Launched on 14th September 2007,  the concept of BlogRush was devised so as to provide bloggers with a large number of readers to read their blog in a faster manner and that too free of cost. Although BlogRush is a free service, it intends to generate revenue through advertisements and partnership agreements. Apart from this, another source of generating revenue is by selling 10% of surplus credit
Blog Rush, a Cooperative Syndication Network is actually a network of blogs that runs a small widget on their pages. This widget or a small window contains a list and links of 5 blog post titles. Currently bloggers can choose from 13 different widget colors that are available. 
Once a blogger loads his blog, his blog page will contain this widget. Bloggers will provide links related to blog content based on the category used and with the help of proprietary technology. Clicking on any of these links will take reader directly to the blog page so that they can read the entire post. But these links will open in a new browser window there by retaining the original blog window as well. Thus bloggers can show their blog on other bloggers network. Through this system of syndication credit blogger can there by earn maximum exposure to their blog. 
Currently the BlogRush is only for English blogs, however in near future we plan to include foreign language blogs as well. Moreover in order to control the quality of blogs we are also planning to move to a 100% manual review process.
 

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Masala Board is the leader in message boards dedicated to Indian movies. The domain MasalaTalk.com was created in February 2000 with a simple aim to be the forerunner among the communities catering to Bollywood and Indian movie lovers by providing latest news and information about everything related to Bollywood. Masala Chat which was already popular on IndianMasala.com was moved to MasalaTalk.com and Masala News was added to Masala Board. For providing the message board service CoolBoard.com’s free message board was used.

Initially posts on Masala Board could be posted by anyone irrespective of the fact whether he was registered member or not. After a while registration with CoolBoard.com was made mandatory in order to post on Masala Board. The popularity of the Board can be gauged by the fact that by March 2000 there were more than 1000 registered users on Masala Board many of them posting for first time in their life. The success and popularity of Masala Board on Cool Board was such that it was given a preferred member status by Cool Board.

Masala board was filled with posts requesting/soliciting/offering nude or semi nude pictures of Indian actresses. It was very common to find posts like “I want some nude pics of “some” actresses, pls reply with email to receive those pics” or “I want some nude pics of so and so actress, please mail them to me….my email id is…..”. Along with members like these Masala Board had some really good members who made Masala Board such a success. Some of the members who ought to be mentioned are “navelover” (yeah there is one L!), “priapus”, “artguy”, “999466” and several others. Each member had his/her own style and a fan following of their own.

When Masala Board was getting popular, a member named Manmohana created a lot of trouble on the board. Manmohana (possibly along with his friends) used to start a thread on Madhuri Dixit pretending to be her fan, but soon the thread would turn nasty with nasty things being talked about the actress. There used to be debates and abuses on other topics as well. Some more users started posting with user names similar to those of reputed members of the board such as “priyapus” for “priapus” and “navellover” for “navelover” to confuse the people reading posts and to make their posts look more credible. The interesting part was all these users were using only one IP address (in essence they were using a single computer for all the user ids!). All the user ids posting inflammatory messages were banned by the administrator.

As the Masala Board’s basic theme was masala (spice), there had to be spicy news in the message board but things started getting out of control with people posting messages that included profanities like “F**k”, “C**t”, “P**sy” etc. Cool Board had a policy to terminate message boards containing material of adult nature as it used to host advertisements on the message board and it looks inappropriate for an advertisement to appear along with material of adult nature. Due to fear of being banned by Masala Board for hosting adult content, the administrator exercised his powers and edited posts and requested members to cooperate with him on this issue.

On September 21, 2000 the administrator announced that he would be locking threads which are in contravention of the policy to avoid profanities. A member of Masala Board, “Hotbabes”, expressed his displeasure of the censorship being imposed by the moderator and would start his own board on similar line. Some members of repute, like “Dayavaan” and “warez222” decided to support “Hotbabes”.  Within a week a new board with name of “Hot Board” was started on CoolBoard by Hotbabes and Dayavaan.

