How Google Governs the Internet

The extent to which Google governs the internet today is unsurpassable. Google has tactfully developed products and services that are ubiquitous in the cyber realm, in addition, these products and services are user friendly designed to meet the consumer needs, encompassing current and potentially future market trends.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on How Google Governs the Internet specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Google seems to set standards for the industry by influencing every sector and reasserting the company’s market dominance. This document will highlight Google’s efforts in revolutionizing the internet industry focusing specifically on products, services, market command and their usability. Google has greatly invested in internet based search engine, software, data and advertizing. AdWords, a Google subsidiary, has the primary function of income generation from advertisements. Other than Goo gle’s core web search engine, it has successfully developed a series of online services as well as acquiring other internet-based brands in collaboration with some innovative online companies. This has led to the Company’s rapid growth since it was incorporated in 1998. According to Pandia Search Engine News (2007), Google has established over one million servers and three million computers worldwide to handle search traffic and support their online products and services, which translates to twenty-four Pet bytes of processed data each day. Alexa (2011) lists www.google.com as the most visited site on the internet, more so in the United States and several other countries in the world. It also ranks highly other Google owned sites such as YouTube, Blogger, and Orkut. As a market leader, Google has been criticized on issues such as violation of privacy, copyright, censorship as well as high-energy consumption of the servers. This has not legally hurt Google because most of these criticisms are based on issues that do not feature in the cyber laws (Rosen, 2008). Google Web Search According to Alexa (2011), over the last three months, Google Web Search has been the most utilized search engine on the internet. On October 10, 2011, approximately 48% of the people who logged into the internet visited Google’s search engine with 27% spending an average of thirteen minutes.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More On the above mentioned date, Google ranked first in the United States of America, Iran, South Korea, Bangladesh to mention a few. It ranked second in India, Brazil, Netherlands, Algeria, Ukraine and ranked third in most European countries including, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy. Google search engine is a simple website that features a search bar in the middle. This simplicity has not changed much for the last fourteen years. In addition, the website contains eight links. The links are located at the top left corner of the interface. The first one is Google Plus, second link is the World Wide Web, the third link is Videos, the fourth link is Maps on the Internet, the fifth link is to leading news items worldwide, the sixth link is to Google Mail and the last link labeled â€Å"more† is an open door to over ten links. It is not easy to imagine such a simple site with so much to offer. Compared to other leading search engines, Google has been remarkable, which explains the reason why it has set precedence in ‘search’ on the internet. According to Alexa (2011), compared to Google, Yahoo Search ranked fourth with 23% of internet user visits on 10 October 2011 a position it has maintained for the last three months. Bing Search on the other hand did not even come close to top ten most visited sites. Google Plus Google Plus is a social networking site launched on 28, June 2011 and is one of the newest p roducts from Google. It integrates features such as friendship circles, social hangouts and mobile phone contacts. According to Par (2011), Google Plus is an ambitious answer to Face book. A day after the launch, users were asked to invite friends to Google Plus, this activity was put on hold the following day after an overwhelming demand for accounts (Shaer, 2011). By 6 August, individual account holders received 150 invites (Brinkmann, 2011). Google Plus is one Google’s services launched to enable it exert significant influence on the internet.