The web giant, Google has been ruling the world, is a dream company for most tech and engineering graduates around the world. The web giant is set to turn 22 this year. Here are some interesting facts about Google.
Originally the name was BackRub
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two founders had no idea that they would create this big an empire from their research project. They had researched on the mathematical properties of the internet, that ended up becoming a digital behemoth. They had first developed an algorithm named PageRank, which they named as “BackRub”. The purpose of the algorithm was to rank and measure the importance of webpages based on inbound links, which was the skeleton of Google search. Later, the name was changed to Google rightly. Else it would have been a pretty humorous point in a random conversation, “Let me BackRub.” This is an interesting facts about Google.
Included in Oxford dictionary
“Google” was included in the Oxford English Dictionary from June 2006 as a verb. It meant: “Search for information about (someone or something) on the Internet using the search engine Google.”
The founders had frequent clashes
Page and Brin weren’t friends at the start. They used to have frequent clashes on every petty topic. Despite their arguments, the pair ended up becoming friends and joined together on a research project which changed the world forever.
Derived from Googol
The giant is the biggest ever and most public spelling mistake ever done. The founders settled on “Googol” as the name for their search engine, which means a very large number (1 followed by 100 zeros). They were delighted to find that Google.com was available when they went to register the domain name and rolled it out anyway.
Stored in 4GB drives
The Google team fashioned custom-made server racks out of Lego bricks due to budget constraints. The first Google storage was built of 10 4GB hard drives cased using these legos. Today, Google runs over one million servers in data centres around the world, which handle 3.5 billion searches made internationally every day.
First Office
The first office was set up in Susan Wojcicki’s garage in Menlo Park. Later, she went on to become CEO of YouTube under Google’s ownership.
Google nearly went for a bargain
Former CEO of internet company Excite, George Bell was approached to buy Google for $1 million in 1994, but Bell declined. Later, when the bid was revised to $750,000, Bell again declined, said that the price was too high. And now, Bell’s decision is embedded in the history books to be one of the worst business decisions ever made. The firm also approached Yahoo and AltaVista but was rejected by them as well.
Released a search engine to read your mind
Google announced the release of a search engine that would read to your mind in order to determine search results, called “MentalPlex”.
Rents goats to maintain the grounds
Google replaced lawnmowers with a herd of goats for the maintenance of the lawns at its headquarters in California. It hires for a week, to graze on the grass, clear the weeds and fertilise the grounds. Employees working have also claimed it.
You can’t use the “I am feeling Lucky” option anymore
‘Google Instant’ simultaneously searches as you type in. Hence, there is no time left for you to use the button. The button used to cost $110 million per year, as it would bypass all ads to go to the top search immediately.
First Google doodle
The first-ever Google doodle was a burning man stick figure. The founders came up with idea while they visited the Burning Man festival in Nevada. It was added to the homepage, to notify that they were out of the office and therefore could not solve any technical issues.
Google Mirror
There’s a rotated version of Google known as “Google Mirror”, which showed everything in a mirrored avatar. It was useful to circumvent the Great Wall of China, that later banned Google.
PAC-MAN
PAC-MAN was Google’s first-ever playable doodle on 21st May 2010. The game marked its 30th anniversary on the day.
Acquisitions
Google bought Android for $50 mn and the first Android device was launched in 2008. Google went to buy the video-sharing site, YouTube for a whopping $1.65 billion in 2006 in a move intended to buy users instead of the tech. It was the largest purchase Google back then. Motorola Mobility was bought in 2011 for $12.5 bn. AI firm DeepMind became part of Google in 2014.
A few quirky facts as well:
Go to Google Maps, switch to satellite view and zoom out to the maximum, you can see the real-time shadows of earth and real-time clouds as well if you zoom in.
Stan, Google’s pet which the founders, lives in its headquarters in California, remind employees to net let go Google extinct.
If search ‘Atari breakout’ in Google Images, you can play the game.
If you go to Google Mars, you can see the map of Mars.
Google’s homepage has 28 validation errors and 5 warnings. These are some of the interesting facts about Google.
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