Google is launching a program that offers California small businesses free websites and online training to help them grow and find customers.

While 97 percent of Americans look online for local products and services, just 38 percent of California small businesses have a website, according to Google.

“There is a perception that getting online is hard, that it’s expensive and time-consuming,” said Scott Levitan, Google’s director of small business engagement. “As a company with roots in California, we want to make it fast, easy and free for any business in the state to get online.”

For the next year, participating California businesses can go to CaliforniaGetOnline.com to get a free website as well as free tools, training and resources to help their business succeed online. Google is partnering with Intuit to provide its popular Intuit Websites offerings for free including an easy-to-build website, a customized domain name and web-hosting for one year.

Google is offering the service in partnership with the federally backed business mentoring program SCORE, as well as state business groups: the National Federation of Independent Business/California, the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, the California Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce and the Latin Business Association.

Free seminars will be held March 12 and 13 in Los Angeles, March 14 in Irvine, March 15 in Bakersfield, and March 16 in Sacramento.

“We’re thrilled to support this valuable program for our member companies,” said John Kabateck, Executive Director of the National Federation of Independent Business/California, which represents and serves approximately 20,000 small businesses in California. “Far too many businesses are missing an opportunity to reach customers online and we look forward to providing them with this free service.”

Google joins Internet biggies today in taking over the G.Co domain name, buying the TLD in order to build the official URL shortcut for Google products like GMail, Documents and Photos. While representatives from the .Co registry wouldn’t comment on the specific pricing of the deal, .Co-founder Juan Diego Calle recently told Reuters that in general single letter domains costs more than $1.5 million.

Google says it will use the domain in order to create a shortcut for all its products and services using the format g.co/[XYZproduct/service] and that the domain will be live sometime later in the afternoon today. “You can visit a G.CO shortcut confident you will always end up at a page for a Google product or service,” said Google VP of consumer marketing Gary Briggs in a release.

Run out of Colombia (and with the support of the Colombian government), the .Co domain is hard core targeting itself towards tech companies big and small. Also announced today is the 500 Startups‘ .Co rebranding; the incubator will be moving from 500Startups.com to 500.co this fall. While not as mainstream, the 500 Startups move is probably just as monumental as the Google news, as it give the domain street cred and solidifies that idea that the “Co” in .Co means companies.

Emphasizing this point, 500 Startups co-founder Dave McClure said that he recommends the .Co domain to all his now 150 startups, ” “With .Co, startups can launch businesses and brands on a short, cool, credible domain name — without having to shell out a million bucks to do it.” “CO is quickly becoming the hot new geek TLD in Silicon Valley,” he said.

The .Co domain registry is two days away from the first anniversary of its public launch and most recently hit 1 million registered domains after ten months of existence. Its marketing and advertising push has been aimed at tech companies who have thus far had to settle for a lame mainstream .com domains — i.e. no vowels, weird spelling, etc — or have had to shell out tons of VC cash for the domains that they want. The new enough .Co offers a viable alternative.

“We want to be inspiring people with big dreams and big ideas to do it on a .Co.,” .Co  Director Lori Anne Wardi told me about the registry’s aspirations on the phone earlier, “We want to be a platform for the world’s next great businesses.”

Forsalebyowner.com is the United States largest “by owner” real estate website. It provides a real estate advertising and information service that charges a flat fee to property owners who advertise their property on the company’s Website. It created a business model that competed directly with traditional real estate firms, connecting buyers and sellers without the use of brokers. Property sellers devise and customize the content and format of their advertisement. ForSaleByOwner.com then charged to the owners a listing fee that is directly proportional to the length of the advertisement and the period of time it appears on its Web site. For an additional fee, property owners can have also list their properties on the MLS with a real estate agent affiliated with ForSaleByOwner.com. Interested buyers can use the service to search listed properties for free. However, ForSaleByOwner.com does not represent or negotiate on behalf of either the seller or the buyer. On its Website, a disclaimer clearly states that it is not a real estate agent and is legally prohibited from taking part in the actual sales transaction.

A deal to sell the name ForSaleByOwner.com for $835,000 is currently in escrow, and a few other names offered on the company’s site GreatDomains.com.

FORSALEBYOWNER.COM last sold for $835,000

The Tribune Company bought ForSaleByOwner.com. It’s a full web site, but the domain name ForSaleByOwner.com sold for $835,000 in the height of the dot.com boom.

Frank Michlick joins domain name marketplace.

Sedo – Leading domain name marketplace and monetization provider, announced that Frank Michlick has joined their SedoMLS team. Frank, best known within the domain name industry as one of the founders of and lead contributors to Domain Name News, began working with internet technology in 1993 and registered his first domain in 1995. Frank’s entrepreneurial pursuits led him to found DomainCocoon, which continues to provide services in the areas of development, domain management, custom registrar creation, and ICANN and ccTLD accreditation consulting.

Michlick will be working with the SedoMLS team at Sedo. SedoMLS is its domain sale syndication platform.

He has been in the domain industry for years, including a stint of 5+ years at Tucows. He is also the main contributor to Domain Name News. He has been a consultant in the industry since leaving Tucows and also worked on startups including SharedReviews and Left of the Dot Media, which he left in July according to his LinkedIn profile.

The Federal Trade Commission today sent a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization that oversees Internet domain names, expressing concern that the organization’s plan to dramatically expand the domain name system could leave consumers more vulnerable to online fraud and undermine law enforcers’ ability to track down online scammers.

In its letter to ICANN, the Commission warned that rapid expansion of the number of generic top-level domain names (gTLDs) – the part of the domain name to the right of the dot, such as “.com,” “.net” and “.org” – could create a “dramatically increased opportunity for consumer fraud,” and make it easier for scam artists to manipulate the system to avoid being detected by law enforcement authorities. The Commission urged ICANN – before approving any new gTLD applications – to take additional steps to protect consumers, including starting with a pilot program to work out potential problems.

“A rapid, exponential expansion of gTLDs has the potential to magnify both the abuse of the domain name system and the corresponding challenges we encounter in tracking down Internet fraudsters,” the Commission’s letter states.

ICANN intends to allow website operators to apply for new gTLDs starting on January 12, 2012.

The Commission letter noted that the FTC has raised consumer protection issues with ICANN for more than a decade. The Commission stated that the FTC and other law enforcement agencies need to navigate the domain name system in order to investigate cases of unfair or deceptive practices online, and the existing system already is open to manipulation by scam artists seeking to avoid detection. The FTC routinely consults the “Whois” service, which lists the identities and contact information of website operators. However, the Commission explained that the Whois service often contains incomplete or inaccurate data or, increasingly, proxy registrations, which shields contact information even for domain name registrants engaged in commercial activities.

The increase in website names that could be registered in the new gTLDs would put “infinite opportunities” at the fingertips of scam artists, who take advantage of consumers through tactics such as using misspelled names to create copycat websites, the Commission’s letter states.

“In short, the potential for consumer harm is great, and ICANN has the responsibility both to assess and mitigate these risks,” the letter states.

Before approving any new gTLD applications, the FTC urged ICANN to:

implement the new program as a pilot program and substantially reduce the number of generic top level domains that are introduced as a result of the first application round;

strengthen ICANN’s contractual compliance program, in particular by hiring additional compliance staff;

develop a new ongoing program to monitor consumer issues that arise during the first round of implementing the new gTLD program;

assess each new proposed generic top level domain’s risk of consumer harm as part of the evaluation and approval process;

improve the accuracy of Whois data, including by imposing a registrant verification requirement.

The Commission letter warned “If ICANN fails to address these issues responsibly, the introduction of new gTLDs could pose a significant threat to consumers and undermine consumer confidence in the Internet.”

Chernoff strikes again with MoneyLender.com.

There are a number of people who are looking for money lenders these days. But not domainer Garry Chernoff. He just sold MoneyLender.com for a nice $75,000.

The domain name has been transferred to a new owner who is using whois privacy to protect its identity.

Chernoff, who’s wonderful story with domain names is chronicled in David Kesmodel’s The Domain Game book, frequently sells domain names in this price range. Some of his recent domain name sales include AdNet.com for $60,000, BlueJeans.com for $150,000, and DoorHardware.com for $85,000.

Seems like a strong sales price yet I’m sure the buyer has a plan in place to capitalize on this huge market.

General Electric (GE) is an American multinational corporation operating in sectors like Consumer capital finance, Energy, Technology Infrastructure and Industrial finance. Headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. GE is one of the largest and most influential business firms across the globe. In terms of gross revenue, GE is listed as the 26th Largest Business Organization according to Fortune 500. With a unique business operation and customer satisfaction, GE has its name included among the top rankers in the surveys of different reputes.  As of 2016, the company operates through the following segments: Power & Water, Oil and Gas, Aviation, Healthcare, Transportation and Capital which cater to the needs of Financial services, Medical devices, Life Sciences, Pharmaceutical, Automotive, Software Development and Engineering industries. GE has always been a multi-business company. Over the past 125 years, GE has swiftly evolved to seize new opportunities created by changes in technology and the economy. Today GE is building new platforms in industries and markets with above-GDP growth that provide opportunities to apply GE technology and management expertise to accelerate that growth.

