Google 2008 Annual Report Download - page 33

business practices. Further, any failure by us to protect our users’ privacy and data could result in a loss of user
confidence in our services and ultimately in a loss of users, which could adversely affect our business.
In addition, because our services are accessible worldwide, certain foreign jurisdictions have claimed and
others may claim that we are required to comply with their laws, even where we have no local entity, employees or
infrastructure.
Culture and Employees
We take great pride in our company culture and embrace it as one of our fundamental strengths. Our culture
encourages the iteration of ideas to address complex technical challenges. In addition, we embrace individual
thinking and creativity. As an example, we encourage our engineers to devote as much as 20% of their time to
work on independent projects. Many of our significant new products have come from these independent projects,
including Google News, AdSense for content and orkut.
We began as a technology company and have evolved into a software, technology, internet, advertising and
media company all rolled into one. We take technology innovation very seriously. We compete aggressively for
talent, and our people drive our innovation, technology development and operations. We strive to hire the best
computer scientists and engineers to help us solve very significant challenges across systems design, artificial
intelligence, machine learning, data mining, networking, software engineering, testing, distributed systems, cluster
design and other areas. We work hard to provide an environment where these talented people can have fulfilling
jobs and produce technological innovations that have a positive effect on the world through daily use by millions of
people.
We have assembled what we believe is a highly talented group of employees. Despite our rapid growth, we
constantly seek to maintain a small-company feel that promotes interaction and the exchange of ideas among
employees. We try to minimize corporate hierarchy to facilitate meaningful communication among employees at
all levels and across departments. We believe that considering multiple viewpoints is critical to developing effective
solutions, and we attempt to build consensus in making decisions. While teamwork is one of our core values, we
also significantly reward individual accomplishments that contribute to our overall success. As we grow, we expect
to continue to provide compensation structures that are more similar to those offered by start-ups than
established companies. We focus on very significant rewards for individuals and teams that build amazing things
that provide significant value to us, our advertisers and our users.
At December 31, 2008, we had 20,222 employees, consisting of 7,254 in research and development, 8,002
in sales and marketing, 3,109 in general and administrative and 1,857 in operations. All of Google’s employees are
also equityholders, with significant collective employee ownership. As a result, many employees are highly
motivated to make the company more successful.
Seasonality
Both seasonal fluctuations in internet usage and traditional retail seasonality have affected, and are likely to
continue to affect, our business. Internet usage generally slows during the summer months, and commercial
queries typically increase significantly in the fourth quarter of each year. These seasonal trends have caused and
will likely continue to cause, fluctuations in our quarterly results, including fluctuations in sequential revenue
growth rates.
Available Information
Our web site is located at www.google.com, and our investor relations web site is located at
http://investor.google.com. The following filings are available through our investor relations web site after we file
them with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on
Form 10-Q, and our Proxy Statements for our annual stockholder’s meetings (for the last two years). We also
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