Google.org

Google.org

In 2004, in concert with the company's IPO, Google set up an unusual for-profit philanthropy arm called Google.org and funded it with three million shares from its initial stock offering. As a for-profit entity, Google.org would be able to provide money for start-up firms or form partnerships with an eye toward advancing a social agenda, particularly focusing on climate change, public health, and poverty. Its early projects included development funding of an electric vehicle and improvements in solar energy technologies.

Gmail

In 2004 Google began offering a free Web-based e-mail account to select “beta” testers. The service, known as Gmail, was opened to the general public in 2007 and offered an unprecedented one gigabyte (one billion bytes) of free e-mail storage space, though users were also presented with advertisements based on keywords Google found in their messages. Google has regularly expanded the amount of free storage space given to users, which was in excess of seven gigabytes by 2008, and allows users to rent additional space. In 2007 Google acquired Postini, an e-mail security firm, for $625 million in order to improve Gmail's security, especially in Google's efforts to sign up businesses.

One of the main appeals of Gmail is that it is Web-based, so users can access their e-mail from any computer, personal digital assistant (PDA), or “smartphone” connected to the Internet. Also, it gives users an e-mail address that is independent of any particular Internet service provider (ISP), which makes it easier to maintain a permanent address. Google added a live video capability to Gmail in November 2008. Essentially a videophone, but over the Internet instead of telephone lines, Google's voice and video chat operates with any standard Web camera and microphone to display a video signal within each user's browser.

In January 2010 Google announced that it had detected a series of sophisticated hacking attacks, originating in China, that were directed at the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists and foreign journalists working in China. In some cases the accounts had been reconfigured to forward all incoming and outgoing e-mail to unfamiliar addresses. Google's immediate response was to change Gmail's protocol from the Web standard HTTP to the encrypted HTTPS, which increased security at the expense of speed. The attacks also led Google to reverse its stance on censoring its Google.cn site. Chinese users would thus be allowed to receive unfiltered search results. This brought the company into conflict with the Chinese government and raised the possibility of Google exiting the Chinese market altogether.