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on How Google Governs the Internet specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Google Videos Google Videos is a product that Google launched on January 25, 2005 (Blogoscoped, 2005). Google Videos has transformed viewing and downloading of videos on the internet. Acquisition of YouTube in 2006, added to Google Video’s service as Google inh erited a huge collection of videos. However, Google disabled the video upload feature three years after You Tube’s acquisition. Google Videos has a huge video base ranging from television programs, documentaries, movie trailers to educational materials, amateur media to professional media. In 2009, Google in collaboration with Aardvark’d:12 Weeks with Geeks alongside Waterborne launched the Google Video Store. Content providers for this service included CBS Broadcasting Inc. (CBS), National Basketball Association (NBA), The Charlie Rose Show and Sony BMG. Google Maps Internet users can access this internet based mapping application at no cost. The service offers street maps and other features such as route planners for non-commercial use. The pan able map images are not live, but updated periodically, as they could be several weeks or months old. This service makes available satellite images for most urban areas around the world in high pixel resolution. However, some areas around the world have been blurred for security reasons (Back, 2005). Coded in java script and XML, this application has made it easy for users to reverse engineer it producing other scripts. This permits users to custom tune it for use on their individual websites. With this development, Google launched Google Map API in 2005 to allow users adopt the maps in their websites (Taylor, 2005). This Application Programming Interface has been upgraded to use Adobe Flash application from java script, making it applicable for retrieving static images and geo coding for web services. It also incorporates automobile navigational tools for drivers, which has attracted a huge user base across 350,000 websites making it the most used application-programming interface on the internet (ProgrammableWeb.com, 2011).Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Google has also made it possible for users to get maps on mobile devices; this follows the introduction of Google maps for Mobile phones in 2006. Soon after in 2007, Google introduced â€Å"my location† with the release of Google Maps for Mobile 2.0. By December 15, 2008, the service was available for most smart phone platforms including Android OS in iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Windows Mobile, Nokia- S60, Windows Mobile, Symbian OS, BlackBerry, Sony Ericsson K800i, and Palm OS (Google, 2010). Google Earth This virtual geographical information application initially developed by Keyhole incorporated, maps the earth by superimposing satellite pictures and geographic information system’s three-dimensional globe. Google Earth shows satellite pictures of the Earth’s surface where users can see features on the ground from a bird’s eye view, most of these images are covered in not less than fifteen meters of resolution. It applies three-dimensional representation of terrain data received by National Aeronautics Space Administration’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (Farr et al., 2007). Google Earth has many uses among them; it can be used to assess disaster struck areas on the Earth’s surface, for instance, flood or earthquake prone regions. It is also beneficial in a classroom setting as an instructional tool (Rescigno, 2010), teachers are already taking advantage of this application in lesson planning and in teaching subjects such as geography and social sciences (Wyatt, 2010).Google Earth is available in 34 major languages of the world. Google Earth incorporates features that have made it very popular among internet users (McCollum, 2008). Tuned to suite users, these features include, â€Å"Panoramio,† this feature replaced â€Å"Geographic Web† on March 2010, after Google acquired Panoramio, a photo sharing geo location website. It enables users to access map coordinates, a significant geographic tool. The fl ight simulator in Google Earth is a great attraction for internet users; it allows users to simulate F-16 fighting Falcon at maximum speeds and high altitude. The Cirrus SR 22, also featured in the flight simulator on the other hand, offering reduced speeds at minimum altitude. Version 5.1 has the capacity to make users experience under water actions as well. Sky mode feature was added in 2007, it enables users view a simulation of the galaxy. (Google, 2011). The partnership with Space Telescope Science Institute in this venture was strategic and authenticated the application (Knight, 2007). The Street View is a wonderful feature integrating a 360 ° panoramic view of selected city streets around the world. The other interesting feature in this application is the â€Å"Water and ocean.