The General Electric Company, or GE (NYSE: GE), is a multinational American technology and services conglomerate incorporated in the State of New York.[5] In 2009, Forbes ranked General Electric as the world's largest company.
By 1890, Thomas Edison had brought together several of his business interests under one corporation to form Edison General Electric. At about the same time, Thomson-Houston Company, under the leadership of Charles A. Coffin, gained access to a number of key patents through the acquisition of a number of competitors. Subsequently, General Electric was formed by the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Company.
In 2004 GE bought Vivendi's television and movie assets, becoming the third largest media conglomerate in the world. The new company was named NBC Universal. Also in 2004 GE completed the spin-off of most of its mortgage and life insurance assets into an independent company, Genworth Financial, based in Richmond, Virginia.

In May 2008, GE announced it was exploring options for divesting the bulk of its Consumer and Industrial business.
General Electric has the fourth most recognized brand in the world, worth almost $49 billion.[11] Their logo is affectionately referred to as "The Meatball" by GE employees.[12]

CEO Jeffrey Immelt had a set of changes in the presentation of the brand commissioned in 2004, after he took the reins as chairman, to unify the diversified businesses of GE. The changes included a new corporate color palette, small modifications to the GE Logo, a new customized font (GE Inspira), and a new slogan, "imagination at work" replacing the longtime slogan "we bring good things to life", composed by David Lucas. The standard requires many headlines to be lowercased and adds visual "white space" to documents and advertising to promote an open and approachable company. The changes were designed by Wolff Olins and are used extensively on GE's marketing, literature and website.
The value of the brand is reinforced by ownership of two letter domain ge.com. The domain was registered on August 5, 1986.[13] General Electric is one of the few corporations worldwide to own a two letter domain name.[14] The brand is also reflected by the GE New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol.
GE's divisions include GE Capital (including GE Commercial Finance and GE Money and GE Consumer Finance[15]), GE Technology Infrastructure (including GE Aviation,the former Smiths Aerospace and GE Healthcare), GE Energy Infrastructure, and NBC Universal, an entertainment company.
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