Google Ranks No. 1 on FORTUNE's 2007 Best Companies to Work For

(New York) -- Google (GOOG (Charts)) ranks no. 1 on FORTUNE's 2007 Best Companies to Work For list this year. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company was not ranked on the 2006 list.

Google, with 6,500 U.S. employees, added 2,229 jobs last year. A Research Associate, its most common salaried job, is paid an average of $76,000 annually.

Our new No. 1 sets the standard for Silicon Valley: free meals, swimming spa, and free doctors onsite. Engineers can spend 20% of time on independent projects. No wonder Google gets 1,300 résumés a day.

Ten years ago, when Fortune began compiling this list, the idea that your employer would deliver your groceries (a new perk at Microsoft) or allow you to do your laundry at work (Google) might have seemed crazy. (Of course, the idea that you'd be paying out-of-pocket for health care would have sounded just as nuts.)

Indeed, much has changed in the American workplace over the past decade. Back then 18 companies on Fortune's list offered telecommuting; today 82 do. Only 28 companies on the list offered domestic-partner benefits; now that number is 70.

Competition to get on the list has intensified too: This year 446 public and private companies vied for a slot, up from 161 in 1998. And 100,000 workers evaluated their employers, making this by far the largest simultaneous employee survey in corporate America.

Other tech employers on this year's list include:

Network Appliance (Best Companies rank: 6) NTAP (Charts)

Cisco (Best Companies rank: 11) CSCO (Charts)

Yahoo (Best Companies rank: 44) YHOO (Charts)

Microsoft (Best Companies rank: 50) MSFT (Charts)

CDW ((Best Companies rank: 82) CDWC (Charts)