History

Founded in 1892 through a merger of Edison General Electric Company, Schenectady and Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts, GE had its headquartered based in Connecticut, US while both the operating plants were based in New York. Initially Schenectady was used as the company forefront headquarters until the Canadian peer of GE was formed.

Early Years

During the initial quarter of their establishment, GE was more inclined toward computer manufacturing industry. Its general purpose computer series GE 200, GE 400, and GE 600 and GE 4010, GE 4020, and GE 4060 real time process control computers were quite a hit during that time. However, due to the lack of the technical aspect available, GE sold its computer manufacturing unit to Honeywell in 1970, thereby exiting the computer industry. During that phase, GE operated its computer manufacturing division under the name General Electric Information Services (GEIS). During their operational run, GE acquired numerous companies along the way. In the late 90’s the significant acquisitions were RCA for NBC Television Network and Kidder, Peabody & Co., a security firm in 1986.

Recent Years

With the onset of the 21st century, GE acquired manufacturing unit of Enron Wind in 2002 that gave rise to GE Wind Energy. A few years later, GE bought 80% of Universal Pictures from Vivendi. In 2007 GE acquired Smiths Aerospace and Vetco Gray and a year later in 2008, the acquisition of Hydril Pressure & Control for a hefty $1.12 billion was done. GE’s recent acquisition includes Dresser Inc., manufacturer of gas engines and Opal Software, data migration specialist in the year 2010 and Lineage Power Holdings, Inc. in 2011. During the course of their acquisition, GE also signed various strategic partnerships and sold some of its assets as well. In 2002, Francisco Partners and Norwest Venture Partners bought a division of GEIS that gave rise to a new establishment under the banner GXS, while in 2008 Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) acquired GE Plastics.In the current fiscal year, the acquisition of the Alstom Global Power Division is still under way pertaining to the submission of rival bid by Siemens and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Very recently, GE collaborated with Quirky, a design establishment to launch its LED bulb, LINK. The bulb is designed in such a way so as to integrate with smartphones and tabs using the app Wink.

Businesses

GE’s primary business divisions include:

• GE Power
• GE Oil & Gas
• GE Renewable Energy
• GE Energy Connections
• GE Aviation
• GE Healthcare
• GE Transportation
• GE Capital
• GE Digital

The former GE Appliances and Lighting segment was dissolved in 2014 when GE’s appliance division was sold to Haier for $5.4 billion. GE Lighting (consumer lighting) and the newly created Current, powered by GE (commercial LED, solar, EV, and energy storage), are now stand-alone businesses within the company.

Through these businesses, GE participates in markets that include the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity (e.g. nuclear, gas and solar), lighting, industrial automation, medical imaging equipment, motors, railway locomotives, aircraft jet engines, and aviation services. Through GE Commercial Finance, GE Consumer Finance, GE Equipment Services, and GE Insurance it offers a range of financial services. It has a presence in over 100 countries.  GE produces General Imaging digital cameras. Since over half of GE’s revenue is derived from financial services, it is arguably a financial company with a manufacturing arm. It is also one of the largest lenders in countries other than the United States, such as Japan. Even though the first wave of conglomerates (such as ITT Corporation, Ling-Temco-Vought, Tenneco, etc.) fell by the wayside by the mid-1980s, in the late 1990s, another wave (consisting of Westinghouse, Tyco, and others) tried and failed to emulate GE’s success. On May 4, 2008 it was announced, that GE would auction off its appliances business for an expected sale of $5–8 billion. However, this plan fell through as a result of the recession. As of August 2015 GE is planning to set up a silicon carbide chip packaging R&D center in coalition with SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Utica, New York. The project will create 470 jobs with the potential to grow to 820 jobs within 10 years. On September 14, 2015, GE announced the creation of a new unit: GE Digital, which will bring together its software and IT capabilities. The new business unit will be headed by Bill Ruh, who joined GE in 2011 from Cisco Systems and has since worked on GE’s software efforts.

On September 22, 1987, Genentech Inc registered the gene.com domain name, making it 89th .com domain ever to be registered.

Genentech, Inc., is a biotechnology corporation which became a subsidiary of Roche in 2009. Genentech Research and Early Development operates as an independent center within Roche.

Company History:

Genentech, Inc. became a pioneer of biotechnology when it was founded in the late 1970s. A publicly traded company, Genentech is controlled by Roche Holding Ltd. (parent of Swiss pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-La Roche) through that company’s 66 percent stake, but is allowed to operate independently. Genentech discovers, develops, manufactures, and markets human pharmaceuticals for significant medical needs. The company fabricates organisms from gene cells, organisms that are not ordinarily produced by the cells. Conceivably, this process, referred to as gene splicing or recombinant DNA, may lead to cures for cancer or AIDS. The potential success of this young science causes it to flourish, attracting entrepreneurs and investors. After being swept up in a wave of takeovers and mergers that shook the industry in the late 1980s, Genentech emerged in the 1990s as one of the most solid biotechnology companies in the world. At the turn of the century the company marketed seven products in the United States: Protropin, Nutropin, and Nutropin AQ, all for the treatment of growth deficiency or failure; Activase, used to dissolve blood clots in heart attack and stroke patients; Pulmozyme, a therapy in the treatment of cystic fibrosis; Rituxan, used to treat non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system; and Herceptin, for the treatment of breast cancer.

Early Years

Founded in 1976, Genentech was financed by Kleinman, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, a San Francisco high-tech venture capital firm, and by its cofounders, Robert Swanson and Herbert Boyer. Swanson, a graduate of the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was employed by Kleinman, Perkins, where he learned of the achievements of Cetus, a biotechnology firm founded in 1971; he decided to investigate the prospect of marketing DNA products. Initially, the concept was met with little enthusiasm, but in Herbert Boyer, a distinguished academic scientist, Swanson found someone who enthusiastically supported his plan. One of the first scientists to synthesize life (he had created gene cells with Stanley Cohen), Boyer wanted to take his research further and to create new cells.

Boyer and Swanson decided to leave their respective jobs and to found Genentech (genetic engineering technology). Thomas J. Perkins, a partner with Kleinman, Perkins, who became Genentech’s chairman, suggested that the new company contract out its early research. Swanson followed Perkins’s advice and contracted the City of Hope National Medical Center to conduct the company’s initial research project.

Boyer and Swanson wanted to exhibit their grasp of the relevant technology before they attempted to market products&mdashø achieve credibility for Genentech. To accomplish this goal, Boyer intentionally selected an easily replicated cell with a simple composition, Somatostatin. The first experiment with Somatostatin required seven months of research. Scientists on the project placed the hormone inside E. coli bacteria, found in the human intestine. The anticipated result was that the bacteria would produce useful proteins that duplicated Somatostatin, but that did not happen. Then a scientist working on the project hypothesized that proteins in the bacteria were attacking the hormone. Somatostatin was protected, and the cell was successfully produced. Although it established credibility for the company, the experiment brought no real financial returns. Boyer and Swanson intended to produce human insulin as Genentech’s first product.

Early in the summer of 1978 Genentech experienced its first breakthrough in recreating the insulin gene. This development required an expenditure of approximately $100 million and 1,000 human years of labor. By 1982 the company had won approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Eli Lilly and Company, the world’s largest and oldest manufacturer of synthetic insulin, commanded 75 percent of the U.S. insulin market, and Swanson knew that Genentech stood little chance of competing with them. He informed Lilly’s directors of Genentech’s accomplishments, hoping to attract their attention: he believed that the mere threat of a potentially better product would entice Lilly to purchase licensing rights to the product, and he was correct. Lilly bought the rights and marketed the product as Humulin. This maneuver provided ample capital for Genentech to continue its work. By 1987 the company was earning $5 million in licensing fees from Lilly.

Swanson pursued a similar strategy with the company’s next product, Alpha Interferon. Hoffmann-La Roche purchased the rights to Interferon–which it marketed as Roferon-A–and paid approximately $5 million in royalties to Genentech in 1987. Revenues from these agreements helped to underwrite the costs of new product development, which ran from $25 million to $50 million per product prior to FDA approval. Meanwhile, Genentech went public in 1980, raising $35 million through an initial public offering.

Entering the Marketing Arena in the Middle to Late 1980s

The first product independently marketed by Genentech, human growth hormone (HGH) or Protropin, generated $43.6 million in sales in 1986. Demand for HGH increased as the medical profession learned more about the drug’s capabilities and diagnosed hormone inadequacy more frequently. Protropin enjoyed record-setting sales over the next six years, topping $155 million by 1991. Approved by the FDA in 1985, Protropin helped prevent dwarfism in children. Genentech’s entry into the market was facilitated by an FDA decision to ban the drug’s predecessor because it was contaminated with a virus. By the end of the 1980s a ‘new and improved’ version of HGH patented by Eli Lilly also had received approval from the FDA. Lilly’s drug, unlike Genentech’s version, actually replicated the growth hormone found in the human body. To counter this potential threat to their market, Genentech sued the FDA to force the agency to determine which company held exclusive rights to the product. At the end of 1991, Genentech’s Protropin maintained an impressive 75 percent share of the HGH market.

