The Golden Lounge

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Investor FAQ


What is Google's mission? How did Google begin?
What does Google do?
Why are we so focused on our users?
How does Google make money? What is driving the company's growth?
Who are our customers?
Who are our partners?
What are our products?
Who are the company's competitors?
Where is Google located?
How many employees does Google have?
When was Google's initial public offering and at what price?
How many shares of Google are outstanding?
On what exchange does Google trade and what is its ticker symbol?
How can I invest in Google? Can I purchase Google stock directly from the company?
When do I receive my certificate of ownership?
What is a transfer agent, who is yours, and how do I contact them?
Does Google pay a cash dividend?
When does Google report earnings?
How can I listen to the webcast for the earnings report?
I missed the earnings webcast. Can I listen to the archived session?
When does Google's fiscal year end?
When and where is the Google Annual Stockholders Meeting?
How can I attend the Annual Stockholders Meeting?
Where can I find all of Google's SEC filings?
How can I download and view the quarterly and annual reports online?
Can I request to receive all SEC filings, annual reports, and/or proxy statements electronically rather than through the mail? Can I vote my proxy online?
Who is Google's Independent Accountant?
How do I contact Investor Relations?
What is Google's mission? How did Google begin?

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. The first step toward fulfilling that mission came when our founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, working out of a Stanford University dorm room, developed a new approach to online search that quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world's largest search engine -- a free service whose utility and ease of use have made it one of the world's best-known brands almost entirely through word of mouth from satisfied users.

What does Google do?

Google is a global technology leader focused on improving the ways people find and use information. We maintain the world's largest online index of websites and other content and, via our automated search technology, make this information freely available, nearly instantly, to anyone with an Internet connection.

Google primarily generates revenue by delivering relevant, cost-effective online advertising. Businesses use our AdWords program to promote their products and services with targeted advertising. In addition, the thousands of third-party websites that comprise our Google network use our Google AdSense program to deliver relevant AdWords ads that generate revenue and enhance the user experience.

For more information, please see our Company Overview.

Why are we so focused on our users?

We believe that the most effective, and ultimately the most profitable, way to accomplish our mission is to put the needs of our users first. We've found that a high-quality user experience leads to strong word-of-mouth promotion. Our dedication to our users is reflected in these three key company-wide commitments:

We will do our best to provide the most relevant and useful search results possible, independent of financial incentives. Our search results will be objective and we will not accept payment for their inclusion or ranking.
We will do our best to provide the most relevant and useful advertising. Ads should not be an annoying interruption. If any element on a search result page is influenced by payment to us, we will make this fact clear to our users.
We will never stop working to improve our user experience, our search technology, and other areas of information organization.
We believe that our user focus is the foundation of our success to date. We also believe that this focus is critical for the creation of long-term value. We do not intend to compromise our user focus for short-term economic gain.

We recommend that you read Letters from Our Founders for more about Google's philosophy.

How does Google make money? What is driving the company's growth?

Today, the majority of our revenue comes from advertising.

Advertisers are increasingly turning to the Internet to market their products and services. Google AdWords, our auction-based advertising program, enables advertisers to deliver relevant ads targeted to search queries or web content to potential customers across Google sites and through the Google Network, which consists of content owners and websites. Our proprietary technology automatically matches ads to the content of the page on which they appear, and advertisers pay us either when a user clicks on one of its ads or based on the number of times their ads appear on the Google Network.

We distribute our advertisers' AdWords ads for display on the Google Network through our AdSense program. We share most of the revenue generated from ads shown on a site of a Google Network member with that member.

You can learn more about AdWords and AdSense here.

Who are our customers?

Our customers are the hundreds of thousands of advertisers, from small businesses targeting local customers to many of the world's largest global enterprises, who use Google AdWords to reach millions of users around the world.

Who are our partners?

Partnerships have been very important to Google's success throughout our history, and we take our partnerships very seriously.

Our AdSense network consists of partners ranging from website publishers to the most popular search destinations, to whom we provide advertisements and with whom we share a majority of the revenue we receive from those ads.

We also have relationships with partners who distribute our products and services to users all over the world. Other partners provide valuable content that allows us to bring even more content and information to our users.

What are our products?

Our product development philosophy is centered on rapid and continuous innovation, with frequent releases of early stage products that we seek to improve with every iteration. We often make products available early in their development stages by posting them on Google Labs, at test locations online or directly on Google.com. If our users find a product useful, we promote it to “beta” status for additional testing. Once we're satisfied that a product is of high quality and utility, we remove the beta label and make it a core Google product.

Here are some examples of our products and services:

Google Web Search
Google Desktop

Google AdWords
Gmail

Google AdSense
Google Earth

Google News
Google Finance

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