Google may have humble beginnings but today they are a titan on the world stage. Google ( Alphabet Inc. ) have their hands in everything, shaping the world we live in. Imagine how different everything would be if Google never existed. Find out 30 facts about one of the companies remaking our world in it’s image.
Every query has to travel on average 1,500 miles to a data center and back to return the answer to the user.
A single Google query uses 1,000 computers in 0.2 seconds to retrieve an answer
16% to 20% of queries that get asked every day have never been asked before.
In 1999, it took Google one month to crawl and build an index of about 50 million pages.In 2012, the same task was accomplished in less than one minute
Buffy the vampire slayer
Buffy the vampire slayer was the first to use the term “to Google” something. The first time someone said they were going “to Google” something was on an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer on October 15th, 2002.
Foobar
Google uses a special web tool named foo bar, by which it recruits new employees based on what they search for online
Google Image Search
Google image search launched with 250 million searchable images. This grew to 1 billion images by 2005 and over 10 billion images by 2010.
Going Public
When Google first went public they were valued the same as the general motors. The company sold 19,605,052 shares of stock for $85 per share. It was valued at $27 billion.
BAckrub
In 1996, Page and Brin collaborated on a pioneering “web crawler” concept curiously called BackRub. Some speculate that the early search engine’s nomenclature was a nod to retrieving backlinks. BackRub, which linked to Brin’s and Page’s ’90s-tastic original homepages, lived on Stanford’s servers for more than a year, but eventually chewed up too much bandwidth.
“Googol”
Page and Brin registered the domain name of their mushrooming project as Google, a twist on “googol,” a mathematical term represented by the numeral one followed by 100 zeros. The name hinted at the seemingly infinite amount of data the brainy pair code their fledgling search engine to mine, make sense of and deliver. Some believe it originally meant to be called “Googol,” but investors spelled it “Google” on a check and it stuck.
Google’s first doodle was a Burning Man stick figure.
Google’s inaugural doodle was an out-of-the-office message that Page and Brin created in August of 1998 to let people know they’d shipped off to the Burning Man festival. The future billionaires positioned the iconic Man behind the second “o” in Google’s logo.
Google’s first office was a rented garage.
Starting in September 1998, the company’s first workspace was Susan Wojcicki’s garage on Santa Margarita Ave. in Menlo Park, Calif. Wojcicki, sister of 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki, is Google employee number 16. She was Google’s first marketing manager and is now the CEO of YouTube. As for the house that built Google, the tech titan bought it, because of course it did. Then it filled the suburban ranch-style dwelling with candy, snacks and lava lamps.
Google New York began at a Starbucks on 86th Street.
In 2000, Google unofficially kicked off its New York arm at a Starbucks in New York City. It was helmed by a one-person sales “team.” Now, thousands of “NYooglers” clock-in at its swanky, 2.9 million-square-foot New York office, a former Port Authority building on 111 8th Ave.
Google’s odd languages
Swedish Chef is a language preference in Google search. Gurndy morn-dee burn-dee, who knew? Yes, it’s true. In 2001, Google got in touch with its inner yodelling Muppet and opened the gates for search queries and results in Swedish Chef lingo (called Bork Bork Bork, to be technical). Other “joke” languages you can tickle Google’s algorithm with include: Elmer Fudd, Pirate, Klingon, Pig Latin and, of course, Hacker (a.k.a. 1337sp34k).
Gmail was launched on April Fool’s Day, no joke.
Toying with Silicon Valley’s longstanding tradition of pulling April Fool’s Day pranks, Google unveiled Gmail on April 1, 2004, in a wackily-worded announcement that was widely misconstrued as a hoax. It wasn’t Google Gulp. It was a brilliant double fake and the precursor to a Google staple that now serves millions of users across the world every day.
Google’s acquisition of YouTube
We didn’t want to meet at offices,” YouTube co-founder Steven Chen said, “so we were like, ‘Where’s a place that none of us would go?’” That place turned out to be a Denny’s in Palo Alto, Calif. Mozzarella sticks were nibbled, hands were shaken. The 2006 landmark acquisition was a Grand Slam for Chen and co-founders Jawed Karim and Chad Hurley. Not bad for the time. Google doled out $1.65 billion for what would explode into the Internet’s most-watched — and most uploaded-to — video platform.
Private Planes & Nasa
Larry and Sergey’s private planes have special runways at NASA, which no other plane is allowed to land.
Google knows what’s important
No matter which part you’re in the Google office, you’re not more than 150 feet away from any kind of food.
Selling itself short
Google attempted to sale itself to online company Excite in 1999 for USD 1 million, but the CEO refused the offer. Now, Google is worth more than USD 300 billion.
Google translates more than words
Google helps in pronouncing very large digits if you type “=english” after searching for them in the search bar
Showing they care
Google employees in the US also get death benefits, which guarantee that the domestic partner or surviving spouse will get 50% of their salary every year for the next decade
Google wants it all!
Google has acquired, on average, more than one company per week since 2010.
Google and Legos
The first Google computer storage was built with Legos.
Google owns a pet T-rex
Google owns a pet T-rex, named Stan, which has been placed at their California Headquarters. The intention of placing it in the office was to remind the employees not to let Google go extinct. (I don’t think they need to worry about that anytime soon.)
Suicide Prevention
It will provide the Suicide Helpline number of your country above all the searched results
Google Sky maps
Google Sky maps let you view and explore more about stars, constellations, galaxies, and planets
Let Google plan your wedding?
Google also works as a wedding planner. Yes..!! you heard it right, you can also plan your special day with the help of it
“Atari Breakout”
If you search “Atari Breakout” in Google Images, you will be able to play the game just by clicking on any of its images.
“Google Mirror”
There is a rotated version which is known as “Google Mirror” that shows everything in a mirrored form.
Google Suite
Google has 250 other products, other than the search engine, all of which have a combined user base of over a billion people
Adwords
The majority of googles revenue comes from its advertising business, not the search engine.
