Google LLC (/ˈɡuː.
ɡəl/ ⓘ, GOO-gəl) is an American multinational technology
corporation focused on information technology, online advertising, search engine
technology, email, cloud computing, software, quantum computing, e-commerce,
consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI).[9] It has been referred to
as "the most powerful company in the world" by the BBC,[10] and is one of the
world's most valuable brands.[11][12][13] Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. has
been described as a Big Tech company.
Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by American computer scientists Larry Page
and Sergey Brin. Together, they own about 14% of its publicly listed shares and
control 56% of its stockholder voting power through super-voting stock. The company
went public via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google was
reorganized as a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet's
largest subsidiary and is a holding company for Alphabet's internet properties and
interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google on October 24, 2015, replacing
Larry Page, who became the CEO of Alphabet. On December 3, 2019, Pichai also became
the CEO of Alphabet.[14]
After the success of its original service, Google Search (often known simply as
"Google"), the company has rapidly grown to offer a multitude of products and
services. These products address a wide range of use cases, including email
(Gmail), navigation and mapping (Waze, Maps, and Earth), cloud computing (Cloud),
web navigation (Chrome), video sharing (YouTube), productivity (Workspace),
operating systems (Android and ChromeOS), cloud storage (Drive), language
translation (Translate), photo storage (Photos), videotelephony (Meet), smart home
(Nest), smartphones (Pixel), wearable technology (Pixel Watch and Fitbit), music
streaming (YouTube Music), video on demand (YouTube TV), AI (Google Assistant and
Gemini), machine learning APIs (TensorFlow), AI chips (TPU), and more. Many of
these products and services are dominant in their respective industries, as is
Google Search. Discontinued Google products include gaming (Stadia),[15] Glass,
Google+, Reader, Play Music, Nexus, Hangouts, and Inbox by Gmail.[16][17] Google's
other ventures outside of internet services and consumer electronics include
quantum computing (Willow), self-driving cars (Waymo), and transformer models
(Google DeepMind).[18]
Google Search and YouTube are the two most-visited websites worldwide, followed by
Facebook, Instagram, and ChatGPT. Google is the largest provider of search engines,
mapping and navigation applications, email services, office suites, online video
platforms, photo and cloud storage, mobile operating systems, web browsers, machine
learning frameworks, and AI virtual assistants in the world as measured by market
share.[19] On the list of the most valuable brands, Google is ranked second by
Forbes as of January 2022,[20] and is fourth by Interbrand as of February 2022.[21]
The company has received criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns, tax
avoidance, censorship, search neutrality, antitrust, and abuse of its monopoly
position.[22]
History
Main articles: History of Google and List of mergers and acquisitions by Alphabet
See also: Alphabet Inc.
Early years
Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2003
Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
while they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California, United
States.[23][24][25] The project initially involved an unofficial "third founder",
Scott Hassan, the original lead programmer who wrote much of the code for the
original Google Search engine, but he left before Google was officially founded as
a company;[26][27] Hassan went on to pursue a career in robotics and founded the
company Willow Garage in 2006.[28][29]
Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page sitting together
Then chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt (left) with co-founders Sergey Brin (center) and
Larry Page (right) in 2008
While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the
search terms appeared on the page, they theorized about a better system that
analyzed the relationships among websites.[30] They called this algorithm PageRank;
it determined a website's relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of
those pages that linked back to the original site.[31][30] Page told his ideas to
Hassan, who began writing the code to implement Page's ideas.[26] Page and Brin
would also use their friend Susan Wojcicki's garage as their office when the search
engine was set up in 1998.[32]
Page and Brin originally nicknamed the new search engine "BackRub" because the
system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site.[23][33][34] Hassan,
as well as Alan Steremberg were cited by Page and Brin as being critical to the
development of Google. Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd later co-authored with
Page and Brin the first paper about the project, describing PageRank and the
initial prototype of the Google search engine, published in 1998. Héctor García-
Molina and Jeffrey Ullman were also cited as contributors to the project.[35]
PageRank was influenced by a similar page-ranking and site-scoring algorithm
earlier used for RankDex, developed by Robin Li in 1996, with Page's PageRank
patent including a citation to Li's earlier RankDex patent; Li later went on to
create the Chinese search engine Baidu.[36][37]
Eventually, they changed the name to Google; the name of the search engine was a
misspelling of the word googol,[23][38][39] a very large number written 10100 (1
followed by 100 zeros), picked to signify that the search engine was intended to
provide large quantities of information.[40] Google was initially funded by an
August 1998 investment of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim,[23] co-founder of Sun
