It was quietly launched on January 22, 2004 by search engine company Google. The service was created by Orkut Buyukkokten in the 20% of his time that Google encourages employees to spend on their own projects. This service is similar to Friendster, another so-called social networking space.

Someone who spends altogether too much time building their network on Orkut is sometimes called an Orslut or a Whorkut.

Their terms of service are quite confiscative, and go even beyond what's normally possible with copyrights:

By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials.