15 Amazing facts about Google
“Life is like google you just need to know what you are searching for”
Let’s begin with a riddle to scratch your head a little. Can you guess your friend who knows all your secrets even though you haven’t shared any with him? He is your best friend Google you often use to solve your worries — World’s largest search engine!! Google knows everything about you, but do you know some cool facts about google? Catch up with me to explore some amazing facts about the $1978 billion company shaping your day-to-day life.
1) Intriguing mathematics behind the name “Google”
Once Larry Page and Sergey Brin with their colleagues were in their office, using the whiteboard, trying to think up a good name something that related to the indexing of an immense amount of data. Sean Anderson, One of the undergraduate students then, verbally suggested the word “googolplex”. Larry responded verbally with the shortened form, “googol” as both words refer to specific large numbers. Googol is a mathematical term represented by the numeral one followed by 100 zeros.
“Basically, our goal is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful.” — Larry Page
Sean executed a search of the Internet domain name registry database to see if the newly suggested name was still available for registration and use. By mistakenly he searched “google.com” which he found to be available. Larry liked the name and within a few hours on September 15, 1997, he registered the domain name.
2) Google’s Inception
In 1995, Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University while they were graduate students in computer science. By January 1996, the pair began collaborating on writing a program for a search engine dubbed Backrub, named after its ability to do backlink analysis. The project resulted in a widely popular research paper titled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.
“You don’t need to have a 100 person company to develop that idea.” — Larry Page
This search engine was unique in that it used a technology they developed that determined a website’s relevance by taking into account the number of pages, along with the importance of the pages, that linked back to the original site. At the time, search engines ranked results based on how often a search term appeared on a webpage.
“You never lose a dream, it just incubates as a hobby.” — Larry Page
3) Google’s first office was a rented garage.
So stereotypical Silicon Valley startup, right? Starting in September 1998, the company’s first workspace was Susan Wojcicki’s garage on Santa Margarita Ave. Wojcicki charged the company $1,700 per month in rent and joined Google as one of its first employees. Later she became Google’s first marketing manager and is now the CEO of YouTube.
4) Google’s birth name was BackRub
In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin collaborated on a pioneering “Web Crawler ”concept curiously called BackRub. The name barely lasted a year as founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin shortly trademarked the name ‘Google’. “Googling” has become part of our daily lingo, we’re happy the company decided on the name change back in 1998. Why? Can you imagine someone saying, “Let me just BackRub that for you?” Sounds ridiculous !!
We want Google to be the third half of your brain. — Sergey Brin
5) Don’t be evil —Google’s Motto
It’s Google’s former corporate code of conduct, originally introduced when the company went public in 2004. However, the tech titan decided to ditch it in October 2015 in favor of “Do the right thing” after corporate restructuring under its parent company Alphabet.
Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems. — Sergey Brin
We have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good — always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, ‘Don’t be evil’ seems the easiest way to summarize it. — Sergey Brin
6) Page Rank — Algorithm behind Google search
PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank websites in their search engine results. PageRank was named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. It is not the only algorithm used by Google to order search engine results, but it is the first algorithm that was used by the company, and it is the best-known.
7) Yahoo got an offer to buy Google at $1 million in 1998
One man’s misfortune is another man’s opportunity.
But what if you miss the opportunity? That’s what happened with today’s disappeared company Yahoo. Probably Yahoo would be the first search engine used by the first person of your family who used the internet for the first time. Yahoo was 128 billion dollars company in 1998 and was the most popular search engine company. In fact, it was the internet of those days. In 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted to sell their startup, Google to Yahoo at just $ 1 billion. What are you kidding me? Yes, You heard it right!! But as whatever happens, happens for the good, Yahoo declined the offer. If it would have accepted you might have said today, “ Yahoo the nearest restaurants”.
As the tides of time changed and the 21st century dawned with a big roar of Google being the Internet giant.
“If we were motivated by money, we would have sold the company a long time ago and ended up on a beach.” — Larry Page
8) Alphabet — Parent company of Google
Alphabet, Inc. is the parent company of Google headquartered in California established in 2015. It was created to reorganize Google’s various interests as a conglomerate. The company operates through the Google segment and other than the internet services segment.
Larry Page’s said they chose the company’s name because the alphabet is “a collection of letters that represent language, one of humanity’s one of humanity’s most important innovations, and is the core of how we index with Google search.” Also in a financial context, Alpha means investment return above benchmark.
9) Google’s first doodle was a Burning Man stick figure
The 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.
10) “I’m feeling lucky” — Google’s first tweet
Google’s first tweet was in a cryptic way encoded as “I’m feeling lucky” in February 2009. If we convert each set of 8 bits into decimal and check with ASCII values we get the message as “I’m feeling lucky\n”
For example, if we take first 8 binary bits 01100110 is 102 in decimal and if we check ASCII value table we find that “ f ” has ASCII value of 102.
11) Sundar Pichai — Exemplary Leader
Sunder’s stint with the search giant started in 2004. He is counted amongst the most powerful men of Indian origin in the United States. If you ever wondered about who is the mastermind behind Chrome then, Here comes your answer. Sunder’s major achievements include the launch of Google Chrome as he is the mastermind behind one of the best browsers in the world. He also has a major role in the development of the same. He became the Vice President of product development in Google in 2008.
Sundar was appointed as the Google CEO in 2015. During his time leading Google, it has doubled its workforce to about 140,000 people, and Alphabet has tripled in value. It is not unusual for a company that has grown so large to appear sluggish or unwilling to risk what has made it so wealthy. Sundar has taken some steps to counter that. In 2019, for example, he reorganized Google and created new decision-making bodies so fewer decisions needed his signoff.
“A person who is happy is not because everything is right in his life, he is happy because his attitude towards everything in his life is right.”- Sundar Pichai
Sundar is an IITian with a B.tech degree in Metallurgy Engineering from IIT Kharagpur. He pursued his master’s from Stanford University.
12) Rented Goats grazing at Google’s head quarters
Google hires 200 goats to munch their weeds from a company called California Grazing. This is Google’s “low-carbon” approach to maintaining its property. Google has replaced lawnmowers that normally cut the grass in the fields around its headquarters and claims that goats will cost about the same as lawnmowers would.
13) Prankster Tech company — Product launching on April fools’ day
Google has chosen April Fools’ Day and the day before it to announce some of their actual products, as a form of virtual marketing. Google launched Gmail on April 1, 2004, and just like the rest of us don’t believe any big news on the first of April, nobody did in 2004. However, it was widely believed to be a hoax, since free web-based e-mail with one gigabyte of storage was unheard of at the time. In 2005, On April 1, Google increased Gmail storage to two gigabytes.
Similarly, on April 1, 2016, Google introduced a new feature for Google Photos, allowing users to search their photos using emojis. On April 1, 2010, Google Street View received a new feature to toggle anaglyph 3D images. On April 1, 2021, YouTube made The Truman Show free to watch. This was seen as an ironic commentary on how people document all aspects of their lives over social media.
14) Google’s Revenue — Major share from Advertising Business
Besides The Search Engine, Google Has 250 Other Products, All Of Which Have A Combined User Base Of Over A Billion. Google Makes Most Of Its Revenue Not Through Its Search Engine But Via Its Advertising Business. After its launch, the company has now become more than just a search engine. The company has changed the world along with itself.
15) Google Owns A Pet T-Rex
Google Owns A Pet T-Rex, Named Stan, Which has been placed there at California Headquarters. Google’s choice of “Stan” the Tyrannosaurus rex as its corporate mascot tells us no one has anything to fear from Google. The intention of placing it in the office is to keep the employees reminding them not to let Google go extinct.