Microsystems. This initial investment served as a motivation to incorporate the
company to be able to use the funds.[41][42] Page and Brin initially approached
David Cheriton for advice because he had a nearby office in Stanford, and they knew
he had startup experience, having recently sold the company he co-founded, Granite
Systems, to Cisco for $220 million. David arranged a meeting with Page and Brin and
his Granite co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim. The meeting was set for 8 a.m. at the
front porch of David's home in Palo Alto and it had to be brief because Andy had
another meeting at Cisco, where he now worked after the acquisition, at 9 a.m. Andy
briefly tested a demo of the website, liked what he saw, and then went back to his
car to grab the check. David Cheriton later also joined in with a $250,000
investment.[43][44]
Google's homepage in 1998
Google's original homepage had a simplistic design because the company founders had
little experience in HTML, the markup language used for designing web pages.[45]
Google received money from two other angel investors in 1998, including Amazon
founder Jeff Bezos, and entrepreneur Ram Shriram.[46] Page and Brin had first
approached Shriram, who was a venture capitalist, for funding and counsel, and
Shriram invested $250,000 in Google in February 1998. Shriram knew Bezos because
Amazon had acquired Junglee, at which Shriram was the president. It was Shriram who
told Bezos about Google. Bezos asked Shriram to meet Google's founders and they met
six months after Shriram had made his investment when Bezos and his wife were on a
vacation trip to the Bay Area. Google's initial funding round had already formally
closed but Bezos' status as CEO of Amazon was enough to persuade Page and Brin to
extend the round and accept his investment.[47][48] Between these initial
investors, friends, and family, Google raised around $1,000,000, which is what
allowed them to open up their original shop in Menlo Park, California.[49] Craig
Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee.[25]
[50][51]
After some additional small investments through the end of 1998 to early 1999,[46]
a new $25 million round of funding was announced on June 7, 1999,[52] with major
investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital.
[42] Both firms were initially hesitant about investing jointly in Google, as each
wanted to retain a larger percentage of control over the company to themselves.
Page and Brin insisted on taking investments from both. Both venture companies
finally agreed to investing jointly $12.5 million each due to their belief in
Google's great potential and through the mediation of earlier angel investors Ron
Conway and Shriram who had contacts in the venture companies.[53] In 1998, Page and
Brin proposed to sell Google to Yahoo for $1 million, but Yahoo refused.[54] A more
significant opportunity for Yahoo to acquire Google came in 2002. Terry Semel,
Yahoo's then-CEO, offered $3 billion to purchase the company, but Page and Brin
reportedly held firm on a $5 billion valuation. After Yahoo refused to raise its
offer, the deal fell through, a move that would later be considered a major
strategic misstep for Yahoo.[55]
Growth
Google's first servers, showing lots of exposed wiring and circuit boards
Google's first production server[56]
In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California,[57] which is
home to several prominent Silicon Valley technology start-ups.[58] The next year,
Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords against Page
and Brin's initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine.[59][25]
To maintain an uncluttered page design, advertisements were solely text-based.[60]
In June 2000, it was announced that Google would become the default search engine
provider for Yahoo!, one of the most popular websites at the time, replacing
Inktomi.[61][62]
In 2001, Google's investors felt the need to have a strong internal management, and
they agreed to hire Eric Schmidt as the chairman and CEO of Google.[49] Schmidt was
proposed by John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins. He had been trying to find a CEO that
Page and Brin would accept for several months, but they rejected several candidates
because they wanted to retain control over the company. Michael Moritz from Sequoia
Capital at one point even menaced requesting Google to immediately pay back
Sequoia's $12.5m investment if they did not fulfill their promise to hire a chief
executive officer, which had been made verbally during investment negotiations.
Schmidt was not initially enthusiastic about joining Google either, as the
company's full potential had not yet been widely recognized at the time, and as he
was occupied with his responsibilities at Novell where he was CEO. As part of him
joining, Schmidt agreed to buy $1 million of Google preferred stocks as a way to
show his commitment and to provide funds Google needed.[63]
In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex
from Silicon Graphics, at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California.
[64] The complex became known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the
number one followed by a googol of zeroes. Three years later, Google bought the
property from SGI for $319 million.[65] By that time, the name "Google" had found
its way into everyday language, causing the verb "google" to be added to the
Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted
as: "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet".[66]
[67] The first use of the verb on television appeared in an October 2002 episode of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[68]
Initial public offering
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011
On August 19, 2004, Google became a public company via an initial public offering.
