Google promotes itself as a corporation that is committed to helping the environment and, since 2007, has aimed for carbon neutrality in regard to its operations. The Google Green website states that "Google is creating a better web that's better for the environment. We’re greening our company by using resources efficiently and supporting renewable power." On the website, Google also claims that businesses using "Gmail decreases its environmental impact by up to 98%" and that its data centers use 50% less energy. In 2011, Google announced at its annual I/O conference that it was developing a new application plug-in to increase the efficiency of automobiles. Named "Prediction", Google collaborated with Ford engineers on the technology that maximizes the fuel and power consumption of automobiles.
News Controversy was generated in June 2013 after the Washington Post news outlet revealed that Google had donated US$50,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a right wing organization responsible for numerous law suits that aimed to discredit the science behind climate change. Google was further criticized in July 2013 following the publicity for a Google-hosted fundraiser for Oklahoma Republican politician Jim Inhofe, who is well known for dismissing climate change science as a "hoax" in the U.S. Senate. Tickets for the event range between US$250 and US$2,500, and a portion of the funds raised will be donated to the national Republican Senatorial Committee.
Google is a noted supporter of network neutrality. According to Google's Guide to Net Neutrality:
Best Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet. The Internet has operated according to this neutrality principle since its earliest days, Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content. Just as telephone companies are not permitted to tell consumers who they can call or what they can say, broadband carriers should not be allowed to use their market power to control activity online.
On February 7, 2006, Vint Cerf, a co-inventor of the Internet Protocol (IP) and current Vice President and "Chief Internet Evangelist" at Google, testified to Congress that "allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success, Following criticism of the amount of corporate taxes that Google paid in the United Kingdom, Chairman Eric Schmidt said, "It's called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic." During the same December 2012 interview Schmidt "confirmed that the company had no intention of paying more to the UK exchequer." In 2013, Schmidt responded to questions about taxes paid in the UK by pointing to the advertising fees Google charged UK companies as a source of economic growth, VP Matt Brittin testified to the Public Accounts Committee of the UK house of commons that his UK sales team made no sales and hence owed no sales taxes to the UK.
Google uses various tax avoidance strategies. Consequently, out of the five largest American technology companies it pays the lowest taxes to the countries of origin of its revenues. The company accomplishes this partly by licensing technology through subsidiaries in Ireland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Netherlands. This has reportedly sparked a French investigation into Google's transfer pricing practices.
In 2011, Google donated 1 million euros to International Mathematical Olympiad to support the next five annual International Mathematical Olympiads (2011–2015). On July 2012, Google launched a "Legalize Love" campaign in support of gay rights.
In 2008 Google announced its "project 10100" which accepted ideas for how to help the community and then allowed Google users to vote on their favorites. After two years of silence, during which many wondered what had happened to the program, Google revealed the winners of the project, giving a total of ten million dollars to various ideas ranging from non-profit organizations that promote education to a website that intends to make all legal documents public and online.
In 2004, Google formed the not for profit philanthropic Google.org, with a start-up fund of $1 billion. The mission of the organization is to create awareness about climate change, global public health, and global poverty. One of its first projects was to develop a viable plug in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 miles per gallon. Google hired Larry Brilliant as the program's executive director in 2004, and the current director is Megan Smith.
Likewise, when searching for the word "anagram," meaning a rearrangement of letters from one word to form other valid words, Google's suggestion feature displays "Did you mean: nag a ram?" In Google Maps, searching for directions between places separated by large bodies of water, such as Los Angeles and Tokyo, results in instructions to "kayak across the Pacific Ocean." During FIFA World Cup 2010, search queries like "World Cup", "FIFA", etc. caused the "Goooo...gle" page indicator at the bottom of every result page to read "Goooo...al!" instead. Typing 'Do a barrel roll' in the search engine makes the page do a 360° rotation.
In addition to April Fools' Day jokes, Google's services contain easter eggs. For instance, Google included the Swedish Chef's "Bork bork bork," Pig Latin, "Hacker" or leetspeak, Elmer Fudd, Pirate, and Klingon as language selections for its search engine. In addition, the search engine calculator provides the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Furthermore, when searching the word "recursion", the spell-checker's result for the properly spelled word is exactly the same word, creating a recursive link.
In 2010, Google jokingly changed its company name to Topeka in honor of Topeka, Kansas, whose mayor actually changed the city's name to Google for a short amount of time in an attempt to sway Google's decision in its new Google Fiber Project. In 2011, Google announced Gmail Motion, an interactive way of controlling Gmail and the computer with body movements via the user's webcam.
Google has a tradition of creating April Fools' Day jokes. For example, Google MentalPlex allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web. In 2007, Google announced a free Internet service called TiSP, or Toilet Internet Service Provider, where one obtained a connection by flushing one end of a fiber optic cable down their toilet. Also in 2007, Google's Gmail page displayed an announcement for Gmail Paper, allowing users to have email messages printed and shipped to them. In 2008, Google announced Gmail Custom time where users could change the time that the email was sent.
Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California.