When in April 2001 Cool Board decided announced that it was stopping the free message board service administrator decided to use vBulletin, a message board software, while Hot Board decide to move onto Aimoo, another free message board service provider.

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The Internet has revolutionized many aspects of our daily lives. Daily many people send email, pay bills, read or watch news and gather any sort of information in seconds by using the Internet.  It is also useful to students for research purpose, for chatting with friends and online shopping. The Internet has brought a wealth of information to our fingertips and organized it for our use.

A network is a group of connected, communicating devices such as computers and printers. An internet is two or more networks that can communicate with each other. The most notable internet is called the Internet, a collaboration of more than hundreds of thousands interconnected networks. Private individuals as well as well as various organizations such as government agencies, schools, research facilities, corporations, and libraries in more than 100 countries use the Internet. Even though currently millions of people are using it, this amazing communication system came into being only in 1969.

APRANET
In the mid 1960s, mainframe computers in research organizations were stand-alone devices. Computers from different manufacturers were unable to communicate with each other. The Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) in the Department of defense (DOD) was interested in finding a way to connect computers together so that the researchers they funded could share their findings, thereby reducing costs and eliminating duplication of effort.

In 1967, at an Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) meeting, ARPA presented its ideas for ARPANET, a small network of connected computers. The idea was that each host computer (not necessarily from same manufacturer) would be attached to a specialized computer, called an “interface message processor” (IMP). The IMPs, in turn, would be connected to each other. Each IMP had to be able to communicate with other IMPs as well as with its own attached host.

By 1969, ARPANET was a reality. Four nodes, at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), Stanford Research Institute (SRI), and the University of Utah were connected via the IMPs to form a network. Software called the “Network Control Protocol” (NCP) provided communication between the hosts.

Birth of the Internet
In 1972, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, both of whom were part of the core APRANET group, collaborated on what they called the “Internetting Project”. They wanted to link different networks together so that a host on one network could communicate with a host on a second, different network. There were many problems to overcome: diverse packet sizes, diverse interfaces, and diverse transmission rates, as well as differing reliability requirements. Cerf and Kahn devised the idea of a device called a “gateway” to serve as the intermediary hardware to transfer packets from one network to another.

TCP/IP
Cerf and Kahn’s landmark 1973 paper outlined the protocols to achieve end-to-end delivery of packets. This was a new version of NCP. This paper on transmission control protocol (TCP) included concepts such as encapsulation, the datagram, and the functions of a gateway. A radical idea was the transfer of responsibility for error correction from the IMP to the host machine. This ARPA Internet now became the focus of the communication effort. Around this time responsibility for the ARPANET was handed over to the Defense Communication Agency (DCA).

In October 1977, an internet consisting of three different networks (ARPANET, packet radio, and packet satellite) was successfully demonstrated.  Communication between networks was now possible.

Shortly thereafter, authorities made a decision to split TCP into two protocols: Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internetworking Protocol (IP). IP would handle datagram routing while TCP would be responsible for higher level functions such as segmentation, reassembly, and error detection. The internetworking protocol became known as TCP/IP.

In 1981, under a DARPA contract, UC Berkeley modified the UNIX operating system to include TCP/IP. This inclusion of network software along with a popular operating system did much to further the popularity of networking. The open (non-manufacture-specific) implementation on Berkeley UNIX gave every manufacturer a working code base on which they could build their products.

In 1983, authorities abolished the original ARPANET protocols and TCP/IP became the official protocol for the ARPANET. Those who wanted to use the Internet to access a computer on a different network had to be running TCP/IP.

MILNET
In 1983, ARPANET split into two networks: MILNET for military users and ARPANET for nonmilitary users.