† This allows users a three-dimensional view of underwater surface of the ocean with zoom capability. This feature integrates information from world-renowned scientists and oceanographers (Brit ish Broadcasting Corporation, 2009). Historical Imagery feature in Google Earth is only available in version 5.0 and allows users to peruse archived records of different places (Hanke, 2009). Google News Google, based on Krishna Bharat’s idea (Glaser, 2010), developed this service and launched it in 2002. Google News automatically selects news items from internet by aggregation algorithm. It aggregates content from over 25,000 publishers, which can be accessible through Google News for 30 days from aggregation date (Cohen, 2009). In addition, Google News is available in 25 major languages of the world. Google News allows users to search for news by date and time of publishing. Users can also custom the search by national audience. In addition, they have the option of subscribing in order to receive news alerts via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. The Cookie option allows users to compile stories from different Google News editions. This application enables users to crea te custom pages that integrate Google Search History. In 2006, Google News added a ‘News Archive Search’ feature. This feature allows users access archives dating back 200 years by clicking on the ‘time line view’ option. Google News provides scanned news materials to facilitate the archive database (Soni, 2008). Interestingly, in 2007, United Airlines lost $ 1 billion due to an article archived in 2002 but appeared on Google News as current most viewed item (Helft, 2008). This incident was an indication of the way Google has revolutionized news on the internet. Google Mail Developed in 2004, Gmail is a free email service that is accessed as secure web mail. The initial storage for Gmail was 1 Gigabytes for every account holder, but was later upgraded to 4 Gigabytes due to stiff competition for storage capacity in the market (Craddock, 2010). By October 11, 2011, Gmail was mentioned as having 260 million active email accounts worldwide (Terdiman, 2011). The re are features in Gmail that are comparable to none in the industry portray Google’s sophistication, dedication and zeal to dominate the market. These include the current storage capacity of 7 Gigabytes for individual email. Users needing more storage are able to rent on a yearly basis (Google, 2007). Gmail Lab is a link that enables account holders to test new Gmail features. This is gives the webmail engineers to assess user input or review of Gmail features. The Spam filter helps users deflect unwanted email. Account holders may suggest to the system ways of handling specific messages (Chitu, 2007). Mobile devices can also access Gmail; this was made possible by the introduction of the Gmail Mobile feature. Users are able to compose, read, reply emails just as on a personal computer (Kroeger, 2009). In 2010, â€Å"Google introduced a two-pane layout that is sent automatically to Gmail users on iPad† (Nicolaou, 2010). Gmail also availed a voice over data feature, wh ich in addition to voice calls allow users to chat and send text messages at no cost to other account holders and to mobile phone worldwide at a fee. Nonetheless, Gmail allows users to make free video calls to other Gmail account subscribers. On the launch date, this service handled over 1 million calls (Shankland, 2010) Google Images Google developed this service to make it easier for internet users to search for images. Images are searched based on their file names and the search results are displayed as thumbnails. The user has to click on the thumbnail to enlarge the image viewing it from the original website. Google has upgraded this interface several times. First, in 2001, when it added over 200 images to the database, by 2005, this base increased to 1 billion and by 2010, it was 10 billion (Google, 2010). In 2009, Google introduced an option of finding similar images. In 2010, Google improved the interface by auto disabling details of the image until the cursor rolls over it. Google Image has revolutionized the way internet users’ access images. With the increase in popularity of Google Image, Google has made it available for mobile phone and portable device users as well. Google Chrome Launched in December 11, 