Such legal disputes were not unusual for biotechnology firms still in their infancy. Because the products of the industry duplicated substances found in nature, they challenged long-established patent laws. Traditionally, products and discoveries determined as not evident in nature receive patent awards. Biotechnology firms contested these standards in the courtroom, attempting to force alterations in the law, to make it conform to the needs of the industry. Companies applied for broad patents to secure against technological innovations that could undermine their niche in the marketplace. For start-up firms such as Genentech, patent battles consumed large sums of money in both domestic and foreign disputes.

Genentech introduced tissue plasmogen activator (t-PA) in 1987 as Activase, a fast-acting drug that helped to break down fibris, a clotting agent in the blood. At $2,200 per dose, t-PA was marketed as a revolutionary drug for the prevention and treatment of heart attacks. When Genentech failed to provide the FDA with evidence that Activase prolonged the lives of heart attack victims, the federal agency delayed approval until 1988. The drug brought in almost half of the company’s $400 million in 1989 revenues.

But Activase was soon battered with legal and clinical setbacks. Genentech’s claim to exclusive ownership of natural t-PA and all synthetic variations on it was struck down in Britain when the British firm Wellcome Foundation Ltd. challenged Genentech’s patent in the British courts, claiming it was overly broad. In 1993, however, Genentech won a court victory against Wellcome, preventing the U.K. firm from marketing t-PA in the United States until 2005, when Genentech’s patent was due to expire. Clinical data showed that the drug caused serious side effects, including severe internal bleeding. A European study indicated that the drug was faster, but no more effective, than some competitors costing just $200 per dose. The troubles continued when a controversial study comparing Activase, SmithKline Beecham plc’s Eminase, and another firm’s streptokinase was released in March 1991. The International Study of Infarct Survival (ISIS-3) found all three drugs to be equally effective at keeping people alive, which again reflected badly on Activase’s high cost. Genentech discounted several of the research methods used, then commissioned its own 41,000-patient comparative trial (at a cost of $55 million), which was completed in 1993 and vouched for the superiority of Activase over streptokinase. By the mid-1990s, however, Genentech was selling just $300 million worth of Activase per year, a far cry from the $1 billion annual sales it had projected for the product in the late 1980s.

Early to Mid-1990s: From Roche Merger to CEO Controversy

The regulatory, legal, and clinical roadblocks that stymied Genentech’s introduction of Activase, combined with competition from large pharmaceutical and chemical companies that bought into biotechnology in the late 1980s, culminated in Genentech’s 60 percent acquisition by Switzerland’s Roche Holding Ltd. The merger was one of many in 1989 and 1990, which resulted in such pharmaceutical giants as SmithKline Beecham plc and Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. Genentech used the $2.1 billion influx of capital to fund research, finance patent disputes, and invest in cooperative ventures to develop synthetic drugs using biotechnological discoveries. Also in 1990, G. Kirk Raab, whom the Wall Street Journal described as a ‘master marketer,’ was named CEO of Genentech. That year, the company launched the first commercial life sciences experiment in space when it sponsored research aboard the space shuttle Discovery, and it received FDA approval to expand the marketing of Activase to include the treatment of acute massive pulmonary embolism (blood clots in the lungs).

Activase had faced stiff competition when it first entered the market in the late 1980s. Delays in approval gave competitors such as Biogen and Integrated Genetics the opportunity to catch up with the industry leader. A dozen or so companies filed patents for similar drugs. Genentech could not expect to easily secure foreign markets for its new drug, either. Competition was stiff; this relatively new industry had little time to carve out established markets, and there were important competitors, particularly in Western Europe. In 1991, however, Genentech won an exclusive patent for recombinant t-PA in Japan. Genentech also had several new products in FDA trials in 1991. An insulin-like growth factor for the treatment of full-blown AIDS patients and relaxin, an obstetric drug, were in development that year. Genentech’s DNase (pronounced dee-en-ayse), for use in the management of cystic fibrosis and chronic bronchitis, entered Phase III FDA trials. The firm’s HER2 antibody entered clinical trials in 1991 as well. This treatment for breast and ovarian cancer was first developed from mouse cells. Genentech also was able to begin marketing of interferon gamma, or Actimmune, in 1991. The product’s relatively meager sales of $1.7 million were connected to the small number of patients suffering from chronic granulomatous disease, an inherited immunodeficiency.

In 1993 Genentech received regulatory approval to market Pulmozyme, its brand name for DNase, in the United States, Canada, Sweden, Austria, and New Zealand, for the treatment of cystic fibrosis. The company’s relationship with Roche led to the establishment of a European subsidiary of Genentech to develop, register, and market DNase in 17 primary European countries. Genentech also allotted Roche an exclusive license to sell DNase anywhere but Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan. DNase was considered the first major advance in the treatment of cystic fibrosis in 30 years. Sales of Pulmozyme–which had gone from conception to market in just five years, half the industry average–reached $76 million by 1996.

Genentech continued to expand its product line as the 1990s continued. In March 1994 the FDA approved a new Genentech human growth hormone, Nutropin, for the treatment of growth failure in children. Other uses for Nutropin soon followed, including the treatment of adults suffering from growth hormone deficiency and of short stature associated with Turner syndrome. A third Genentech HGH, Nutropin AQ–the first liquid HGH–received its first FDA approval in 1996. That year the company’s line of growth hormone products generated $218.2 million in revenues.

By mid-1995 Roche’s holding in Genentech had increased to about 65 percent. As part of its original stake purchased in 1990, Roche had received the option of purchasing the remainder of the company at $60 per share, an option that expired June 30, 1995. In May 1995, however, Genentech and Roche reached an agreement whereby the option would be extended to June 30, 1999. The option was set to begin at $61.25 per share, then increase each quarter by $1.25 until expiring at $82.50. As part of the agreement, Roche took over Genentech’s Canadian and European operations, with Genentech agreeing to receive royalties on sales of Pulmozyme in Europe and on sales of all of the company’s products in Canada.

In the midst of the negotiations on this deal, Raab approached Roche to seek a $2 million guarantee of a personal loan. When Genentech’s board found out about this improper move, it conducted a broad review of his leadership. Finding other problems, including ongoing federal regulatory investigations into charges that Genentech was promoting the use of its products in unapproved ways, the board forced Raab to resign in July 1995. Named to replace him as president and CEO was Dr. Arthur Levinson, a molecular biologist who had headed the company’s research operations. One outcome of the federal probes came in April 1999, when Genentech finalized an agreement to pay $50 million to settle charges that it had illegally marketed Protropin for unapproved uses, such as a kidney disorder and severe burns, from 1985 to 1994. The company also pleaded guilty to a criminal violation, ‘introducing misbranded drugs in interstate commerce.’

Revitalizing the Product Pipeline in the Late 1990s

Although many questioned the wisdom of appointing as CEO a scientist who had never before run a company, Levinson helped restore the company’s reputation by shifting its focus away from the marketing arena and back to the laboratory. Genentech reached new heights in the late 1990s, with revenues surpassing the $1 billion mark for the first time in 1997 before reaching $1.15 billion the year after. The reemphasis on research revitalized the company’s product pipeline, leading to a substantial increase in the sales of products Genentech marketed itself. In 1998 such sales reached $717.8 million, an increase of nearly 23 percent from the previous year. The growth was attributable to the sales of two new products. In November 1997 Genentech began selling a monoclonal antibody called Rituxan, the first such entity approved to treat a cancer, specifically a form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (a cancer of the immune system). Sales of Rituxan, which was codeveloped with La Jolla, California-based IDEC Pharmaceuticals Corporation, were $162.6 million in 1998, the first full year of sales. Monoclonal antibodies are designed to zero in on cancer cells and kill a tumor without harming healthy tissue. A second Genentech-developed monoclonal antibody, Herceptin, was approved by the FDA in September 1998 to treat breast cancer. In clinical trials at this time was a third cancer treatment, called Anti-VEGF, which was being studied as a treatment for several types of solid-tumor cancers.

In June 1999 Roche exercised its option to acquire the 33 percent of Genentech it did not already own for $82.50 per share, or about $3.7 billion. Just one month later, however, Roche sold about 16 percent of Genentech stock back to the public in an IPO that raised about $2.13 billion at the offering price of $97 per share. Genentech thereby resumed trading on the New York Stock Exchange but under a new symbol, DNA. In October 1999 Roche made a secondary offering of 20 million Genentech shares at $143.50, raising $2.87 billion in the largest secondary offering in U.S. history. Following the offerings, Roche held a 66 percent stake in Genentech, which retained the operational autonomy through which it had thrived.

In November 1999 Genentech agreed to pay $200 million to the University of California at San Francisco to settle a nine-year dispute over a patent underlying Protropin. The university had charged that Genentech scientists had stolen a DNA sample from a lab in 1978 and used the specimen to develop Protropin, which by the end of the 1990s had generated $2 billion in sales over its lifetime. The university had sought $400 million in lost royalties and other damages. Despite this latest embarrassment, Genentech entered the 21st century as the most highly respected biotechnology company. With more than a dozen promising products in various stages of clinical development and plenty of cash on hand to fund its aggressive research efforts, Genentech seemed certain to maintain this position well into the new century.

