On September 4, 1998, Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched Google, which effectively controls the World Wide Web.
“If it isn’t on Google, it doesn’t exist,” as Jimmy Wales put it, and I agree. When have you ever had a problem and not said, “Google it?”
Any schoolwork, research, or general information gathering is a thousand times easier with Google than with a trip to the library.
All of this while allowing you to see anywhere in the world at any moment, and yet you’ll always head directly for your street.
In my house, Google typically settles many conflicts, and today we’ll look at some mind-blowing facts that will make you want to work, use, and learn even more about Google!
#1. Google used to be able to handle 30-50 pages per second, but now it can process millions of pages per second.
#2. As of 2009, Google has rented 200 goats to mow their lawns at their Mountain View headquarters as a low-carbon alternative to California Grazing.
#3. The first of many Google Doodles was an out-of-office message in 1998, which featured a man standing behind an O, the second in Goo
#4. In 2002, Google included Klingon as a language option.
#5. Google’s headquarters are decorated with a variety of oddities, such as Google-colored phone boxes, a T-rex named Stan, and adult-sized ball pits.
#6. In 2006, both Oxford English Dictionaries and Merriam-Webster added the word ‘Google,’ which is described as a “search for information about (someone or something) on the Internet using the Google search engine.”
#7. At their first company-wide meeting, Google’s new workers, known as Nooglers, are required to wear blue, yellow, and red hats.
#8. Google provides all employees with a free lunch in the form of an all-you-can-eat buffet, as well as snacks such as cookies and salmon. Swedish Fish was the first snack supplied to staff in 1999.
#9. Google buys a new startup every week on average, acquiring YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006 over Denny’s meetings.
#10. Google was first kept on ten 4GB hard drives housed in a Lego case for easy expansion. Stanford University now has this on display. There are now over 100 million GB of data in the index.
#11. Android, the mobile operating system, Waze, the GPS traffic system, and Nest, a smart home system are all owned by Google.
#12. Google paid $12.5 billion buying Motorola in 2011 then sold it for $2.5 billion after the company’s unexpected downturn.
#13. If a Google employee dies, his or her spouse is entitled to half of the individual’s compensation for the next ten years.
#14. Because the founders didn’t know HTML and intended a simple interface, the Google homepage was originally positioned to the right and fairly empty.
#15. In 2013, Google suffered a five-minute blackout that affected all of its services, resulting in a 40% decline in global internet traffic.
So there you have it: some facts about Google, the internet behemoth in all its magnificence.
Does a day at the office get any better than working for Google, with free lunch and an army of goat mowers?
Evgeny Morozov sums it out far better than I could. “A lot of Silicon Valley geeks will tell you that they no longer believe in the ability of Washington policymakers to accomplish anything. They don’t understand why individuals wind up in politics; they’d be far better off working at Google or Facebook.” And who isn’t on board with that?
Google is without a doubt one of the most well-known names on the planet.
A powerhouse that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and is just going to gain even more traction as it swallows up firms like YouTube, making information searches easier and more efficient while also providing you with a wonderful mail client and a million other side projects.
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