Google+

Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus) is an interest-based social network that is owned and operated by Google Inc.

The service, Google's fourth foray into social networking, experienced strong growth in its initial years, although usage statistics have varied, depending on how the service is defined. Three Google executives have overseen the product, which has undergone substantial changes leading to a redesign in November 2015.

History

Creation

Google+ is the company's fourth foray into social networking, following Google Buzz (launched 2010, retired in 2011), Google Friend Connect (launched 2008, retired by March 1, 2012), and Orkut (launched in 2004, as of 2013 operated entirely by subsidiary Google Brazil – retired in September 2014).

Google+ launched in June 2011. Features included the ability to post photos and status updates to the stream or interest based communities, group different types of relationships (rather than simply "friends") into Circles, a multi-person instant messaging, text and video chat called Hangouts, events, location tagging, and the ability to edit and upload photos to private cloud-based albums.

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software. Most of its profits are derived from AdWords, an online advertising service that places advertising near the list of search results.

Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Together they own about 14 percent of its shares but control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through supervoting stock. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. Its mission statement from the outset was "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and its unofficial slogan was "Don't be evil". In 2004, Google moved to its new headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. In August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its interests as a holding company called Alphabet Inc. When this restructuring took place on October 2, 2015, Google became Alphabet's leading subsidiary, as well as the parent for Google's Internet interests.

List of Internet top-level domains

This list of Internet top-level domain extensions contains all top-level domains, which are those domains in the DNS root zone of the Domain Name System of the Internet.

The official list of all top-level domains is maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). IANA also oversees the approval process for new proposed top-level domains. As of January 2016, the root domain contains 1205 top-level domains, while a few have been retired and are no longer functional.

Types

As of 2015, IANA distinguishes the following groups of top-level domains:

Original top-level domains

Seven generic top-level domains were created early in the development of the Internet, and pre-date the creation of ICANN in 1998.