CSNET
Another milestone in Internet history was the creation of CSNET in 1981. CSNET was a network sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The network was conceived by universities that were ineligible to join ARPANET due to an absence of defense ties to DARPA. CSNET was a less expensive network; there were no redundant links and the transmission rate was slower. It featured connections to ARPANET and Telenet, the first commercial packet data service.

By the middle 1980s, most U.S. universities with computer science departments were part of CSNET. Other institutions and companies were also forming their own networks and using TCP/IP to interconnect. The term “Internet”, originally associated with government funded connected networks, now referred to the connected networks using TCP/IP protocols.

NSFNET
With the success of CSNET, the NSF, in 1986, sponsored NSFNET, a backbone that connected five supercomputer centers located throughout the United States. Community networks were allowed access to this backbone, a T1 line with a 1.544 Mbps data rate, thus providing connectivity throughout the United States.

In 1990, ARPANET was officially retired and replaced by NSFNET. In 1995, NSFNET reverted back to its original concept of a research network.

ANSNET
In 1991, the U.S. government decided that NSFNET was not capable of supporting the rapidly increasing Internet traffic. Three companies, IBM, Merit and MCI, filled the void by forming a nonprofit organization called Advanced Network and Services (ANS) to build a new, high-speed Internet backbone called ANSNET.

The Internet Today
The Internet today is not a simple hierarchical structure. It is made up of many wide and local area networks joined by connecting devices and switching stations. It is difficult to give an accurate representation of the Internet because it is continuously changing – new networks are being added, existing networks need more addresses, and networks of defunct companies need to be removed. Today most end users who want Internet connection use the services of Internet service providers (ISPs). There are international service providers, national service providers, regional service providers, and local service providers. The Internet today is run by private companies, not the government.

International Service Providers
At the top of the hierarchy are the international service providers that connect nations together.

National Service Providers (NSPs)
National Service Providers (NSPs) are backbone networks created and maintained by specialized companies. There are many NSPs operating in North America; some of the most well-known are SprintLink, PSINet, UUNet Technology, AGIS, and internet MCI. To provide connectivity between the end users, these backbone networks are connected by complex switching stations (normally run by a third party) called network access points (NSPs). Some NSP networks are also connected to each other by private switching stations called peering points. NSPs normally operate at a high data rate (up to 600 Mbps).

Regional Internet Service Providers
Regional internet service providers or regional ISPs are small ISPs that are connected to one or more NSPs. They are at the third level of hierarchy with a lesser data rate.

Local Internet Service Providers
Local internet service providers provide direct service to the end users. The local ISPs can be connected to regional ISPs or directly to NSPs. Most end users are connected to the local ISPs. Note that in this sense, a local ISP can be a company that just provides Internet service, a corporation with a network to supply services to its own employees, or a nonprofit organization, such as a college or a university that runs its own network. Each of these can be connected to a regional or national service provider.

Time Line
The following is a list of important Internet events in chronological order:
•    1969: Four-node ARPANET
•    1970: ARPA hosts implement NCP
•    1973: Development of TCP/IP suite  begins
•    1977: An internet tested using TCP/IP.
•    1978: UNIX distributed to academic/research sites.
•    1981: CSNET established.
•    1983: TCP/IP becomes the official protocol for ARPANET.
•    1983: MILNET was born.
•    1986: NSFNET established.
•    1990: ARPANET decommissioned and replaced by NSFNET.
•    1995: NSFNET goes back to being a research network.
•    1995: Companies known as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) started.

Growth of the Internet
The internet has grown tremendously. In just a few decades, the number of network has increased from tens to hundreds of thousands. Concurrently, the number of computers connected to the networks has grown from hundred to hundreds of millions. The Internet is still growing. Factors that have an impact on this growth include the following:

•    New Protocols: New protocols need to be added and obsolete ones need to be removed. For example, a protocol superior in many respects to IPv4 has been approved as a standard but not yet fully implemented.
•    New Technology: New technologies are under development that will increase the capacity of networks and provide more bandwidth to the Internet’s users.
•    Increasing Use of Multimedia: It is predicted that the Internet, once just a vehicle to share data, will be used more and more for multimedia (audio and video).