A GeoTLD (geographic TLD) is a top-level domain in the Domain Name System of the Internet using the name of or invoking an association with a geographical, geopolitical, ethnic, linguistic or cultural community.

A Geo TLD is a top level domain name category created by ICANN denoting geographical, geopolitical, ethnic, social or cultural representation. Currently, .asia (represents the Asian continent), .cat (represents the Catalan language) and .eu (represents the countries in the European Union) are considered geo TLDs. On June 26, 2007, a workshop regarding Geo TLDs was conducted during the International ICANN Public Meeting in San Juan Puerto Rico wherein .berlin, .cat, .nyc and .paris were presented as examples of top level domain names under this category.

As of 2009, only two GeoTLDs existed: the sponsored domains .cat, for the Catalan language and culture and .asia; as of 2014 there were many more, including .kiwi, .paris and .gal, but many others are being added regularly.

As of 2014, several examples of geographic TLDs exist: .London, enabling London businesses, organizations, and individuals to establish an online naming presence, .asia (for Asia), .rio (for Rio city), .quebec (for Québec province), .cat which is a sponsored top-level domain intended to be used to highlight the Catalan language and culture. .eu is a country code top-level domain, since “EU” is a reserved country code for the European Union in ISO 3166-1.

eu (European Union): On September 25, 2000, ICANN decided to allow the use of any two-letter code in the ISO 3166-1 reserve list that is reserved for all purposes. Only EU currently meets this criterion. Following a decisionby the EU’s Council of Telecommunications Ministers in March 2002, progress was slow, but a registry (namedEURid) was chosen by the European Commission, and criteria for allocation set: ICANN approved eu as a ccTLD, and it opened for registration on 7 December2005 for the holders of prior rights. Since 7 April 2006, registration is open to all.

.eu is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the European Union (EU). Launched on 7 December 2005, the domain is available for organisations in and residents of EU member states. The TLD is administered by EURid, a consortium originally consisting of the national ccTLD registry operators of Belgium, Sweden, and Italy, joined later by the national registry operator of the Czech Republic. Trademark owners were able to submit registrations through a sunrise period, in an effort to prevent cybersquatting. Full registration started on 7 April 2006.

History

Establishment

The .eu TLD was approved by ICANN on 22 March 2005 and put in the Internet root zone on 2 May 2005. Even though the EU is not a country (it is a sui generis intergovernmental and supranational organisation), there are precedents of issuing top-level domains to other entities—e.g. .nato. See also GeoTLD.

.eu.int was the subdomain most used by the European Commission and the European Parliament, based on the .int generic top-level domain (gTLD) for international bodies, until 9 May 2006. The .eu domain (ccTLD) was launched in December 2005, and because of this most .eu.int domain names changed to .europa.eu on Europe day, 9 May 2006.

Sunrise period

The Sunrise Period was broken into two phases. The first phase, which began on 7 December 2005 was to facilitate applications by registrants with prior rights based on trademarks and geographic names. The second phase began on 7 February 2006 and covered company, trade and personal names. In the case of all Sunrise applications, the application needed to be accompanied by documents proving the claim to ownership of a certain right. The decision was then made by PricewaterhouseCoopers Belgium, which had been chosen as the validation agent by EURid.

On 7 February 2006, the registry was opened for company, trade and personal names. In the first 15 minutes, there were 27,949 total applications, and after one hour, 71,235.

Landrush

On 7 April 2006 at 11 am CET registration became possible for non-trademark holders. Most people requesting domains had asked their registrars to put their requested domains in a queue, ensuring the best chance to register a domain. This way more than 700,000 domains were registered during the first 4 hours of operation. Some large registrars like Go Daddy and small registrars like Dotster suffered from long queues and unresponsiveness, allowing people to ‘beat the queue’ by registering through a registrar that had already processed its queue. By August 2006, 2 Million .eu domains had been registered. It is now the fourth-largest ccTLD in Europe, after .de, .uk and .nl, and is one of the largest internationally.

Bob Parsons, CEO and co-founder of Go Daddy, criticized the landrush process designed by EURid. Particularly, he condemned the use of shell companies by some registrars. In his blog, he stated “These companies, instead of only registering their real active registrars, created hundreds of new “phantom” registrars.” Parsons cited a group of about 400 companies, all with similar address and contact information based in New York, each registered as an LLC; in his opinion, these were phantom registrars “created to hijack the .EU landrush.”

These “phantom” registrars effectively had hundreds of opportunities of registering a domain whereas a genuine registrar effectively only had one opportunity to register the same domain. Thus some registrants were crowded out of the .eu landrush process and many generic .eu domain names are now owned by the companies using these “phantom” registrars.

Patrik Lindén, spokesman for EURid at the time, denied the allegations by Parsons, stating that “[EURid] verified that each registrar was an individual legal entity. Each had to sign an agreement with us, and prepay €10,000.”[6] Parsons didn’t dispute that each registrar was a separate legal entity, but noted that creating such entities was trivial: “Mr. Linden seemed proud that the EURid registry verified that each applicant was a legal entity before it was accredited. Take a moment and think about what that means. You can form a “legal entity” for $50 – an LLC – and you are good to go. Is that what we want a registry to do? Don’t we want them instead to make sure that the organization it allows to provide end-users with its domain names – especially Europe’s very own domain name – are actually in the domain name registration business?”

The EURid organisation investigated some allegations of abuse, and in July 2006 announced the suspension of over 74,000 domain names and that they were suing 400 registrars for breach of contract. The status of the domains was changed from ACTIVE to ON-HOLD. This meant that the domains could not be moved or have their ownership changed. The registrars also lost their access to the EURid registration database meaning that they could no longer register .eu domain names. The legal action relates to the practice of Domain name warehousing, whereby large numbers of domain names are registered, often by registrars, with the intention of subsequently selling them on to third parties. EURid rules state that applications for domains can only be made after a legitimate application has been made to a registrar. The 74,000 applications were made in the name of only three Cyprus registered companies— Ovidio Ltd, Fausto Ltd and Gabino Ltd.

The affected registrars, joined in the action by the affected registrants obtained a provisional order from the Court of First Instance in Brussels, Belgium on 27 September 2006. The court ordered EURid to release the blocked domain names or else pay a fine of €25,000 per hour for each affected domain name. EURid complied with the court order and changed the status of the domains from ON HOLD to ACTIVE and restored EURid registration database access to the affected registrars.

The main legal action, that of EURid seeking the registrar agreements between EURid and the registrars in question to be dissolved has still to be heard.

Actual use

The main users of .eu domains are websites with pan-European or cross-border intentions and audiences. It is often used to emphasise the ‘European identity’ of a website, as opposed to the website having a strictly national ccTLD or global “dotcom” nature. Alternative (opportunistic) uses include Basque webpages (as the initial letters of Euskadi or the language Euskara) and Romanian, Portuguese, or Galician personal sites, as eu is the equivalent of the English pronoun ‘I’ in those languages.

In most countries of the EU, the national ccTLDs have the major share of the market with the remainder spread over .com/.net/.org/.info/.biz. As a result of this, .eu has had an uphill battle to gain a significant share of these national markets. The dominant players tend to be the national ccTLD and .com. The other TLDs such as .net, .org and to a lesser extent .info and .biz have progressively smaller shares of these national markets.

Over one year after the launch of .eu (5 July 2007), the number of .de domains registered was 11,079,557 according to the German .de registry’s statistics page, while number of German owned .eu domains according to EURid’s statistics page was 796,561. The number of .uk domains registered was 6,038,732 according to .uk registry Nominet’s statistics page. The number of apparently UK owned .eu domains was 344,584.

Example.com, example.net, example.org, and example.edu are second-level domain names reserved for documentation purposes and examples of the use of domain names.

The second-level domain label example for the top-level domains com, net, and org, was reserved in 1999 by the Internet Engineering Task Force in RFC 2606, Section 3, while it was reserved for the edu domain by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) since 2000.

By implementing the reservation, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) made available domains to use in technical and software documentation, manuals and sample software configurations. Thus, documentation writers can be sure to select a domain name without creating naming conflicts if end-users try to use the sample configurations or examples verbatim.

When an address such as username@example.com is used to demonstrate the sign-up process on a website, it directs the user to enter an actual email address at which they receive mail. Example.com is used in a generic and vendor-neutral manner.

These domain names resolve to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for IPv4 and IPv6 of a web server managed by ICANN and are digitally signed using DNSSEC.

The example domains have one subdomain name defined in the Domain Name System. For each domain, the third-level domain name www resolves to the same IPv4 and IPv6 addresses as the parent domains.

Facebook filed a lawsuit Thursday against several companies that bought domain names similar to facebook.com, alleging trademark infringement.

The dispute, first reported on the web site of online-marketer Bill Hartzer, concerns domain names that are either typos or closely related to Facebook.com. The giant social network, which calls the owners of these domains “typosquatters”, claims that these domains are examples of trademark infringement.

