Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University, and was formally incorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. You know there’s more to something than meets the eye when such a massively successful company has such a simple layout though, and I mean that in the best way possible. Google has always done things a little bit differently, and that works to keep things fresh, immersive and consistently progressive.
Here are some Google facts you may not know!
1. The name ‘Google’ is actually derived from the mathematical term ‘googol’ which is basically 1 with a 100 zeros following it
2. Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin originally named Google ‘Backrub’
One can only wonder why…
3. As part of their green initiative, Google regularly rents goats to mow the lawns of their mountain view HQ
The employees claim they find it calming to see goats outside the windows.
4. Thanks to Google Instant, you can’t actually use the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button anymore
‘Google Instant’ starts searching for whatever you type as soon as you type it, thereby leaving no time or possibility to click that button. The ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button apparently cost the company $110 million every year, because it would bypass all ads to go to the top search immediately.
5. Since 2010, Google has been acquiring an average of one company every week
Android, Youtube, Waze, you name it, Google owns it.
6. Google uses a web tool called foo.bar to recruit new employees based on what they search for online
If Google sees that you’re searching for specific programming terms such as Python, they might just ask you to apply for a job.
7. The first ever Google Doodle was a Burning Man stick figure that came out on August 30, 1998
It came about when Larry and Sergey visited the Burning Man Festival in Nevada. It was added to the homepage to let users know they were out of office and couldn’t fix technical issues like a server crash.
8. Larry and Sergey’s private planes have runways in NASA, where no other planes are allowed to land
9. Google owns common misspellings of its own name as well, such as www.gooogle.com, www.gogle.com, and www.googlr.com
10. The first Google computer storage was built with Legos
11. Google employees in the US get death benefits which guarantee that the surviving spouse will receive 50% of their salary every year for the next decade
Might give rise to a whole lot of scheming husbands and wives though.
12. No part of a Google office is allowed to be more than 150 feet away from some kind of food
13. Google helps pronounce massive numbers if you type ‘=english’ after searching for a number
14. There’s a rotated version of Google known as ‘Google Mirror’, which shows everything in a mirrored avatar
It might sound like just a fun and pointless add on, but it was actually useful in circumventing the Great Firewall in China that banned Google.
15. Google wanted to sell itself to online company Excite in 1999 for $1 million, but the Excite CEO rejected the offer
Google is now worth more than $300 billion. That’s got to sting.