PROTOCOLS AND STANDARDS
Protocols
In computer networks, communication occurs between entities in different systems. An entity is anything capable of sending or receiving information. However, two entities cannot simply send bit streams to each other and expect to be understood. For communication to occur, the entities must agree on a protocol. A protocol is a set of rules that governs data communication. A protocol defines what is communicated, how it is communicated, and when it is communicated. The key elements of a protocol are syntax, semantics, and timing.

•    Syntax: Syntax refers to the structure or format of the data, meaning the order in which they   are presented. For example, a simple protocol might expect the first 8 bits of data to be the address of the sender, the second 8 bits to be the address of the receiver, and the rest of the stream to be the message itself.

•    Semantics: Semantics refers to the meaning of each section of bits. How is a particular pattern to be interpreted, and what action is to be taken based on that interpretation? For example, does an address identify the route to be taken or the final destination of the message?

•    Timing: timing refers to two characteristics: when data should be sent and how fast it can be sent. For example, if a sender produces data at 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) but the receiver can process data at only 1 Mbps, the transmission will overload the receiver and data will be largely lost.

Standards
Standards are essential in creating and maintaining an open and competitive market for equipment manufacturers and also in guaranteeing national and international inter-operability of data and telecommunication technology and processes. They provide guidelines to manufacturers, vendors, government agencies, and other service providers to ensure the kind of interconnectivity necessary in today’s marketplace and in international communication.

Data communication standards fall into two categories: “de facto” (meaning “by fact” or “by convention”) and “de jure” (meaning “by law” or “by regulation”).
•    De facto: Standards that have not been approved by an organized body but have been adopted as standards through widespread use are de facto standards. De facto standards are often established originally by manufacturers that seek to define the functionality of a new product or technology.
•    De jure: De jure standards are those that have been legislated by an officially recognized body.

STANDARDS ORGANIZATIONS
Standards are developed through cooperation of standards creation committees, forums, and government regulatory agencies.

Standards Creation Committees
While many organizations are dedicated to the establishment of standards, data telecommunications in North America rely primarily on those published by the following:

•    International Standards Organization (ISO): The International Standards Organization (ISO; also referred to as the International Organization for Standardization) is a multinational body whose membership is drawn mainly from the standards creation committees of various governments throughout the world. Created in 1947, the ISO is an entirely voluntary organization dedicated to worldwide agreement on international standards. With a membership that currently includes representative bodies from 82 industrialized nations, it aims to facilitate the international exchange of goods and services by providing models for compatibility, improved quality, increased productivity, and decreases prices. The ISO is active in developing cooperation in the realms of scientific, technological, and economic activity. The United States is represented in the ISO by ANSI.

•    International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication Standards Sector (ITU-T): By the early 1970s. A number of countries were defining national standards for telecommunications but there were still little international compatibility. The United Nations responded by forming, as part of its International Telecommunication union (ITU), a committee, the Consultative Committee for International Telegraphy and Telephony (CCITT). This committee was devoted to the research and establishment of standards for telecommunication in general and phone and data system in particular. On March 1, 1993, the name of this committee was changed to the International Telecommunications Union-Telecommunications Standard Sector (ITU-T).

•    American National Standards Institute (ANSI): Despite its name, the American National Institute (ANSI) is a completely private, nonprofit corporation not affiliated with the U.S federal government. However, all ANSI activities are undertaken with the welfare of the United States and its citizens occupying primary importance. ANSI’s expresses aims include serving as the national coordinating institution for voluntary standardization in the United States, furthering the adoption of standards as a way of advancing the U.S. economy, and ensuring the participation and protection of the public interests. ANSI members include professional societies, industry associations, governmental and regulatory bodies, and consumer groups.

