Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products that include search,online advertising technologies, software, and cloud computing. Here are some interesting facts about Google.
21 Interesting Facts about Google
1st on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Every day, 16% to 20% of queries that get asked every day have never been asked before.
Mitchell, Jon. “How Google Search Really Works.” Readwrite. February 29, 2012.
2nd on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Google was originally called “Backrub”.
In 1996, Larry and Sergey began collaboration on a search engine called BackRub . BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year-eventually taking up too much bandwidth.
3rd on 21 interesting Facts About Google: In 1999, the founders of Google actually tried to sell it to Excite for just US$1 million. Excite turned them down
Khosla, who was also a partner at Kleiner Perkins (which ended up backing Google) at the time, said he had “a lot of interesting discussions” with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at the time (early 1999). The story goes that after Excite CEO George Bell rejected Page and Brin’s $1 million price for Google, Khosla talked the duo down to $750,000. But Bell still rejected that.
When Google Wanted To Sell To Excite For Under $1 Million – techcrunch.com
4th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: If you search for “askew” in Google, the content will tilt slightly to the right.
Try: https://www.google.com/search?q=askew
5th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Google has found GPA’s and test scores to be “worthless as criteria for hiring”; they have teams where 14% of their employees haven’t gone to college.
One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation. Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything.
What’s interesting is the proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time as well. So we have teams where you have 14 percent of the team made up of people who’ve never gone to college.
In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal – nytimes.com
6th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: The first Google Doodle was dedicated to the Burning Man festival attended by Google founders in 1998.
In 1998, before the company was even incorporated, the concept of the doodle was born when Google founders Larry and Sergey played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. They placed a stick figure drawing behind the 2nd “o” in the word, Google, and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were “out of office.”. While the first doodle was relatively simple, the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was born.
7th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: When a Google employee dies, their spouses receive half pay from the company for 10 years and their children US$1,000 per month until they turn 19.
If an employee dies, that employee’s spouse receives half the employee’s salary for 10 years.
Reports Forbes – Here’s What Happens To Google Employees When They Die
8th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Google intends to scan all known existing 129 million unique books before 2020.
For those who have ever wondered how many different books are out there in the world, Google has an answer for you: 129,864,880, according to Leonid Taycher, a Google software engineer who works on the Google Books project.
Google: 129 Million Different Books Have Been Published – pcworld.com
9th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Google hired a camel to create the Street View of a desert.
The beast has become the first animal to carry Google’s Trekker camera, which is typically hoisted by humans to capture 360-degree images of destinations inaccessible to its Street View cars.
Google spokeswoman Monica Baz says the camel, reportedly named Raffia, was an apt way of documenting the beautiful shifting sands of Abu Dhabi’s Liwa Oasis.
Google hires camel for desert Street View – cnn.com
10th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Microsoft pays you to use Bing instead of Google.
Exactly one year ago, Microsoft discontinued their product search incentive Bing Cashback. Over the last 9 months or so they’ve been testing the waters with a new way to entice shoppers: Bing Rewards! When I first looked at Bing Rewards back in September, I didn’t bother with a write-up as it required you to install the Bing Toolbar. Sorry, I’m not a fan of adding a tracking device to my browser. Anyway, recently I got an email from Microsoft explaining that they’ve made some changes to the service and it no longer requires their Live Toolbar. Ok fine, let’s take a look. As of this writing, the Bing Rewards is still in “Preview” status, which basically is another word for “Beta” or “Testing”. The preview is scheduled to end by December 31st, 2011 so some of the things we talk about today may change so just keep that in mind.
Bing Rewards Pays You to Use a Google Search Alternative by Austin Krause on groovypost.com
11th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: The “I’m feeling lucky” button costs Google US$110 million per year, as it bypasses all ads.
Google’s homepage includes a button labeled “I’m Feeling Lucky”. Prior to a change[37] in 2012, when a user typed in a search and clicked on the button the user would be taken directly to the first search result, bypassing the search engine results page. The idea was that if a user is “feeling lucky”, the search engine would return the perfect match the first time without having to page through the search results. According to a study by Tom Chavez of “Rapt”, this feature cost Google $110 million a year as 1% of all searches use this feature and bypass all advertising
Wikipedia.org
12th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Google earns US$20 billion a year from advertising, more than the primetime revenues of CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX combined.
…Google engineers start from an assumption that the old ways of doing things can be improved and made more efficient, an approach that has yielded remarkable results? Google will generate about $20 billion in advertising revenues this year, or more than the combined prime-time ad revenues of CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX…
Googled The End of the World As We Know It – By Ken Auletta
13th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Every minute, 2 million searches are performed on Google.
Google performs 2 million searches each minute and 72 hours worth of video is uploaded to YouTube within the space of 60 seconds.
What happens in just ONE minute on the internet – dailymail.co.uk
14th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Because Gmail first launched on April 1st of 2004, many people thought it was an April Fools’ Day prank.
Google chose a pretty dubious day to announce the birth of Gmail (1 April 2004), so news outlets were understandably sceptical. But looking back with wizened eyes, their hesitancy isn’t anywhere near as entertaining as the thought of Yahoo being a legitimate competitor to Gmail. So on this day of fools, let’s look back at the beginning of what would soon become the NSA’s wet e-dream — the largest store of personal information anywhere.
9 People Who Thought Gmail Might Be An April Fools’ Prank – gizmodo.com.au
15th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Firefox web browser’s lead developer is now working for Google Chrome.
Ben Goodger (born in London, England) is a Software Engineer, formerly employee of Netscape Communications Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation and former lead developer of the Firefox web browser.
Goodger grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, and graduated from the University of Auckland in May 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering. He now lives in Los Altos Hills, California and is currently working for Google Inc., where he leads user experience for the Google Chrome project.
Wikipedia.org
16th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: On April Fool’s day of 2007, Google sent an e-mail out to its employees warning that a python was loose in the facilities. It wasn’t a joke.
Definitely sounds like a prank, I know, but it was true: an engineer kept a ball python named Kaiser in his cube and Kaiser escaped. The e-mail to employees apologized for the awkward timing and assured them that this was no April Fool stunt.
mentalfloss.com
17th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Google’s First Computer Storage Was Made From LEGO.
From 2003 to 2010 the Google storage unit was exhibited in the basement hall of Gates Computer Sciences, as shown on this page.
In 2010 the Google Storage unit was loaned for permanent exhibit in the Octagon of the new Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center.
stanford.edu
18th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Google is developing a computer so smart it can program itself.
Google’s secretive artificial intelligence researchers have revealed a computer that they hope will one day be able to program itself.
Developers at Google’s secretive DeepMind start-up, which it bought for $400 million earlier this year, are attempting to mimic some of the properties of the human brain’s short-term working memory.
By combining the way ordinary computers work with the way the human brain works, the researchers hope the machine will learn to program itself.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2813303/Google-reveals-developing-computer-smart-program-ITSELF.html
19th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Google beats Facebook: it’s the world’s most visited website.
Source: Alexa.com
20th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: For the 4th consecutive year, Google was named the best company to work for in the U.S. by Fortune Mag in 2014.
Source: rd.com
21th on 21 interesting Facts About Google: Google got its name by accident. The founders misspelled “googol”, which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes.
Source: telegraph.co.uk