2008, this is one of the most popular browsers on the internet today with 26.16% of the market share (Stat Counter, 2011). This browser applies WebKit layout engine mechanism incorporated with ‘V8 java script’ to enhance the application’s performance. Chrome exhibits tremendous difference from other browsers, it does not run RSS feeds; it combines the address bar with the search bar and offers simplicity, speed and security to users. It portrays unique features like the graphical interface that has made it adorable by many internet users worldwide (Google, 2011). Chrome incorporates two access control mechanisms (phishing and malware). The browser warns users when they click on potentially harmful links or sites (McClou d, 2011). Statistics indicate that internet users are regularly cheated into accepting malware downloads (Hughes, 2010). Chrome allows individual tabs to fit in their own processes making them independent, this, is a complex model that prevents malware from self-installation (Chung, 2008). Chrome does not sandbox plug-in as tabs since they are not standardized; they are run at a different security level to reduce their vulnerability. Chrome also provides a porn mode feature, ‘Incognito’ that stops it from archiving information from visited websites (Google Support, 2011). Google Chrome uses the ‘V8 java script virtual machine engine’ which incorporates just-in-time compilation (JIT) and an automatic memory management that makes it twice as fast as Firefox 3.0. Google Chrome performed faster compared to several other websites that included Explorer, Safari, and Opera in a joint benchmark test (Google, V8 Benchmark Suite – version 6, 2011). According t o Mathew Moore (2008), reviewers not only appreciated Chrome’s appearance and features but also found it fast. However, they were skeptical regarding Chrome’s market dominance. In a rejoinder, Business Week reported in 2010 that, â€Å"For the first time in years, energy and resources are being poured into browsers, the ubiquitous programs for accessing content on the Web. Credit for this trend—a boon to consumers—goes to two parties. The first is Google, whose big plans for the Chrome browser have shaken Microsoft out of its competitive torpor and forced the software giant to pay fresh attention to its own browser, Internet Explorer. Microsoft all but ceased efforts to enhance IE after it triumphed in the last browser war, sending Netscape to its doom. Now it’s back in gear.† (Jaroslovsky, 2010). By July 2011, Google Chrome was the most used browser in Chile, Uruguay, Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tunisia, Armenia, Moldova, Argentina and Jamaica (Stat Counter, 2011). Android Google led a consortium of 84 information and communication technology companies collectively known as Open Handset Alliance to develop this operating system meant for mobile phones and computers. Google acquired Android incorporated in 2005. In 2007, it announced the formation of Open Handset Alliance as well as Android’s debut in the market (Open Handset Alliance, 2010). Android consist of a component integrating Linux, Application Programming Interface (API), middleware and libraries authored in general purpose computer language(C), operating on a framework including java-compatible resources based on Apache Harmony (Bray, 2010). Android has user-friendly features including, Handset layouts, a graphics library platform, which is a database storage facility, Connectivity, including Bluetooth, WI-FI, WiMAX and more. Additional features include, Messaging, both SMS and MMS, Multiple language Support, including most major languages of the world, Web browsers based on Chrome. Android contains advanced features that are java supported making it exceptional compared to other systems. These Android application programs run on Dalvik. Android also supports various video formats including, WebM, MPEG-4 SP, AMR, H.263. Audio formats include, MP3, Wav, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP,MIDI and more (Android Developers, 2011). In addition, the Android also supports multi-touch, which is prominent in the Nexus One and Motorola Droid. The primary market for Android is online. The online market is pre-installed on devices running on Android and enable users to download applications from other developers. In 2010, the market contained 200,000 applications, by April 2011, the number of installed application from the market grew to 3 billion and by June 2010, the number was 6 billion installed applications (Tsotsis, 2011). Google has introduced several applications into the