•    Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE): The institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is the largest professional engineering society of the world. International in scope, it aims to advance theory, creativity, and product quality in the fields of electrical engineering, electronics, and radio as well as in all related branches of engineering. As one of its goals, the IEEE oversees the development and adoptions of international standards for computing and communication.

•    Electronic Industries Association (EIA): aligned with ANSI, the electronic Industries Association (EIA) is a nonprofit organization devoted to the promotion of electronics manufacturing concerns. Its activities include public awareness education and lobbying efforts in addition to standards development. In the field of information technology, the EIA has made significant contributions by defining physical connection interfaces and electronic signaling specifications for data communication.

Forums
Telecommunications technology development is moving faster than the ability of standards committees to ratify standards. Standards committees are procedural and by nature slow moving. To accommodate the need for working models and agreements and to facilitate the standardization process, many special-interest groups have developed forums made up of representatives from interested corporations. The forums work with universities and users to test, evaluate, and standardize new technologies. By concentrating their efforts on a particular technology, the forums are able to speed acceptance and use of those technologies in the telecommunication community. The forums present their conclusion to the standards bodies. Some important forums for the telecommunication industry are Frame Relay Forum and ATM Forum.

Regulatory Agencies
All communications technology is subject to regulation by government agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission in the United States. The purpose of these agencies is to protect the public interest by regulating radio, television, and wire communications.
•    Federal Communications Commission (FCC): The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has authority over interstate and international commerce as it relates to communication.

INTERNET STANDARDS
An Internet standard is a thoroughly tested specification that is useful to and adhered to by those who work with the Internet. It is a formalized regulation that must be followed. There is a strict procedure by which a specification attains Internet standard status. A specification begins as an Internet draft. An Internet draft is a working document (a work in progress) with no official status and a six-month lifetime. Upon recommendation from the Internet authorities, a draft may be published as a Request for Comment (RFC). Each RFC is edited, assigned a number, and made available to all interested parties.

RFCs go through maturity levels and are categorized according to their requirement level. An RFC, during its lifetime, falls into one of six maturity levels: proposed standard, draft standard, Internet standard, historic, experimental, and informational.

INTERNET ADMINISTRATION
The Internet with its root primarily in the research domain has evolved and gained a broader user base with significant commercial activity. Various groups that coordinate Internet issues have guided this growth and development.

Internet Society (ISOC)
The Internet Society (ISOC) is an international, nonprofit organization formed in 1992 to provide support for the Internet process. ISOC accomplishes this through maintaining and supporting other Internet administrative bodies such as IAB, IETF, IRTF, and IANA. ISOC also promotes research and other scholarly activities relating to the Internet.

Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) is the technical advisor to the ISOC. The main purposes of the IAB are to oversee the continuing development of the TCP/IP Protocol Suite and to serve in a technical advisory capacity to research members of the Internet community. IAB accomplishes this through its two primary components, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF). Another responsibility of the IAB is the editorial management of the RFCs. IAB is also the external liaison between the Internet and other standards organization and forums.

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a forum of working groups managed by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). IETF is responsible for identifying operational problems and proposing solutions to these problems. IETF also develops and reviews specifications intended as Internet standards. The working groups are collected into areas, and each area concentrates on a specific topic. Currently nine areas have been defined, although this is by no means a hard and fast number. The areas are:
1.    Application
2.    Internet protocols
3.    Routing
4.    Operations
5.    User services
6.    Network management
7.    Transport
8.    Internet protocol next generation (Ipng)
9.     security

Internet Research Task Force (IRTF)
The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) is a forum of working groups managed by the Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG). IRTF focuses on long-term research topics related to Internet protocols, applications, architecture, and technology.

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), supported by the U.S. government, was responsible for the management of Internet domain names and addresses until October 1998. At that time the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private nonprofit corporation managed by an international board, assumed IANA operations.

Network information Center (NIC)
The Network information Center (NIC) is responsible for collecting and distributing information about TCP/IP protocols.

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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

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