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Google wasn't always the world's third most valuable brand. Long before it was a go-to verb, it was
an obedient digital dog, merely finding and retrieving stuff, playing fetch for Internet users over and
over again.
Eventually the little G -- which started in 1995 as a Stanford University Ph.D. research project -grew into the big, $367 billion-dollar G we know and love-hate today. No longer satisfied to fetch
links alone, the global tech colossus now chases meatier, more meaningful bones, like nailing the
fastest Internet speeds on the planet, rendering human drivers obsolete and, NBD, ending death.
Related: Larry Page and Sergey Brin
The Mountain View mammoth's meteoric rise to the top is chock full of juicy trivia tidbits and mindblowing milestones along the way.
Here are 11 surprising facts about Google:
1. Sergey Brin and Larry (Lawrence) Page met by chance.
Page, 22 at the time, having recently earned a computer engineering degree from the University of
Michigan, considers attending Stanford University for his Ph.D. Brin, then 21, already a Ph.D.
candidate at the prestigious institution, is assigned to show Page around campus. That was back in
1995 and, as fate would have it, quite the momentous meeting of the minds.
2. Google was originally named BackRub.