Android Market, including Google Voice, Sky Map, Finance, Map Editor, Places Directory, Google Goggles and more. Google AdWords This is Google’s leading advertizing setup; it is also the main income earner. AdWords offers various online advertisement services including, cost-per-thousand, website advertising and pay-per-click. According to Google Investor Relations (2011), Google earned a total of $ 28 billion in revenues in 2010. Google websites are the primary hosts of AdWords adverts, in addition, advertisers are allowed to display their adverts on other Google affiliate and partner networks that include, American Online search, Ask.com and Netscape. Google has also developed a â€Å"Google Display Network† that displays advertisements on websites and not search engines. These websites apply a different advertising model such as AdSense and DoubleClick, which are used by those who wish to earn money-displaying advertisement on their websites. According to Google Investor Relations (2010), revenue for the first quarter from Google owne d sites was $ 2.04 billion and from collaborate sites $ 3.58 billion. In the second quarter of 2011, the revenues rose to $ 9.03 billion, with Google sites earning $ 6.23 billion and partner sites generating $ 2.48 billion. International revenues went up $ 4.87 billion 54% of total revenue of the second quarter of 2011. With almost 70% of market share (Danny Goodwin, 2011); Google has managed to influence the worldwide internet market. It has successfully positioned products and services strategically in order to take advantage of the market trends. This way, it not only dominates the market but also govern internet activities worldwide References Alexa. (2011). Top Sites. Retrieved from Alexa Web site: http://www.alexa.com/ Android Developers. (2011). Android Supported Media Formats. Retrieved from Android Web site: http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html Back, E. (2005, April). Google Maps: The White House. Retrieved from Elliottback Web site: http://elliott back.com/wp/google-maps-the-white-house/ Blogoscoped. (2005). Google Video Search Live. Retrieved from Blogoscoped Web site: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-01-25-n90.html Bray, T. (2010, November). What Android Is. Retrieved from Tbray Web site: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/11/14/What-Android-Is Brinkmann, M. (2011, August). 150 Google Plus Invites. Retrieved from Ghacks Web site: http://www.ghacks.net/2011/08/06/150-google-plus-invites/ British Broadcasting Corporation. (2009). Google Earth dives under the sea. 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Retrieved from Searchenginewatch Web site: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2049889/Hitwise-Bing-Market-Share-up-5-Google-Down-2-in-February-2011 Farr et al. (2007). Reviews of Geophysics. Pasadena, California, USA: California Institute of Technology. Glaser, M. (2010, February 4). Google News to Publishers: Let’s Make Love Not War.  Retrieved from Mediashift Web site: http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/02/google-news-to-publishers-lets-make-love-not-war035.html Googl e. (2011). Explore the sky with Google Earth. Retrieved from Earthgoogle Web site: http://earth.google.com/sky/skyedu.html Google. (2010). Google Images Presents a Nicer Way to Surf the Net. Retrieved from Google Web site: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/ooh-ahh-google-images-presents-nicer.html Google. (2010). Google Maps for mobile. Retrieved from Google Web site: www.google.com: https://www.google.com/mobile/maps/ Google Investor Relations. (2011). 2011 Financial Tables. Retrieved From www.google.com: http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html Google. (2007). More storage for photos and messages. Retrieved from Webcitation Web site: http://www.webcitation.org/5nE4hgK7M Google Support. (2011). Using the Incognito mode: private browsing. Retrieved from Google Web site: https://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py? answer=95464hl=en Google. (2011). Technology overview. Retrieved from Google Web site: https://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/tech.html Google . (2011). V8 Benchmark Suite – version 6. Retrieved from GoogleCode Web site: http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/data/benchmarks/v6/run.html Google Investor Relations. (2010). Google Announces First Quarter 2010  Financial Results. Retrieved from Googleearnings Web site: http://investor.google.com/earnings/2010/Q1_google_earnings.html Hanke, J. (2009, February ). Dive into the new Google Earth. Retrieved from Googleblog Web site: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/dive-into-new-google-earth.html Helft, M. (2008, September). How a Series of Mistakes Hurt Shares of United.  