, advertisers bid for search terms to display relevant ads on the search results. Yahoo! earns 2.5 cents to 3 cents from each search. With the new search advertising system “Panama” Yahoo! is trying to increase revenue generated from search. Yahoo! closed down user created chat rooms in June 2005 after media criticized the lack of control on child predators on these chat rooms. 
On the Yahoo! homepage there is an Easter Egg. If the exclamation point in the Yahoo! logo is clicked upon, the famous Yahoo! yodel will play.
Yahoo! is currently headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and has its offices around the world.

Google or Google Inc. is an American public company with revenue of more than 10 billion USD specializing in Internet search, online advertising and broad range of online services. It’s headquartered in Mountain View, California and employs more than ten thousand people. “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” is the mission statement of Google.
Origin of Google:
Larry Page and Sergey Brin met each other at Stanford University as students of Computer Science. They had different viewpoints but common interests. Together they tried solving the biggest problem of that time: – how to retrieve relevant data from the large sea of data floating on the internet. To tackle this problem they started working together in 1996 on a search engine “BackRub” named so due to its ability to analyze the “back links” which point to a given website. While brainstorming for a new name for the search engine Sean Anderson, his fellow student, suggested “googolplex” and Larry shortened it to “googol”. Sean made a search on the net for the availability whether the name was available or had already been registered. Sean spelt the word wrongly and searched for google.com which was available. The name struck a note with Larry and he registered Google.com for himself and Sergey. Before google.com the search engine used the domain google.stanford.edu using the Stanford University website. On September 14, 1997 the domain google.com was registered and on September 7, 1998 the company was incorporated as “Google Inc.”. “Googol” which was supposed to be the name of the search engine is the mathematical term for “a 1 followed by 100 zeros”. Larry and Sean decided on “googol” as it reflected company’s mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the net.

The story of how “Google Inc” came into existence is really interesting. Larry and Sergey spend a lot of cash on buying memory disks for storing data. They needed money to pay off their bills and get a place of their own as they were still operating from their dorm. After being refused by their friend and founder of Yahoo! David Filo for funds they talked to Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founder members of Sun Microsystems. He looked at the demo of Google and immediately realized the potential it had. As Andy was in a hurry he simply made a check for $ 100,000 in the name of “Google Inc”. At that time “Google Inc” did not exist so to realize the check they collected more funds and started “Google Inc.” with around $ 1 million starting investment.

Growth of Google:
Even in beta stage Google.com was answering more than 10,000 search queries daily. In 1998, Google appeared in article of USA Today and in December in the same year Google featured in the list of Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines for 1998 compiled by PC Magazine. In February 1999, the company moved into its new office at 165, University Avenue at Palo Alto which was a home to several other Silicon Valley startups. Soon it started getting around 500,000 queries per day. Red Hat became first commercial customer of Google somewhat drawn by the fact that Google was running its servers on Linux. In a significant development, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, two leading rival venture capitalist firms of Silicon Valley decided to fund Google with $ 25 million. Coming together of two rival companies together underlined their confidence in Google. After getting funds the company’s headquarters were shifted to Mountain View, California called Googleplex which is the company’s present headquarters. After AOL selected Google for its web search service due to which the traffic reached in excess of 3 millions searches per day. The beta label came off from the website on September 21, 1999. In 1999, Google appeared on Time Magazine’s Top Ten Best Cybertech list.

In 2000, Google Directory was added and it went global in real sense when it added the option to search in ten different languages. It became world’s largest search engine when it introduced a billion-page index. When Google signed a partnership with Yahoo it solidified Google’s reputation. At the end of 2000, Google was handling more than 100 million searches daily. In 2001, Dr. Eric Schmidt who had earlier held the posts of CEO at Novell Inc. and CTO of Sun Microsystems joined Google as CEO. Google Image Search was launched in summer of 2001, by December it came out of beta stage with a database of more than 250 million images. At the same time the Google search index crossed the mark of 3 billion searchable web pages.

In May 2002, Google was chosen by America Online to provide advertising and search to millions of members and visitors of AOL sites. In 2003 version 2.0 of the Google Toolbar was released followed soon by Google Deskbar. As the Deskbar was located in the Windows Taskbar now it was not necessary to launch web browser to use Google search. In 2006 Google was added to S&P 500 index.

