The company opened on the NASDAQ National Market under the ticker symbol GOOGL with an offering of 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share. At that time Page, Brin and Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024. The first use of the verb on television appeared in an October 2002 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from Silicon Graphics, at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. He had been trying to find a CEO that Page and Brin would accept for several months, but they rejected several candidates because they wanted to retain control over the company. This led to the filing of an antitrust lawsuit in October 2020, on the grounds the company had abused a monopoly position in the search and search advertising markets. On November 1, 2018, more than 20,000 Google employees and contractors staged a global walk-out to protest the company’s handling of sexual harassment complaints. On January 26, 2014, Google announced it had agreed to acquire DeepMind Technologies, a privately held AI company from London. The most commonly perceived error is said to be caused by a lack of diverse scope within curation staff, including overlooking mainstay artists in large genres, potentially causing a categorical homogenization of musical styles; even impacting mainline artists like within hip hop with A Tribe Called Quest. Using this, users can perform various actions such as pulling playlists, launching radio stations, playing or pausing songs. Named the Car Thing, it represents the music-streaming service’s first entry into hardware devices. Spotify first announced a voice-activated music-streaming gadget for cars in May 2019. In January 2014, Spotify removed all time limits for Free users on all platforms, including on computers, which previously had a 10-hour monthly listening limit after a 6-month grace period. Users can refine playlists with additional instructions, such as “more upbeat” or “happier songs”. Spotify for Artists In a 2022 National Labor Relations Board ruling, court documents suggested that Google sponsored a secretive project—Project Vivian—to counsel its employees and to discourage them from forming unions. Also in February 2022, Google announced a $100 million fund to expand skills training and job placement for low-income Americans, in conjunction with non-profits Year Up, Social Finance, and Merit America. The company also decided to transform its office in Warsaw into a help center for refugees. Responding to the humanitarian crisis after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Google announced a $15 million donation to support Ukrainian citizens. In March 2007, in partnership with the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), Google hosted the first Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival at its headquarters in Mountain View. Google continued to monetize and profit from sites propagating climate disinformation even after the company updated their policy to prohibit placing their ads on similar sites. Helpful products, built with you in mind In June 2022, Spotify acquired Sonantic, a synthetic voice and video developer. Armchair Expert announced on Instagram that the podcast would be available exclusively on Spotify beginning 1 July, saying they would continue to maintain the same creative control over the show after the move. In November 2020, Spotify announced plans to acquire Megaphone from The Slate Group for US$235 million. On 19 May 2020, Spotify acquired exclusive rights to stream the popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience beginning in September of that year, under an agreement valued at around US$100 million (equivalent to $119,100,000 in 2024). On 5 February 2020, Spotify announced its intent to acquire Bill Simmons’ sports and pop culture blog and podcast network The Ringer for an undisclosed amount. On 19 November 2019, Spotify announced the acquisition of the exclusive rights to The Last Podcast on the Left. The post stated that all free members would be limited to ten hours of music streaming per month, and in addition, individual tracks were limited to five plays. In April 2011, Spotify announced via a blog post that they would drastically cut the amount of music that free members could access, effective 1 May 2011. Spotify has experimented with different limitations to users’ listening on the Free service tier. Instead, a 30% commission is applied to recording royalties generated from all streams of selected songs in Discovery Mode contexts—Spotify Radio and Autoplay. In January 2015, Sony announced PlayStation Music, a new music service with Spotify as its exclusive partner. In December 2021, Spotify acquired Whooshkaa, a podcast tech company that develops specialized technology that allows radio broadcasters to easily turn their existing audio content into on-demand podcast programming. In November 2021, Spotify acquired audiobook company Findaway, including its publishing imprint OrangeSky Audio. On 3 July 2020, cybersecurity firm VPNMentor discovered a database containing 380 million individual records, including the logins and passwords of Spotify users. Ek’s initial pitch to Lorentzon was not initially related to music, but rather a way for streaming content such as video, digital films, images or music to drive advertising revenue. Features Spotify generates revenue by selling premium streaming subscriptions to users and advertising placements to third parties. Spotify operates under a freemium business model (basic services are free, while additional features are offered via paid subscriptions). In December 2025, over 300 terabytes of files were scraped from Spotify’s servers and uploaded to Anna’s Archive, totalling 86 million songs uploaded from 2007 to July 2025 that account for 37% of all songs and 99.6% of all listens, as well as 256 million rows of song metadata. In December 2024, Harper’s Magazine released a report stating that Spotify was padding out playlists with ghost artists created by production companies in order to minimise royalty costs and increase profits. In May 2023, Spotify removed tens of thousands of songs, roughly 7% of the tracks uploaded by the Boomy, due to suspected “artificial streaming”, the practice of using online bots to inflate the listening statistics. Google Labs In March 1999, the company moved its offices to Palo Alto, California, which