New York Times, Al. Hughes, B. (2010). Virus Bulletin : 2010 – Social engineering trumps a zero-day every  time. Retrieved from Virusbtn Web site: http://www.virusbtn.com/conference/vb2010/abstracts/Hughes.xml Jaroslovsky, R. (2010, February). Browser Wars: The Sequel. BusinessWeek, Al. Knight, W. (2007, August). Celestial add-on points Google Earth at the stars. Retrieved from Newscientist Web si te: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12523 Kroeger, R. (2009, April). A new mobile Gmail experience for iPhone and Android.  Retrieved from Gmailblog Web site: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-mobile-gmail-experience-for-iphone.html McCloud, S. Google Chrome. Comic. Google inc. Mccollum, J. (2008, January). Google Maps Growing in Popularity. Retrieved from Maketingpilgrim Web site: www.marketingpilgrim.com Moore, M. (2008, September). Google Chrome browser: Review of reviews. Retrieved from The Telegraph Web site: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3358306/Google-Chrome-browser- Review-of-reviews.html Nicolaou, A. (2010, April). Gmail on the iPad. Retrieved from Gmailblog Web site: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/gmail-on-ipad.html Open Handset Alliance. (2010). What would it take to build a better mobile phone?  Retrieved from Openhandsetalliance Web site: http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/ Pandia Serach Engine News. (2007). Google: one million servers a nd counting.  Retrieved from Pandia Web site: http://www.pandia.com/sew/481-gartner.html Par, B. (2011, June 28). Google+: First Impressions. Retrieved from Mashable Web site: http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/google-plus-review/ ProgrammableWeb.com. (2011). API Dashboard. Retrieved from Programmableweb Web site: http://www.programmableweb.com/apis Rescigno, D. (2010, April). Reinventing classroom geography with Google Earth  API. Retrieved from Googleenterprise Web site: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/04/reinventing-classroom-geography-with.html Rosen, B. J. (2008, November). Google’s Gatekeepers. Retrieved from Nytimes Web site: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/magazine/30google-t.html?_r=1partner=rssemc=rsspagewanted=all Shaer, M. (2011, June ). Looking for a Google+ invite? Either get comfortable – or get  crafty. Retrieved from Csmnitor Web site http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2011/0630/Looking-for-a-Google-invite-Either-get-comfortable -or-get-crafty. Shankland, S. (2010, August). Google: 1 million Gmail calls on first day. Retrieved from Cnn Web site: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/08/26/google.gmail. phone.calls/index.html?iref=NS1 Soni, P. (2008, September). Bring history Online One Paper at a Time. Retrieved from Googleblog Web site: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/bringing-history-online-one-newspaper.html Stat Counter. (2011). Stat Counter Global Stats: The World’s Top Five Browsers.  Retrieved from Statcounter Web site: http://gs.statcounter.com/ Taylor, B. (2005, June). The World is your javascript enabled Oyster. Retrieved from Googleblog Web site: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/world-is-your-javascript-enabled_29.html Terdiman, D. (2011, October). Microsoft aiming to clean up Hotmail user’s inboxes  Retrieved from Newscnet Web site: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20114975-52/microsoft-aiming-to-clean-up-hotmail-users-inboxes/ Tsotsis, A. (2011, July ). Google And roid Now On 130M Total Devices, With 6B App  Downloads. Retrieved from Techcrunch Web site: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/14/google-android-now-on-130-million-total- devices/?utm_source=feedburnerutm_medium=feedutm_campaign=Feed%3 A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 Wyatt, N. (2010, April). Reinventing classroom geography with Google Earth API.  Retrieved from Googleenterprise Web site: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/04/reinventing-classroom-geography-with.html This essay on How Google Governs the Internet was written and submitted by user Desiree Holder to help you with your own studies. You are free to use it for research and reference purposes in order to write your own paper; however, you must cite it accordingly. You can donate your paper here.

