curious to know more about the
biggest tech giant? here are 40
lesser known facts about
google!
google is indeed an
inseparable part of everyone's
life today. let's accept that we
all are curious to know
interesting things about the
company, which has brought
big things like, google search
and android. so, we bring to
you 40 interesting facts to bring
you closer to 'our favourite'
google!
1. the google guys, larry page
and sergey brin, met first in
1995 at stanford university
when sergey was asked to
show larry around the school.
google was first created as a
private company on 4
september, 1998, and its first
initial public offering was held
on 19 august, 2004.
2. a google employee is termed
as a googler, while they like to
call a new employee “noogler.”
3. based on alexa, google is
the internet’s most used
website globally.
4. google aims to organise the
world’s information and “make
it universally accessible and
useful.”
5.the earlier version of google
which was developed at
stanford could only analyse
30-50 pages a second. today,
the count has increased to
millions of pages per second.
6. google was sued by a
former google sales executive,
christina elwell, on the grounds
of job discrimination, when she
was pregnant with quadruplets.
the court granted google's
request to move the case to
arbitration rather than to a
public trial.
7. creators page and brin
thought if of naming google as
"what box." however, brin
thought that it sounded similar
to "wet box," which sounds like
some kind of porn.
8. critics opine that the internet
might still be in its pre-
hellenistic age sans google.
9. during the egyptian crisis in
2011-2012, google launched
its special service, which
allowed people with no internet
to send tweets by dialing a
phone number and dropping a
voicemail. the voicemail was
automatically translated as
messages on twitter.
10. facebook users spend the
most minutes on the internet,
with over 250 billion minutes in
a month. this data is for the
month of may 2011. microsoft
and google came in second
and third with 204 billion and
200 billion minutes,
respectively.
11. a fellow graduate sean
anderson asked page and brin
to name their site as
'googolplex'. page thought they
should shorten it to 'googol,'
which means number 1
followed by 100 zeroes.
anderson mistyped 'googol' as
'google,' which was an
available name. the name
reflects google’s mission to
organise the massive amounts
of information on the web.
12. google ceo eric schmidt got
into controversy when he told
google users that the future of
the web is headed towards
complete transparency and no
anonymity. he said that if
google looked at a person’s
messaging and a person’s
location, it could predict where
a person will go. additionally,
according to schmidt, if a
person has just 14 photos on
the internet, google could
accurately identify the person.
13. schmidt raised eyebrows
when in a 2011 interview, he
said that he doesn’t think
people want google to answer
their questions, rather they
want google to “tell them what
they should be doing next.”
14. google is criticised by its
competitors that it manipulates
its search results, it uses
others’ intellectual properties, it
consumes big amount of
computer energy, and for
monopoly, antitrust, and
restraint of trade issues. the
company is also criticised for
promoting sexism and ageism.
15. google has on-campus
daycare centers for the children
of the employees. these are
based on a philosophy called
reggio emilia, which is a self-
directed learning program. in
2008, the company realised
that they are spending $37,000
on each child per year, where
as getting a phd in computer
science at stanford costs
$34,000 a year.
16. google has reduced its tax
rates by billions of dollars by
intelligently taking advantage of
offshore tax havens such as
ireland and bermuda. top
corporate income tax in the
u.s. is 35 per cent. where as in
ireland, it's only 12.5 per cent,
and in bermuda it’s zero.
17. google inc.’s first employee
was craig silverstein, a fellow
computer science graduate
student at stanford. he was
hired september 1998. he
currently serves as director of
technology at google.
18. google was originated at
the stanford school of
engineering with an attempt to
catalog and analyse the world
wide web. the process first ran
at stanford with the user name
“google.stanford.edu.”
19. google, on an estimate,
generates approximately 20
petabytes of user-generated
data every day. 1 petabyte is
approximately
1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.
20. google hires goats to eat
brush and reduce fire hazard in
fields at their california
mountain view headquarters.
21. about 1 million computers
are used for google's operation
and about 1 billion search
requests are handled every
day.
22. google is a dog-friendly
company as per its code of
conduct. they state in a quirky
way, that it is a “dog
company...as a rule we feel
cats visiting our offices would
be fairly stressed out.”
23. google’s first-ever twitter
post was: “i’m 01100110
01100101 01100101 01101100
01101001 01101110 01100111
00100000 01101100 01110101
01100011 01101011 01111001
00001010."in february 2004.
which is binary for “i’m feeling
lucky.”
24. google started the tradition
of april fool jokes in april 2000,
when it brought the
“mentalplex,” which said google
has ability to read a person’s
mind as he visualises the
search results he wants.
25. if you use are using google
calendar, "google knows more
about you than your mother."
google know your schedule, all
the books you’ve read on
google books, all the videos
you have watched on youtube.
google also remember all your
search queries, the date and
time of every request, your ip
address, your sms messages,
your browser and its set
language, the cookies used for
advertising services, and third-
party application data. scared
yet?
26. in the year 1998, the
google's homepage used a
yahoo like exclamation mark in
its logo.
27. in the year 2007, the forbes
magazine showcased google
as the best place to work in the
u.s.
28. in the year 2007, google
with norad decided to follow
santa claus on christmas eve
using google earth in 3d.
29. in the year 2010, google
accepted that in the previous
three years, they have
mistakenly collected the data
sent by people over
unencrypted wi-fi networks.
30. in january 2003, the
american dialect society said
that the word 'google' is the is
the most useful word for 2002.
31. in june 2006, google was
added as a verb in the oxford
english dictionary (oed).
32. google received a record
75,000 job applications for
6,000 openings in one week in
february 2011.
33. remember “googolplex,”
which was earlier being
considered by larry page and
sergey brin as the name of the
company, which means 10 to
the power of googol. the name
was later adopted the for their
corporate campus in mountain
view, california.
34. page and brin decided that
the total number of words on
the homepage of google should
not exceed 28.
35. not willing to leave the
school to devote time to their
new search engine, page and
brin tried to sell google.com for
$1 million to altavista.
fortunately, alta vista was shut
down and google had by then
surpassed other search
engines.
36. the “chief culture officer” is
actually a job title at google
and his or her main job is to
retain the unique culture of the
company, which includes flat
organisation, lack of hierarchy,
a collaborative environment,
and keeping googlers happy.
37. the authors of 'a billion
wicked thoughts' crunched
some data from google, bing,
and yahoo! ranking the most
popular sex terms used for
search. the top 10 terms were:
1. youth (13.5 per cent) 2. gay
(4.7 per cent) 3. milfs (4.3 per
cent) 4. breasts (4 per cent) 5.
cheating wives (3.4 per cent)
6. vaginas (2.8 per cent) 7.
penises (2.4 per cent) 8.
amateurs 9. mature 10.
animation.
38. google was pressurised by
the u.s. government to provide
google usage records for
further investigations into online
pornography.
39. googleplex have google
bikes parked throughout the
campus that employees can
hop on and ride. none of these
bikes are locked and
employees can simply take
them whenever they need
them. google is also known for
its "20 per cent time," which
states that one day a week
employees can take simply to
work on something that
interests them.
40. after introducing “did you
mean...” feature, google's site
traffic doubled.
courtesy: randomhistory