“(The) defendants’ schemes also diminish the goodwill associated with Facebook and its marks, injure Facebook’s reputation, breach enforceable agreements between Defendants and Facebook, interfere with Facebook’s business, and unjustly enrich Defendants,” Facebook states in the court document. “Facebook therefore seeks an order cancelling Defendants’ rights in their typosquatter domain names or transferring those typosquatter domain names to Facebook, awarding Facebook damages and providing other relief.”

A total of 25 defendants are listed in the “Facebook, Inc. v. Cyber2Media, Inc. et al” lawsuit —  only a handful of them are individuals, with the rest being companies. Some of the domains in dispute include facebobk.com, facemook.com, wwwfacefook.com, ffacebook.com and faecbook.com.

Facebook has previously won trademark lawsuits against the owners of domains that included the “Facebook” name, such as FacebookStuff.com and KillFacebook.com. In 2007, the company was awarded a victory over a cybersquatter that owned Face-book.com.

Facebook is an American for-profit corporation and online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California, United States. The Facebook website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. The founders had initially limited the website’s membership to Harvard students; however, later they expanded it to higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University. Facebook gradually added support for students at various other universities, and eventually to high school students as well. Since 2006, anyone age 13 and older has been allowed to become a registered user of Facebook, though variations exist in the minimum age requirement, depending on applicable local laws. The Facebook name comes from the face book directories often given to United States university students.

Facebook may be accessed by a large range of desktops, laptops, tablet computers, and smartphones over the Internet and mobile networks. After registering to use the site, users can create a user profile indicating their name, occupation, schools attended and so on. Users can add other users as “friends”, exchange messages, post status updates and digital photos, share digital videos and links, use various software applications (“apps”), and receive notifications when others update their profiles or make posts. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, hobbies or other topics, and categorize their friends into lists such as “People From Work” or “Close Friends”. In groups, editors can pin posts to top. Additionally, users can complain about or block unpleasant people. Because of the large volume of data that users submit to the service, Facebook has come under scrutiny for its privacy policies. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisements which appear onscreen. Facebook, Inc. held its initial public offering (IPO) in February 2012, and began selling stock to the public three months later, reaching an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion. On July 13, 2015, Facebook became the fastest company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to reach a market cap of $250 billion. Facebook has more than 1.65 billion monthly active users as of March 31, 2016. As of April 2016, Facebook was the most popular social networking site in the world, based on the number of active user accounts. Facebook deems users from the ages of 13 to 18 as being a minor and therefore, sets their profiles to share its content with friends only.

2003–06: Thefacebook, Thiel investment, and name change

Zuckerberg wrote a program called “Facemash” on October 28, 2003 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore (second year student). According to The Harvard Crimson, the site was comparable to Hot or Not and used “photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the ‘hotter’ person”. To accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into protected areas of Harvard’s computer network and copied private dormitory ID images. Harvard did not have a student “face book” (a directory with photos and basic information) at the time, although individual houses had been issuing their own paper facebooks since the mid-1980s, and Harvard’s longtime Freshman Yearbook was colloquially referred to as the “Freshman Facebook”. Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online. The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy. Ultimately, the charges were dropped. Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final exam. He uploaded 500 Augustan images to a website, each of which was featured with a corresponding comments section. He shared the site with his classmates, and people started sharing notes. The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004. He said that he was inspired by an editorial about the Facemash incident in The Harvard Crimson. On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched “Thefacebook”, originally located at thefacebook.com.

Six days after the site launched, Harvard seniors Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra accused Zuckerberg of intentionally misleading them into believing that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com. They claimed that he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product. The three complained to The Harvard Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation. They later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling in 2008 for 1.2 million shares (worth $300 million at Facebook’s IPO). Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College; within the first month, more than half the undergraduates at Harvard were registered on the service. Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to the universities of Columbia, Stanford, and Yale. It later opened to all Ivy League colleges, Boston University, New York University, MIT, and gradually most universities in the United States and Canada.

In mid-2004, entrepreneur Sean Parker—an informal advisor to Zuckerberg—became the company’s president. In June 2004, Facebook moved its operations base to Palo Alto, California. It received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. In 2005, the company dropped “the” from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com for US$200,000. The domain facebook.com belonged to AboutFace Corporation before the purchase. This website last appeared on April 8, 2005; from April 10, 2005 to August 4, 2005, this domain gave a 403 error.

In May 2005, Accel Partners invested $12.7 million in Facebook, and Jim Breyer added $1 million of his own money. A high-school version of the site was launched in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step. (At the time, high-school networks required an invitation to join.) Facebook also expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft.

2006–2012: public access, Microsoft alliance and rapid growth

On September 26, 2006, Facebook was opened to everyone at least 13 years old with a valid email address.

In late 2007, Facebook had 100,000 business pages (pages which allowed companies to promote themselves and attract customers). These started as group pages, but a new concept called company pages was planned. Pages began rolling out for businesses in May 2009.

On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion. Microsoft’s purchase included rights to place international advertisements on the social networking site.

In October 2008, Facebook announced that it would set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. Almost a year later, in September 2009, Facebook said that it had turned cash-flow positive for the first time.

A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users. Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade “best-of” list saying, “How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers’ birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?” Traffic to Facebook increased steadily after 2009. The company announced 500 million users in July 2010[50] making it the largest online social network in the world at the time. According to the company’s data, half of the site’s membership use Facebook daily, for an average of 34 minutes, while 150 million users access the site by mobile. A company representative called the milestone a “quiet revolution.”

In November 2010, based on SecondMarket Inc. (an exchange for privately held companies’ shares), Facebook’s value was $41 billion. The company had slightly surpassed eBay to become the third largest American web company after Google and Amazon.com.

In early 2011, Facebook announced plans to move its headquarters to the former Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California. In March 2011, it was reported that Facebook was removing approximately 20,000 profiles offline every day for violations such as spam, graphic content, and underage use, as part of its efforts to boost cyber security. Release of statistics by DoubleClick showed that Facebook reached one trillion page views in the month of June 2011, making it the most visited website tracked by DoubleClick. According to a Nielsen Media Research study, released in December 2011, Facebook had become the second-most accessed website in the U.S. behind Google.

2012–13: IPO, lawsuits and one-billionth user

Main article: Initial public offering of Facebook

Facebook eventually filed for an initial public offering on February 1, 2012. Facebook held an initial public offering on May 17, 2012, negotiating a share price of US$38. The company was valued at $104 billion, the largest valuation to date for a newly listed public company.

Facebook began selling stock to the public and trading on the NASDAQ on May 18, 2012. Based on its 2012 income of $5 billion, Facebook joined the Fortune 500 list for the first time in May 2013, ranked in position 462.

Facebook filed their S1 document with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 1, 2012. The company applied for a $5 billion IPO, one of the biggest offerings in the history of technology. The IPO raised $16 billion, making it the third-largest in U.S. history.

The shares began trading on May 18; the stock struggled to stay above the IPO price for most of the day, but set a record for the trading volume of an IPO (460 million shares). The first day of trading was marred by technical glitches that prevented orders from going through; only the technical problems and artificial support from underwriters prevented the stock price from falling below the IPO price on the day.

In March 2012, Facebook announced App Center, a store selling applications that operate via the site. The store was to be available on iPhones, Android devices, and mobile web users.

On May 22, 2012, the Yahoo! Finance website reported that Facebook’s lead underwriters, Morgan Stanley (MS), JP Morgan (JPM), and Goldman Sachs (GS), cut their earnings forecasts for the company in the middle of the IPO process. The stock had begun its freefall by this time, closing at 34.03 on May 21 and 31.00 on May 22. A “circuit breaker” was used in an attempt to slow down the stock price’s decline. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro, and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Chairman Rick Ketchum, called for a review of the circumstances surrounding the IPO. Facebook’s IPO was consequently investigated, and was compared to a pump and dump scheme. A class-action lawsuit was filed in May 2012 because of the trading glitches, which led to botched orders. Lawsuits were filed, alleging that an underwriter for Morgan Stanley selectively revealed adjusted earnings estimates to preferred clients.

The other underwriters (MS, JPM, GS), Facebook’s CEO and board, and NASDAQ also faced litigation after numerous lawsuits were filed, while SEC and FINRA both launched investigations. It was believed that adjustments to earnings estimates were communicated to the underwriters by a Facebook financial officer, who used the information to cash out on their positions while leaving the general public with overpriced shares. By the end of May 2012, Facebook’s stock lost over a quarter of its starting value, which led the Wall Street Journal to label the IPO a “fiasco”.

Zuckerberg announced to the media at the start of October 2012 that Facebook had passed the monthly active users mark of one billion—Facebook defines active users as a logged-in member who visits the site, or accesses it through a third-party site connected to Facebook, at least once a month. Fake accounts were not mentioned in the announcement, but the company continued to remove them after it found that 8.7% of its users were not real in August 2012. The company’s data also revealed 600 million mobile users, 140 billion friend connections since the inception of Facebook, and the median age of a user as 22 years.