Biography of Lord Byron, English Poet and Aristocrat

Biography of Lord Byron, English Poet and Aristocrat Lord Byron is considered to be one of the greatest British writers and poets of his time. He became a leader in the Romantic Period, alongside contemporaries like William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley. Fast Facts: Lord Byron Occupation: English poet, romanticistBorn: 22 January 1788 in London, EnglandDied: 19 April 1824 in Missolonghi, Ottoman EmpireParents: Captain John â€Å"Mad Jack† Byron and Catherine GordonEducation: Trinity College, CambridgePublish Works: Hours of Idleness; Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, She Walks in Beauty, Don JuanSpouse: Anne Isabella MilbankeChildren: Ada Lovelace and Allegra ByronFamous Quote: There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less but Nature more. Lord Byron’s personal life was marked by tumultuous love affairs and inappropriate sexual relationships, unpaid debts, and illegitimate children. Lady Caroline Lamb, with whom Byron had an affair, famously labeled him â€Å"mad, bad, and dangerous to know.† He died in 1824 at the age of 36 from a fever he contracted during his travels in Greece. His most notable works include Don Juan, She Walks in Beauty, and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Early Life Lord Byron was born in 1788 in London under the full name George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron. He was raised in Aberdeen, Scotland, by his mother after his father fled the family and died in 1791 in France. Byron inherited his title at the age of 10, though he later adopted his mother-in-law’s family name, Noel, in order to inherit half of her estate. Imagno/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Byron’s mother was prone to mood swings and heavy drinking. Due to mistreatment by his mother coupled with a deformed foot and an uneven temper, Byron lacked discipline and structure in his formative years. He was educated at Harrow School in London, followed by Trinity College at Cambridge, though he spent most of his time at the latter engaging in sexual relationships and sporting activities. It was during this time that he began writing and publishing works.   Marriage, Affairs, and Children Lord Byron first showed his affections for a distant cousin who indulged him for a while before rejecting his affections. In subsequent years, Byron had promiscuous affairs with many women, including Lady Caroline Lamb, Lady Oxford, and his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, who later gave birth to a daughter widely considered to be Byron’s. Lord Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke in January 1815, and the following year she gave birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada (later Ada Lovelace). Shortly after the birth of their daughter, Lord and Lady Byron separated, with Anne Isabella indicating the cause to be his incestual relations with his half-sister. During this time, Lord Byron developed a close relationship with Percy and Mary Shelley and Mary’s sister Claire Clairmont, who also had a daughter with Byron called Allegra.   Travels After completing his education at Cambridge, Lord Byron embarked on a two-year journey across Spain, Portugal, Malta, Albania, and Greece, from which he drew inspiration for Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. After Byron finalized the separation from his wife, he left England permanently for Switzerland, where he spent time with the Shelleys. He went on to travel across Italy engaging in promiscuous affairs, writing and publishing work along the way. He spent six years in Italy, where he wrote and released Don Juan. Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire, 18th century. The abbey was formerly an Augustinian priory but was converted into a domestic home following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It is the ancestral home of Lord Byron. Hulton Archive / Getty Images In 1823, Lord Byron was asked to assist in the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire. He sold his estate in England to raise money for the Greek cause, part of which he used to enable a fleet of ships to sail to Missolonghi, where he planned to help attack the Turks. Death While in Missolonghi, Lord Byron contracted a fever and died at the age of 36. His heart was removed and buried in Missolonghi, and his body was returned to England. His burial at Westminster Abbey was denied, so Byron was buried in his family tomb in Newstead. He was deeply mourned in England and in Greece.   Legacy After spurning his initial affections, Lady Caroline Lamb labeled Lord Byron â€Å"mad, bad, and dangerous to know,† a statement that stuck with him for life and beyond. Because of his generous financial support and acts of bravery in the Greek Wars of Independence, Lord Byron is widely considered to be a Greek national hero. However, his true legacy is the collection of work he left behind. Don Juan Don Juan is a satirical epic poem written by Lord Byron during the last years of his life. It is based on the legendary womanizer Don Juan, though Lord Byron reversed these character traits to make Don Juan easily susceptible to seduction. The poem is considered to be a reflection of Byron’s personal character and the disappointment with which he felt constantly burdened. Don Juan is comprised of 16 completed sections, called cantos and a final, 17th canto that remained unfinished at the time of Byron’s death in 1824. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Written and released between 1812 and 1818, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage tells the story of a young man who travels the world to fill the void left by disillusionment and sadness he feels as a result of the revolutionary wars on the European continent. Much of the content in Childe is derived from Byron’s personal travels from Portugal to Constantinople. Sources Byron, George Gordon.  Don Juan. Pantianos Classics, 2016.Byron, George Gordon, and Jerome J. McGann.  Lord Byron, the Major Works. Oxford University Press, 2008.Eisler, Benita.  Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame. Vintage Books, 2000.Galt, John.  The Life of Lord Byron. Kindle ed., 1832.MacCarthy, Fiona.  Byron: Life and Legend. John Murray, 2014.