At that time Page, Brin and Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years,
until the year 2024.[69] The company opened on the NASDAQ National Market under the
ticker symbol GOOGL with an offering of 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per
share.[70][71] Shares were sold in an online auction format using a system built by
Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal.[72][73] The sale of
$1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion.[74]
On October 9, 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock,[75]
[76][77][78] On July 20, 2007, Google bids $4.6 billion for the wireless-spectrum
auction by the FCC.[79] On March 11, 2008, Google acquired DoubleClick for $3.1
billion, transferring to Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with
Web publishers and advertising agencies.[80][81] By 2011, Google was handling
approximately 3 billion searches per day. To handle this workload, Google built 11
data centers around the world with several thousand servers in each. These data
centers allowed Google to handle the ever-changing workload more efficiently.[49]
In May 2011, the number of monthly unique visitors to Google surpassed one billion
for the first time.[82][83] In May 2012, Google acquired Motorola Mobility for
$12.5 billion, in its largest acquisition to date.[84][85][86] This purchase was
made in part to help Google gain Motorola's considerable patent portfolio on mobile
phones and wireless technologies, to help protect Google in its ongoing patent
disputes with other companies,[87] mainly Apple and Microsoft,[88] and to allow it
to continue to freely offer Android.[89]
2012 onwards
Entrance of building where Google and its subsidiary DeepMind are located at 6
Pancras Square, London
In June 2013, Google acquired Waze for $966 million.[90] While Waze would remain an
independent entity, its social features, such as its crowdsourced location
platform, were reportedly valuable integrations between Waze and Google Maps,
Google's own mapping service.[91] Google announced the launch of a new company,
called Calico, on September 19, 2013, to be led by Apple Inc. chairman Arthur
Levinson. In the official public statement, Page explained that the "health and
well-being" company would focus on "the challenge of ageing and associated
diseases".[92]
On January 26, 2014, Google announced it had agreed to acquire DeepMind
Technologies, a privately held AI company from London.[93] Technology news website
Recode reported that the company was purchased for $400 million, yet the source of
the information was not disclosed. A Google spokesperson declined to comment on the
price.[94][95] The purchase of DeepMind aids in Google's recent growth in the AI
and robotics community.[96] In 2015, DeepMind's AlphaGo became the first computer
program to defeat a top human pro at the game of Go. According to Interbrand's
annual Best Global Brands report, Google has been the second most valuable brand in
the world (behind Apple Inc.) in 2013,[97] 2014,[98] 2015,[99] and 2016, with a
valuation of $133 billion.[100]
Google CEO Sundar Pichai with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi
On August 10, 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a
conglomerate named Alphabet Inc. Google became Alphabet's largest subsidiary and
the umbrella company for Alphabet's Internet interests. Upon completion of the
restructuring, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Page, who became CEO
of Alphabet.[101][102][103] On August 8, 2017, Google fired employee James Damore
after he distributed a memo throughout the company that argued bias and "Google's
Ideological Echo Chamber" clouded their thinking about diversity and inclusion, and
that it is also biological factors, not discrimination alone, that cause the
average woman to be less interested than men in technical positions.[104] Google
CEO Sundar Pichai accused Damore of violating company policy by "advancing harmful
gender stereotypes in our workplace", and he was fired on the same day.[105][106]
[107]
Between 2018 and 2019, tensions between the company's leadership and its workers
escalated as staff protested company decisions on internal sexual harassment,
Dragonfly, a censored Chinese search engine, and Project Maven, a military drone
artificial intelligence, which had been seen as areas of revenue growth for the
company.[108][109] On October 25, 2018, The New York Times published the exposé,
"How Google Protected Andy Rubin, the 'Father of Android'". The company
subsequently announced that "48 employees have been fired over the last two years"
for sexual misconduct.[110] On November 1, 2018, more than 20,000 Google employees
and contractors staged a global walk-out to protest the company's handling of
sexual harassment complaints.[111][112] CEO Sundar Pichai was reported to be in
support of the protests.[113] Later in 2019, some workers accused the company of
retaliating against internal activists.[109]
On March 19, 2019, Google announced that it would enter the video game market,
launching a cloud gaming platform called Google Stadia.[114] On June 3, 2019, the
U.S. Department of Justice reported that it would investigate Google for antitrust
violations.[115] This led to the filing of an antitrust lawsuit in October 2020, on
the grounds the company had abused a monopoly position in the search and search
advertising markets.[116] 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.[117] 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.[118] Most employees were
also working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the success of it even led
to Google announcing that they would be permanently converting some of their jobs
to work from home [119]
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.[120][121][122] In 2021, the Alphabet Workers
Union was founded, composed mostly of Google employees.[123] 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.[124] In March
2021, Google reportedly paid $20 million for Ubisoft ports on Google Stadia.[125]
Google spent "tens of millions of dollars" on getting major publishers such as
Ubisoft and Take-Two to bring some of their biggest games to Stadia.[126] 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.[127] 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.[128]
In 2022, Google began accepting requests for the removal of phone numbers, physical
addresses and email addresses from its search results. It had previously accepted
requests for removing confidential data only, such as Social Security numbers, bank
account and credit card numbers, personal signatures, and medical records. Even
with the new policy, Google may remove information from only certain but not all
search queries. It would not remove content that is "broadly useful", such as news
articles, or already part of the public record.[129] In May 2022, Google announced
that the company had acquired California based, MicroLED display technology
development and manufacturing Start-up company Raxium. Raxium is set to join
Google's Devices and Services team to aid in the development of micro-optics,
monolithic integration, and system integration.[130][131] In December 2022, Google
debuted OSV-Scanner,[132][133] a Go tool for finding security holes in open source
software, which pulls from the largest open source vulnerability database of its
kind to defend against supply chain attacks. Following the success of ChatGPT and
concerns that Google was falling behind in the AI race, Google's senior management
issued a "code red"[134] and a "directive that all of its most important products—
those with more than a billion users—must incorporate generative AI within months".