2013–present: site developments, A4AI and 10th anniversary

On January 15, 2013, Facebook announced Facebook Graph Search, which provides users with a “precise answer,” rather than a link to an answer by leveraging the data present on its site. Facebook emphasized that the feature would be “privacy-aware,” returning only results from content already shared with the user. The company became the subject of a lawsuit by Rembrandt Social Media in February 2013, for patents involving the “Like” button. On April 3, 2013, Facebook unveiled Facebook Home, a user-interface layer for Android devices offering greater integration with the site. HTC announced the HTC First, a smartphone with Home pre-loaded.

On April 15, 2013, Facebook announced an alliance across 19 states with the National Association of Attorneys General, to provide teenagers and parents with information on tools to manage social networking profiles. On April 19, 2013, Facebook officially modified its logo to remove the faint blue line at the bottom of the “F” icon. The letter F moved closer to the edge of the box. Following a campaign by 100 advocacy groups, Facebook agreed to update its policy on hate speech. The campaign highlighted content promoting domestic and sexual violence against women, and used over 57,000 tweets and more than 4,900 emails that caused withdrawal of advertising from the site by 15 companies, including Nissan UK, House of Burlesque and Nationwide UK. The social media website initially responded by stating that “while it may be vulgar and offensive, distasteful content on its own does not violate our policies”. It decided to take action on May 29, 2013, after it “become clear that our systems to identify and remove hate speech have failed to work as effectively as we would like, particularly around issues of gender-based hate.”

On June 12, 2013, Facebook announced on its newsroom that it was introducing clickable hashtags to help users follow trending discussions, or search what others are talking about on a topic. A July 2013 Wall Street Journal article identified the Facebook IPO as the cause of a change in the U.S.’ national economic statistics, as the local government area of the company’s headquarters, San Mateo County, California, became the top wage-earning county in the country after the fourth quarter of 2012. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the average weekly wage in the county was US$3,240, 107% higher than the previous year. It noted the wages were “the equivalent of $168,000 a year, and more than 50% higher than the next-highest county, New York County (better known as Manhattan), at $2,107 a week, or roughly $110,000 a year.”

Russian internet firm Mail.Ru sold its Facebook shares for US$525 million on September 5, 2013, following its initial $200 million investment in 2009. Partly owned by Russia’s richest man, Alisher Usmanov, the firm owned a total of 14.2 million remaining shares prior to the sale. In the same month, the Chinese government announced that it will lift the ban on Facebook in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone “to welcome foreign companies to invest and to let foreigners live and work happily in the free-trade zone.” Facebook was first blocked in China in 2009.

Facebook was announced as a member of The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) in October 2013, when the A4AI was launched. The A4AI is a coalition of public and private organisations that includes Google, Intel and Microsoft. Led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the A4AI seeks to make Internet access more affordable so that access is broadened in the developing world, where only 31% of people are online. Google will help to decrease Internet access prices so that they fall below the UN Broadband Commission’s worldwide target of 5% of monthly income. A Reuters report, published on December 11, 2013, stated that Standard & Poor’s announced the placement of Facebook on its S&P 500 index “after the close of trading on December 20.” Facebook announced Q4 2013 earnings of $523 million (20 cents per share), an increase of $64 million from the previous year, as well as 945 million mobile users.

By January 2014, Facebook’s market capitalization had risen to over $134 billion. At the end of January 2014, 1.23 billion users were active on the website every month. The company celebrated its 10th anniversary during the week of February 3, 2014. In each of the first three months of 2014, over one billion users logged into their Facebook account on a mobile device.

In February 2014, Facebook announced that it would be buying mobile messaging company Whatsapp for US$19 billion in cash and stock.[101] In June 2014, Facebook announced the acquisition of Pryte, a Finnish mobile data-plan firm that aims to make it easier for mobile phone users in underdeveloped parts of the world to use wireless Internet apps. At the start of July 2014, Facebook announced the acquisition of LiveRail, a San Francisco, California-based online video advertising company. LiveRail’s technology facilitates the sale of video inventory across different devices. The terms of the deal were undisclosed, but TechCrunch reported that Facebook paid between US$400 million and $500 million. As part of the company’s second quarter results, Facebook announced in late July 2014 that mobile accounted for 62% of its advertising revenue, which is an increase of 21% from the previous year.

Alongside other American technology figures like Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook, Zuckerberg hosted visiting Chinese politician Lu Wei, known as the “Internet czar” for his influence in the enforcement of China’s online policy, at Facebook’s headquarters on December 8, 2014. The meeting occurred after Zuckerberg participated in a Q&A session at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, on October 23, 2014, where he attempted to converse in Mandarin—although Facebook is banned in China, Zuckerberg is highly regarded among the people and was at the university to help fuel the nation’s burgeoning entrepreneur sector. A book of Chinese president Xi Xinping found on Zuckerberg’s office desk attracted a great deal of attention in the media, after the Facebook founder explained to Lu, “I want them [Facebook staff] to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Zuckerberg fielded questions during a live Q&A session at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park on December 11, 2014. The question of whether the platform would adopt a dislike button was raised again, and Zuckerberg said, “We’re [Facebook] thinking about it … It’s an interesting question,” and said that he likes the idea of Facebook users being able to express a greater variety of emotions. In October 2015, Zuckerberg said that instead of creating a dislike button, Facebook is testing emoji reactions as an alternative to the ‘like’ button. On February 24, 2016, Facebook launched Facebook Reactions, which allows users to respond to posts with multiple reactions in addition to “liking” it. According to a study by quintly- a social media analytics company, these reactions were hardly used initially immediately after the release of the Facebook Reactions. However, the second study revealed that the use of Facebook Reactions is picking up. They reported that the Facebook pages with more than 10 million fans, the new Facebook Reactions increased by a remarkable 47%.

As of January 21, 2015, Facebook’s algorithm is programmed to filter out false or misleading content, such as fake news stories and hoaxes, and will be supported by users who select the option to flag a story as “purposefully fake or deceitful news.” According to Reuters, such content is “being spread like a wildfire” on the social media platform. Facebook maintained that “satirical” content, “intended to be humorous, or content that is clearly labeled as satire,” will be taken into account and should not be intercepted. The algorithm, however, has been accused of maintaining a “filter bubble”, where both material the user disagrees with and posts with a low level of likes, will also not be seen. In 2015 November, Zuckerberg prolonged period of paternity leave from 4 weeks to 4 months.

On April 12, 2016, Zuckerberg revealed a decade-long plan for Facebook in a keynote address. His speech outlined his vision, which was centered around three main pillars: artificial intelligence, increased connectivity around the world and virtual and augmented reality. He also announced a new Facebook Messenger platform, which will have developers creating bots that are able to engage in automatic interactions with customers. In June 2016 Facebook announced Deep Text, a natural language processing AI which will learn user intent and context in 20 languages.

On May 31, 2016, Facebook, along with Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, jointly agreed to a European Union code of conduct obligating them to review “[the] majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech” posted on their services within 24 hours.

Facebook introduced 360-degree photo to posts on June 9, 2016. If one has a compatible Samsung phone, Facebook will display a dedicated “view in VR” button, then users will have to insert the phone into their Gear VR headsets to watch the photo in a more immersive style.

In July 2016, a $US 1 billion lawsuit was filed against the company alleging that it permitted the Hamas group to use it to perform assaults that ended the lives of 4 people. Facebook released the blueprints of Surround 360 camera on GitHub under Open-source license.

In September 2016, it won an Emmy for its Visual animated short “Henry”.

On September 30, Facebook launched “Messenger Day” in Poland, a competitor to Snapchat, where users can share filtered photos and videos that disappear in 24 hours.

In October 2016, Facebook announced a fee based communications tool called Workplace that aims to “connect everyone” while at work. Users can create profiles, see updates from co-workers on their news feed, stream live video and participate in secure group chats.

In November 2016, Facebook acquired FacioMetrics, a face recognition technology company started out of Carnegie Mellon.

Facebook paid the American Farm Bureau $8.5 million for the domain name FB.com, now used internally by employees of the social network. The transaction might have included other related web addresses yet to be revealed.

Facebook spend $8.5 million to acquire Fb.com, more than 42 times the amount the company originally paid for Facebook.com.

Facebook purchased the domain last year from the American Farm Bureau Federation, which uses fb.org as its primary domain. In its annual meeting in the USA, the non-profit organisation revealed that it earned $8.5 million on the sale of fb.com.

Facebook.com purchase was seems as expensive for the company at that time however investment has clearly paid off. Facebook hope that fb.com will also fall in the same line.

The social network’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg had first revealed the purchase itself, but not the price, during the November 15 press conference announcing the new messaging platform. Today Reuters reported that the purchase price of $8.5 million.

The news wire obtained the price information from the annual meeting of the Farm Bureau in Atlanta today, where officials said the organization earned $8.5 million on the sale of “a couple of domain names,” but were not allowed to identify the buyer. This suggests that the transaction included at least one additional web address besides FB.com.

The Farm Bureau continues to use fb.org for its Internet address, and may own as many as four dozen domain names related to farming, according to Reuters. The article didn’t spell out any of these additional addresses, nor for that matter, what URL(s) Facebook might have received in addition to FB.com.

