Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the two founders of Google, met at Stanford University in 1995 and started working on an algorithm for a search engine that could help people easily find information on the internet. The search engine went live in 1996 on Stanford’s network and for the world in 1998. Today, close to 90% of all searches made on the internet are done on Google.
Alphabet, its parent company, is also the world’s largest company in terms of market capitalization, behind only Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco and Amazon. In the third quarter of 2021, Alphabet recorded a revenue of USD 65.1 billion and a net profit of USD 18.9 billion. While the search engine and what it does needs no introduction to anyone, there are things most people don’t know about it. That is why, here are some amazing things you didn’t know about Google. Check these out below.
Things You Didn’t Know About Google
It was originally named ‘Backrub’
In 1996, Larry Page and Sergey Brin started working on a search engine program that analyzed websites’ backlinks to determine the importance of websites and their pages. They named the search engine ‘backrub’.
The first server was made of Lego
The first Google server contained merely 10 disks of 4GB each and was built inside a house made of Lego. Today, Google has more the 20 data centers around the globe.
Google had its First Office in a Garage
While many know that Google’s first office was in a garage that Larry and Sergey rented for about six months, what many people don’t know about Google is that Susan Wojcicki, the owner of the garage, is currently the CEO of YouTube, a video sharing platform owned by Google.
Its motto was “Don’t be evil”
“Don’t be evil” has been a crucial part of Google’s philosophy and remained in the beginning of its corporate code of conduct ever since 2000. While it was later removed from the beginning in 2018, it is still a part of the company’s code of conduct.
Google owns similar domains
Typo errors are quite common but Google doesn’t want that a simple typo could keep you from reaching the search engine. For this purpose, it has bought similar domains like Gogle.com and Gooogle.com to redirect users to the original page.
It rents 200 goats
Why would a tech giant need goats and that too, 200? Well, to mow its lawns. In a 2009 blog post, Google said that it rented 200 goats from a herder to mow the lawns around its headquarters. The company chose this traditional method over noisy mowers that pollute the environment.
Google was forced to change its phone number
When Google was still in its nascent stage, it accidentally published its phone number on the website. As a result, it was flooded with calls and was forced to change its number.
Gmail was an accident
It is believed that Google has a ‘20 percent time’ policy, wherein employees are asked to spend 20% of their working hours on projects of their own choosing. An employee, Paul Buchheit, used this time to work on an email service that offered 1GB storage, which was 500 times of what the other popular service, Hotmail, offered at the time. Today, Google users have 15GB storage space on their Gmail address.
‘Google’ was a typo error
When Larry and Sergey were thinking of a name for their growing project, they decided to name it ‘Googol’ which is a mathematical term meaning a numeral followed by one hundred zeroes. This would represent the infinite amount of data. However, while registering the domain, it was misspelled as ‘Google’ and the rest is history.
Google loves Easter eggs
If you have been using Google for a while, you would know how much it loves Easter eggs. Visit elgoog.im to check out some of these.
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