Google moved into 311,000 square feet of office space in New York City, at 111 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan in 2006. The office houses the largest advertising team of Google and was specifically designed and built for Google. The same team was instrumental in forging large partnerships, like deals with MySpace and
AOL On October 9, 2006 Google announced that it is acquiring YouTube, a web based platform for watching and sharing videos, for a sum of $1.65 billion in stocks.
Products:
AdWords

Google came out with AdWords in 2000 to provide advertising facility to small businesses. It is a keyword based self-service ad program which can be activated with online by help of a credit card within a few minutes. In February 2002 Google included cost-per-click (CPC) model which made search advertising economical for both small and large businesses. Google AdWords works very well as the ads reach only the people who are using keywords which relate well to that particular ad. This approach has made AdWords extremely popular.
After announcing that it’s going to launch Gmail soon, Google filed for an IPO (initial public offer) with SEC on April 29, 2004. The Google IPO was offered to public on August 19 through Dutch auction process. In October first quarterly results of Google were announced showing revenues to the tune of $800 million.

Google Toolbar

Google introduced the Google Toolbar in 2000 making it possible for surfers to use Google search without visiting the Google webpage. One can also search by right clicking on text within a web document. With help of Google Toolbar keywords can be highlighted in search results. Since its launch the Google Toolbar has been very popular and downloaded by many millions. It also blocks pop-ups and translates webpage into English.

AdSense

In 2003, Google introduced Google AdSense which offered a means to earn revenues on web sites by placing ads along with contents. Google AdSense automatically analyses the content of the web page and places ads which are relevant to the web page increasing the chances of the link to be clicked by the viewers.

Froogle

Froogle was launched in December 2002. It helps the user to many source of a particular product by searching through all the relevant websites. Along with the product information it provides price and images for that particular product.

Gmail

On April 1, 2004 many thought that the announcement by Google to come out with a mail service providing 1 GB storage space was a joke. But soon Gmail was launched and left “Yahoo!” and “hotmail” far behind. It used AdSense to provide relevant ads next to mail messages. It provides a search facility to help you look up for a particular message. You can also chat without downloading any software from the mail page with people you already mail. Currently Gmail offers more than 2800 Mb of storage space.

Google Desktop Search

The first version of Google Desktop Search was released on october14, 2004. It is a free application which can easily locate files like emails, web history, photos etc in your computer. In a later version released in 2005 it also has the capability to locate PDF and mp3 files. It’s available in many languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Dutch.

Google Earth

In 2005 June Google Earth was launched. With help of Google Earth any desired location on earth can be seem. All you have to do is type in you house address, press search and you will be able to see the location. Location of schools, hotels and restaurants can be had from this site along with directions as how to reach the place.

Google Talk

In August 2005 Google Talk was released which provided a free application to communicate with each other via instant messenger along with providing quality voice chat.

Google PageRank
Google uses both hardware and software solutions to make its search engine faster. The hardware part is achieved by networking together of thousands of low cost PC together so as to give huge computing power.
On the software side, Google uses PageRank to rank web pages. It is a system of ranking web pages and was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were at Stanford.  When a web page, say A, gives a link to another page, say B, it is interpreted as a vote by page A for page B. Along with taking into consideration of the number of votes received by a web page the page that casts the vote is also taken into consideration. It means that some when some important site provides link to another page it is sure to improve its ranking.

Google Language Tools
Google Language tools can translate full web pages from one language to another. You can also type text and convert it from language to another. It has become very popular since its launch.

Company Culture:
The atmosphere at Google is very relaxed and informal. There are no cubicles, large rubber exercise balls are used as chairs. The lobby of the head quarter is decorated with piano, lava lamps and you can find bicycles in hallways. There are enough recreation facilities in the campus including a gym, massage room, washers and dryers, video games, pool tables, and table tennis. The snack rooms are always full of cashews, fresh fruits, carrots, cereals, and fresh juice, soda and coffee.

Google has a policy of “Twenty percent” time according to which all engineers working at Google are encouraged to spend one day per week (20%of their time) working on a project that interests them. Gmail, Orkut and AdSense are a result of this.
Google always comes with an April Fool Joke; in 2002 Google claimed that pigeons were responsible for the growth of their search engine. In 2004, they said they are going to open a research facility on Moon. In 2005, a brain-boosting drink called Google Gulp was announced. And in 2006, they came up with Google Romance, a hypothetical online dating service.
Google is givin free broadband … chk this out …
http://www.google.com/tisp/
In recognition of its workplace environment “Fortune Magazine” declared Google as the best company to work for in January 2007.
Holiday Logos
Google comes out with special Holiday Logos time to time in sync with coming holidays and events. You can see holiday logos here

Happy Googling