As for the price, $8.5 million may seems steep when regarded only as something for internal use by employees; call it a legal expenditure and the amount makes a lot more sense, part of Facebook’s overarching strategy of pre-empting domain name squatting and trademark infringement. Assuming the Farm Bureau passed on most of the proceeds of the sale to agricultural concerns that need the money, that makes the whole transaction a win-win.

The last time Facebook made headlines for buying a domain name was in August 2005, when it paid $200,000 to land Facebook.com. At the time, the now 500-million user social-networking giant was still known as TheFacebook. The FB.com domain is not the only acquisition Facebook made in 2010. Although Google led the pack with the most acquisitions of the year, Facebook made five purchases of its own. Facebook’s purchases included for example, startup Chai Labs and recommendation site Nextstop.

The Federal Internet Exchange (FIX) points were policy-based network peering points where U.S. federal agency networks, such as the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET), NASA Science Network (NSN), Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), and MILNET were interconnected.

Two FIXes were established in June 1989 under the auspices of the Federal Engineering Planning Group (FEPG). FIX East, at the University of Maryland in College Park and FIX West, at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The existence of the FIXes allowed the ARPANET to be phased out in mid-1990. FIX West was eventually expanded to become MAE-West, one of the NSF-supported Network Access Points.

Flickr (pronounced “flicker”) is an image hosting and video hosting website and web services suite that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo on March 20, 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, and effectively an online community, the service is widely used by photo researchers and by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. The Verge reported in March 2013 that Flickr had a total of 87 million registered members and more than 3.5 million new images uploaded daily. In August 2011 the site reported that it was hosting more than 6 billion images and this number continues to grow steadily according to reporting sources. Photos and videos can be accessed from Flickr without the need to register an account but an account must be made in order to upload content onto the website. Registering an account also allows users to create a profile page containing photos and videos that the user has uploaded and also grants the ability to add another Flickr user as a contact. For mobile users, Flickr has official mobile apps for iOS, Android,and PlayStation Vita, operating systems, and an optimised mobile website.

Flickr was launched in February 2004 by Ludicorp, a Vancouver-based company founded by Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake. The service emerged from tools originally created for Ludicorp’s Game Neverending, a web-based massively multiplayer online game. Flickr proved a more feasible project, and ultimately Game Neverending was shelved; Butterfield later launched a similar online game, Glitch, which closed down in November 2012. Early versions of Flickr focused on a chat room called FlickrLive with real-time photo exchange capabilities. The successive evolutions focused more on the uploading and filing backend for individual users and the chat room was buried in the site map. It was eventually dropped as Flickr’s backend systems evolved away from Game Neverending’s codebase. Key features of Flickr not initially present are tags, marking photos as favorites, group photo pools and interestingness, for which a patent is pending.

Yahoo acquired Ludicorp and Flickr in March 2005. The acquisition reportedly cost $22 to $25 million. During the week of 26 June – 2 July 2005, all content was migrated from servers in Canada to servers in the United States, and all resulting data become subject to United States federal law. In May 2007, Yahoo announced that Yahoo Photos would close down on 20 September 2007, after which all photos would be deleted; users were encouraged to migrate to Flickr. In January 2007, Flickr announced that “Old Skool” members—those who had joined before the Yahoo acquisition—would be required to associate their account with a Yahoo ID by 15 March to continue using the service. This move was criticized by some users.

Flickr upgraded its services from beta to “gamma” in May 2006; the changes attracted positive attention from Lifehacker. In December 2006, upload limits on free accounts were increased to 100 MB a month (from 20 MB) and were removed from Flickr Pro accounts, which originally had a 2 GB per month limit. On 9 April 2008, Flickr began allowing paid subscribers to upload videos, limited to 90 seconds in length and 150 MB in size. On 2 March 2009, Flickr added the facility to upload and view HD videos, and began allowing free users to upload normal-resolution video. At the same time, the set limit for free accounts was lifted. In 2009, Flickr announced a partnership with Getty Images in which selected users could submit photographs for stock photography usage and receive payment. In 2010, this was changed so that users could label images as suitable for stock use themselves.

On 20 May 2013, Flickr launched the first stage of a major site redesign, introducing a “Justified View” close-spaced photo layout browsed via “infinite scrolling” and adding new features, including one terabyte of free storage for all users, a scrolling home page (mainly of contacts photos and comments) and updated Android app. The Justified View is paginated between 72 and 360 photos per page but unpaginated in search result presentation. Tech Radar described the new style Flickr as representing a “sea change” in its purpose. Many users criticized the changes, and the site’s help forum received thousands of negative comments. In March 2014, Flickr’s New Photo Experience, a user interface redesign, left beta.

On May 7, 2015, Yahoo overhauled the site, adding a revamped Camera Roll, a new way to upload photos and upgraded to the site’s apps. The new Uploadr application was made available for Macs, Windows and mobile devices.

Corporate changes

In June 2008, Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield announced his resignation, which followed his wife and co-founder Caterina Fake, who left the company on 13 June 2008. Butterfield wrote a humorous resignation letter to Brad Garlinghouse.

On 14 December 2008, The Guardian reported that three employees had been laid off as Yahoo continued to reduce its workforce, and on 30 November 2010, CNET reported Yahoo was on the verge of a major layoff affecting 10–20% of its workforce. Flickr was specifically named as a target for these layoffs.

On 25 July 2016, Verizon announced that it had entered a deal to acquire Yahoo and Flickr. The deal is expected to close in Q1 of 2017.

Features

Accounts

Flickr offers three types of account: Free, Ad Free and Doublr. The free option includes one terabyte of storage limited to 200 MB per photo and 1 GB per video with maximum length 3 minutes. The Ad Free option allows subscribers to avoid advertisements for an annual fee. The Doublr account includes twice the storage of a free account. In May 2011, Flickr added an option to easily reverse an account termination, motivated by the accidental deletion of a Flickr user’s account, and public reporting of its protracted restoration. Flickr may delete accounts without giving any reason or warning to the account’s owner.

Before May 2013, Flickr offered two types of accounts, Free and Pro. Free accounts were limited in data storage, accessibility and interaction. Pro accounts received unlimited bandwidth and storage, and allowed users to upload an unlimited number of images and videos every month. New Pro accounts are no longer offered, but old ones remain active, with no plans to retire them.

Organization

The images a Flickr photographer uploads go into their sequential “photostream”, the basis of a Flickr account. All photostreams can be displayed as a justified view, a slideshow, a “detail” view or a datestamped archive. Clicking on a photostream image opens it in the interactive “photopage” alongside data, comments and facilities for embedding images on external websites.

Users may label their uploaded images with titles and descriptions, and images may be tagged either by the uploader or by other users, if the uploader permits it. These text components enable computer searching of Flickr. Flickr was an early website to implement tag clouds, which were used until 2013, providing access to images tagged with the most popular keywords.Tagging was further revised in the photopage redesign of March 2014. Flickr has been cited as a prime example of effective use of folksonomy.

Users can organize their Flickr photos into “albums” (formerly “sets”) which are more flexible than the traditional folder-based method of organizing files, as one photo can belong to one album, many albums, or none at all. Flickr provides code to embed albums into blogs, websites and forums. Flickr albums represent a form of categorical metadata rather than a physical hierarchy. Geotagging can be applied to photos in albums, and any albums with geotagging can be related to a map using imapflickr. The resulting map can be embedded in a website. Flickr albums may be organized into “collections”, which can themselves be further organized into higher-order collections. Organizr is a web application for organizing photos within a Flickr account that can be accessed through the Flickr interface. It allows users to modify tags, descriptions and set groupings, and to place photos on a world map (a feature provided in conjunction with Yahoo Maps). It uses Ajax to emulate the look, feel and quick functionality of desktop-based photo-management applications, such as Google’s Picasa and F-Spot. Users can select and apply changes to multiple photos at a time,as an alternative to the standard Flickr interface for editing.

Access control

Flickr provides both private and public image storage. A user uploading an image can set privacy controls that determine who can view the image. A photo can be flagged as either public or private. Private images are visible by default only to the uploader, but they can also be marked as viewable by friends and/or family. Privacy settings also can be decided by adding photographs from a user’s photostream to a “group pool”. If a group is private all the members of that group can see the photo. If a group is public the photo becomes public as well. Flickr also provides a “contact list” which can be used to control image access for a specific set of users in a way similar to that of LiveJournal. In November 2006, Flickr created a “guest pass” system that allows private photos to be shared with non-Flickr members. This setting allows sets or all photos under a certain privacy category (friends or family) to be shared. Many members allow their photos to be viewed by anyone, forming a large collaborative database of categorized photos. By default, other members can leave comments about any image they have permission to view and, in many cases, can add to the list of tags associated with an image.

Interaction and compatibility

The core functionality of the site relies on standard HTML and HTTP features, allowing for wide compatibility among platforms and browsers; Flickr’s functionality includes RSS and Atom feeds and an API that enables independent programmers to expand its services. This includes a large number of third-party Greasemonkey scripts that enhance and extend the functionality of Flickr. In 2006, Flickr was the second most extended site on userscripts.org. Organizr and most of Flickr’s other text-editing and tagging interfaces use Ajax, with which most modern browsers are compliant. Images can be posted to the user’s photostream via email attachments, which enables direct uploads from many cameraphones and applications. Flickr uses the Geo microformat on over 3 million geotagged images.