[135] In March 2023, in direct response to the rapid rise of ChatGPT, Google
released Bard (now Gemini), a generative artificial intelligence chatbot.[136]
In early May 2023, Google announced its plans to build two additional data centers
in Ohio. These centers, which will be built in Columbus and Lancaster, will power
up the company's tools, including AI technology. The said data hub will add to the
already operational center near Columbus, bringing Google's total investment in
Ohio to over $2 billion.[137] In August 2024, Google would lose a lawsuit which
started in 2020 in lower court, as it was found that the company had an illegal
monopoly over Internet search.[138] D.C. Circuit Court Judge Amit Mehta held that
this monopoly was in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.[139] In September
2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU), based in Luxembourg, also
found that Google held an illegal monopoly, in this case with regards to its
shopping search, and could not avoid paying a €2.4 billion fine.[140] The EU Court
of Justice found that Google's treatment of rival shopping searches, which the
court referred to as "discriminatory", was in violation of the Digital Markets Act.
[140] In October 2024, Google was fined by a local Russian court a symbolic 2.5
decillion dollars for allegedly blocking pro-Kremlin propaganda. No payment was
made.[141]
In November 2024, Google announced the establishment of a new AI hub in Saudi
Arabia, aiming to support the Kingdom's economic growth and technological
development as part of its Vision 2030 initiative. This AI hub is projected to
contribute up to $71 billion to Saudi Arabia's economy by advancing AI-driven
solutions tailored to the region's specific needs and training local talent.[142]
The partnership between Google and Saudi Arabia includes collaboration with key
stakeholders, such as the Public Investment Fund (PIF), to develop AI applications
that will benefit sectors like healthcare, finance, oil and gas, and logistics. The
initiative focuses on creating localized AI technologies, with an emphasis on
integrating Arabic language capabilities and enabling widespread cloud adoption.
[143]
In March 2025, Google agreed to acquire Wiz, a New York-based cybersecurity startup
focusing on cloud computing, for US$32 billion. This cash deal would be Google's
biggest ever, as well as it currently being the most expensive deal of 2025.
Alphabet reportedly tried to close a deal for only $23 billion in 2024, but this
fell apart after concerns about regulatory hurdles, among other issues. Wiz, a
company located in the U.S. and Israel, was cofounded in 2020 by Assaf Rappaport.
The company is backed by a number of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, as well as
notably being partnered with Amazon and Microsoft, as listed in their website.
Google reportedly said "the deal would help artificial-intelligence companies get
better security and use more than one cloud service."[144] In July 2025, the U.S.
Department of Defense announced that Google had received a $200 million contract
for AI in the military, along with Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI.[145] In September
2025, federal judge Amit Mehta in the United States ruled that Google will not be
required to divest Chrome or the Android operating system;[146] however, the ruling
barred Google from having exclusive contracts for Google Search, Chrome, Google
Assistant and Gemini app products, and ruled Google must share search data with
competitors.[147]
Products and services
Main article: List of Google products
Search engine
Main articles: Google Search and Google Images
Google indexes billions of web pages to allow users to search for the information
they desire through the use of keywords and operators.[148] According to comScore
market research from November 2009, Google Search is the dominant search engine in
the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%.[149] In May 2017, Google
enabled a new "Personal" tab in Google Search, letting users search for content in
their Google accounts' various services, including email messages from Gmail and
photos from Google Photos.[150][151]
Google launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which
summarizes news articles from various websites.[152] Google also hosts Google
Books, which allows users to search books in its database and shows limited
previews, or the full book when allowed.[153] Google expanded its search services
to include shopping (launched originally as Froogle in 2002),[154] finance
(launched 2006),[155] and flights (launched 2011).[156]
Advertising
Google at ad-tech London, 2010
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.[157] In addition to its own algorithms for understanding
search requests, Google uses technology from its acquisition of DoubleClick, to
project user interest and target advertising to the search context and the user
history.[158][159] In 2007, Google launched "AdSense for Mobile", taking advantage
of the emerging mobile advertising market.[160]
Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their
website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page.[161]
Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program.
