On June 3, 2019, the United States Department of Justice reported that it would investigate Google for antitrust violations.
In December 2019, former PayPal chief operating officer Bill Ready became Google’s new commerce chief. Ready’s role will not be directly involved with Google Pay.
In April 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Google announced several cost-cutting measures. Such measures included slowing down hiring for the remainder of 2020, except for a small number of strategic areas, recalibrating the focus and pace of investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel.
The 2020 Google services outages disrupted Google services: one in August that affected Google Drive among others, another in November affecting YouTube, and a third in December affecting the entire suite of Google applications. All three outages were resolved within hours.
What’s different?
In January 2021, the Australian Government proposed legislation that would require Google and Facebook to pay media companies for the right to use their content. In response, Google threatened to close off access to its search engine in Australia. In March 2021, Google reportedly paid $20 million for Ubisoft ports on Google Stadia.
In April 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google ran a years-long program called ‘Project Bernanke’ that used data from past advertising bids to gain an advantage over competing for ad services. This was revealed in documents concerning the antitrust lawsuit filed by ten US states against Google in December.
In September 2021 the Australian government announced plans to curb Google’s capability to sell targeted ads, claiming that the company has a monopoly on the market harming publishers, advertisers, and consumers.
Similar performance
Google indexes billions of web pages to allow users to search for the information they desire through the use of keywords and operators. Google launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which summarizes news articles from various websites.
Google generates most of its revenues from advertising. This includes sales of apps, purchases made in-app, digital content products on Google and YouTube, Android and licensing and service fees, including fees received for Google Cloud offerings. Forty-six percent of this profit was from clicks (cost per clicks), amounting to US$109,652 million in 2017. This includes three principal methods, namely AdMob, AdSense (such as AdSense for Content, AdSense for Search, etc.) and DoubleClick AdExchange.
In addition to its own algorithms for understanding search requests, Google uses technology its acquisition of DoubleClick, to project user interest and target advertising to the search context and the user history.
Some Google services are not web-based. Google Earth, launched in 2005, allowed users to see high-definition satellite pictures from all over the world for free through a client software downloaded to their computers.
Google develops the Android mobile operating system,
In January 2010, Google released Nexus One, the first Android phone under its own brand.
In June 2014, Google announced Google Cardboard, a simple cardboard viewer that lets user place their smartphone in a special front compartment to view virtual reality (VR) media.
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite until October 2020
On September 24, 2012, Presently, there are seven Campus locations: Berlin, London, Madrid, Seoul, São Paulo, Tel Aviv, and Warsaw.
In February 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project, with experimental plans to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities.
In April 2015, Google announced Project Fi, a mobile virtual network operator, that combines Wi-Fi and cellular networks from different telecommunication providers in an effort to enable seamless connectivity and fast Internet signal.