According to the company, as of August 2009 Flickr is hosted on 62 databases across 124 servers, with about 800,000 user accounts per pair of servers. Based on information compiled by highscalability.com, as of November 2007 the MySQL databases are hosted on servers that are Linux-based (from Red Hat), with a software platform that includes Apache, PHP (with PEAR and Smarty), shards, Memcached, Squid, Perl, ImageMagick and Java; the system administration tools include Ganglia, SystemImager, Subcon and CVSup.

Signed-in Flickr users can “Follow” the Photostreams of other Flickr photographers. Reciprocating this process is optional. A user’s homepage contains a stream of their Contacts’ photos at 2/3 screensize.

Groups are another major means of interaction with fellow members of Flickr around common photography interests. A Flickr Group can be started by any Flickr user, who becomes its administrator and can appoint moderators. Groups may either be open access or invitation-only, and most have an associated pool of photos. The administrator of the Flickr group can monitor and set restrictions for the group, assign awards to members, and may curate and organize the photo content. Recent uploads to a group will sometimes appear on its members’ homepages. Group photo pools may be displayed in the “Justified View” or as a slideshow.

“Galleries” of photos from other photostreams may be curated by any signed-up Flickr user, provided the feature is not disabled by the photo’s uploader, these are then publicly viewable. Any Flickr user can post comments to a Flickr photo on its photopage, unless this has been disabled by the uploader, and users can “favorite” a photo. A user’s favorites can be viewed in a justified or slideshow display.

Filtering

In March 2007, Flickr added new content filtering controls that let members specify by default what types of images they generally upload (photo, art/illustration, or screenshot) and how “safe” (i.e., unlikely to offend others) their images are, as well as specify that information for specific images individually. Individual images are assigned to one of three categories: “safe”, “moderate” and “restricted”. Users can specify the same criteria when searching for images. There are some restrictions on searches for certain types of users: non-members must always use SafeSearch, which omits images noted as potentially offensive, while members whose Yahoo accounts indicate that they are underage may use SafeSearch or moderate SafeSearch, but cannot turn SafeSearch off completely. The system achieves a fairly good separation of family-friendly photos and adult content; generic image searches normally produce no pornographic results, with the visibility of adult content restricted to users and dedicated Flickr communities who have opted into viewing it.

Flickr has used this filtering system to change the level of accessibility to “unsafe” content for entire nations, including South Korea, Hong Kong and Germany. In summer 2007, German users staged a “revolt” over being assigned the user rights of a minor.

Licensing

Flickr offers users the ability to either release their images under certain common usage licenses or label them as “all rights reserved”. The licensing options primarily include the Creative Commons 2.0 attribution-based and minor content-control licenses – although jurisdiction and version-specific licenses cannot be selected. As with “tags”, the site allows easy searching of only those images that fall under a specific license. Several museums and archives post images released under a “no known restrictions” license, which was first made available on 16 January 2008.

According to Flickr, the goal of the license is to “firstly show you hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer.” Participants include The National Museum of Denmark, Powerhouse Museum, George Eastman House, Library of Congress, Nationaal Archief, National Archives and Records Administration, National Library of Scotland, State Library of New South Wales and Smithsonian Institution.

In May 2009, White House official photographer Pete Souza began using Flickr as a conduit for releasing White House photos. The photos were initially posted with a Creative Commons Attribution license requiring that the original photographers be credited. Flickr later created a new license which identified them as “United States Government Work”, which does not carry any copyright restrictions.

In March 2015 Flickr added the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark and Creative Commons Zero (CC0) to its licensing options. The Public Domain Mark is meant for images that are no longer protected by copyright. CC0 is used for works that are still protected by copyright or neighbouring rights but where the rights holders choose to waive those rights.

Sale of Creative Commons-licensed photos

In November 2014, Flickr announced that it would sell wall-sized prints of photos from the service that are licensed under Creative Commons licenses allowing commercial use. Although its use of the photos in this manner is legal and allowed under the licenses, Flickr was criticized by users for what they perceived to be unfair exploitation of artists’ works, as all the profits from these offerings go to Yahoo! and are not shared with their respective photographers, and users were not given a means of opting-out from the program without placing their photos under a more restrictive non-commercial license. By contrast, a similar opt-in program for “licensed” photos does give photographers a 51% share of sales. On December 19, 2014, Bernardo Hernandez announced that Flickr would pull all Creative Commons-licensed content from the program and issue refunds, stating that “Subsequently, we’ll work closely with Creative Commons to come back with programs that align better with our community values.”

On October 27, 1986, Fluke Corporation registered the fluke.com domain name, making it 30th .com domain ever to be registered.

Fluke Corporation, a subsidiary of Fortive, is a manufacturer of industrial testing equipment including electronic test equipment. It was started in 1948 by John Fluke, who was a friend and roommate of David Packard, future co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, when both were employed at General Electric. Today, Fluke Corporation is a global corporation with operations worldwide. It designs, develops, manufactures, and sells commercial electronic test and measurement instruments for scientific, service, educational, industrial, and government applications. Fluke Biomedical and Fluke Networks are sister organizations.

Company History

Fluke Corporation was founded in Washington state by John Fluke on October 7, 1953 as the John Fluke Manufacturing Company, Inc., producing electrical metering equipment. In certain instrumentation categories, Fluke was a strong competitor to U.S instrumentation leader Hewlett-Packard, and in the category of calibration equipment, Fluke was the industry leader. By the end of the decade, the total market for test and measurement equipment had grown to $6 billion. Fluke’s share of that figure was a healthy $150 million annually by the end of the 1970s. Industry sales continued to increase in the 1980s. Between 1975 and 1985, Fluke’s sales rose at an annual average of nearly 20 percent, but with the late 1980s contraction in U.S. defense spending due to a reduction in United States-Russia tension, Fluke’s sales to the government and to aerospace companies declined. The sale of Fluke’s line of large bench and rack mounted equipment such as digital voltmeters and signal scanners weakened due to the increased use of PC controlled measurement and sensing modules embedded with the computer. However, in the arena of very portable hand held instruments for signal analysis and voltage measurement, Fluke was a leader. Sales in this category remained strong.

Fluke was bought by the Danaher Corporation in 1998. Danaher spun off several subsidiaries, including Fluke, in 2016 to create Fortive. Today Fluke is a billion dollar company and its markets range from industrial and commercial facility operations to precision measurement and calibration (Fluke Calibration), data communications (Fluke Networks), to medical equipment (Fluke Biomedical). Newer contributions by Fluke to test and measurement technology in the last 10 years include thermal imaging (working with Raytek and then ISI) and remote wireless displays.

Capabilities

Fluke’s NIST-traceable in-house calibration laboratory provides the standards to which Fluke products and manufacturing equipment are calibrated and maintained. Internationally recognized through accreditation by NIST NVLAP and Germany’s DKD programs, the standards lab is headed by Jeff C. Gust. Additionally, Fluke maintains an environmental safety lab where prototype Fluke products are baked, frozen, shaken, shocked and abused with the equivalent of years of hard use. If a test exposes a flaw or weakness, it is re-engineered and then re-tested.

Fluke’s complete test and measurement line now includes digital multimeters, clamp meters, electrical testers, power quality analyzers, thermal imagers, insulation resistance testers, portable oscilloscopes, earth ground testers, infrared and contact thermometers, air quality meters, and vibration testers.

These tools are used by industrial technicians, process technicians, industrial electricians, electrical contractors, commercial electricians, power quality consultants, energy auditors, thermographers, metrologists, electrical and electronic engineers, design and test engineers, calibration engineers, HVAC technicians and contractors, facility maintenance, and building diagnostics professionals. Fluke’s headquarters is located in Everett, Washington, U.S., but the company has facilities worldwide.

Market segments

Fluke Networks

Fluke Networks began as a business unit within Fluke Corporation in 1992. By 2000, Fluke Networks had grown substantially, and differences between Fluke Networks and Fluke Corporation were apparent – different customers, different sales channels and sales processes, and different products designed for different applications. In 2000, Fluke Networks became a separate operational division with a new brand and a separate identity.

Fluke Biomedical

Fluke Biomedical has been around for 30 years, serving biomedical test customers in the manufacturing of biomedical test and simulation products, including electrical safety testers, patient simulators, performance analyzers, and fully integrated and automated performance testing and documentation systems. Fluke Biomedical also provides diagnostic imaging, radiation safety, and oncology quality-assurance solutions for regulatory compliance.

Fluke Calibration

With the acquisition of the Precision Measurement Division of Wavetek Wandell Goltermann in early 2000, Fluke strengthened its position in the electrical calibration marketplace. Subsequent acquisitions of Hart Scientific, DH Instruments, Pressurements and Ruska added expertise and product lines in temperature and pressure/flow calibration. The Fluke Calibration line of calibrators, standards, waveform generators, calibration software products, and support equipment provide exacting standards for companies and government organizations who must meet strict international quality requirements.