Google Ads allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content
network, through a cost-per-click scheme.[162] The sister service, Google AdSense,
allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn
money every time ads are clicked.[163] One of the criticisms of this program is the
possibility of click fraud, which occurs when a person or automated script clicks
on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing the advertiser
to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately
14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid.[164] Google Search Console
(rebranded from Google Webmaster Tools in May 2015) allows webmasters to check the
sitemap, crawl rate, and for security issues of their websites, as well as optimize
their website's visibility.
Generative artificial intelligence
Google had previously used virtual assistants and chatbots, such as Google Bard,
prior to the announcement of Gemini in March 2024. None of them had been seen as
legitimate competitors to ChatGPT, unlike Gemini.[165] An AI training program for
Google employees was also introduced in April 2024.[166] Google has created the
text-to-image model Imagen,[167] and the text-to-video model Veo.[168] In 2025,
Google announced SynthID Detector, a tool that uses watermarking to identify
whether content such as text, images, audio, or video was generated using Google
products.[169] In 2023, Google released NotebookLM, an online tool for synthesizing
documents using Gemini. In September 2024, it gained attention for its "Audio
Overview" feature, which generates podcast-like summaries of documents.[170][171]
Google also developed LearnLM, a family of language models serving as personal AI
tutors.[172]
Consumer services
Web-based services
See also: Firebase Studio, Google Colab, Kaggle, and Google Docs Editors
Google offers Gmail for email,[173] Google Calendar for time-management and
scheduling,[174] Google Maps and Google Earth for mapping, navigation and satellite
imagery,[175] Google Drive for cloud storage of files,[176] Google Docs, Sheets and
Slides for productivity,[176] Google Photos for photo storage and sharing,[177]
Google Keep for note-taking,[178] Google Translate for language translation,[179]
YouTube for video viewing and sharing,[180] Google My Business for managing public
business information,[181] Google Classroom for managing assignments and
communication in education,[182] and Duo for social interaction.[183] A job search
product has also existed since before 2017,[184][185][186] Google for Jobs is an
enhanced search feature that aggregates listings from job boards and career sites.
[187] Google Earth, launched in 2005, allows users to see high-definition satellite
pictures from all over the world for free through a client software downloaded to
their computers.[188]
Software
Google develops the Android mobile operating system,[189] as well as its
smartwatch,[190] television,[191] car,[192] and Internet of things-enabled smart
devices variations.[193] It also develops the Google Chrome web browser,[194]
ChromeOS, an operating system based on Chrome,[195] and the AI-powered integrated
development environment Google Antigravity.[196][197]
Hardware
Google Pixel smartphones on display in a store
In January 2010, Google released Nexus One, the first Android phone under its own
brand.[198] It spawned a number of phones and tablets under the "Nexus"
branding[199] until its eventual discontinuation in 2016, replaced by a new brand
called Pixel.[200] In 2011, the Chromebook was introduced, which runs on ChromeOS.
[201] In July 2013, Google introduced the Chromecast dongle, which allows users to
stream content from their smartphones to televisions.[202][203] In June 2014,
Google announced Google Cardboard, a simple cardboard viewer that lets the user
place their smartphone in a special front compartment to view virtual reality (VR)
media.[204] In October 2016, Google announced Daydream View, a lightweight VR
viewer which lets the user place their smartphone in the front hinge to view VR
media.[205][206]
Other hardware products include:
Nest, a series of voice assistant smart speakers that can answer voice queries,
play music, find information from apps (calendar, weather etc.), and control third-
party smart home appliances (users can tell it to turn on the lights, for example).
The Google Nest line includes the original Google Home[207] (later succeeded by the
Nest Audio), the Google Home Mini (later succeeded by the Nest Mini), the Google
Home Max, the Google Home Hub (later rebranded as the Nest Hub), and the Nest Hub
Max.
Nest Wifi (originally Google Wifi), a connected set of Wi-Fi routers to simplify
and extend coverage of home Wi-Fi.[208]