31 Interesting and Amazing facts about

Google

We all use Google in some way or the other. The way

Google has evolved is a story worth telling. Here are
some of the interesting facts about Google :
1. The name ‘Google’ was an accident. It was the
result of a spelling mistake made by the original
founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’.
The domain name “Googol.com” was already taken
by the time Google was founded.
2. The domain Google.com was registered on 15
September 1997.
3. The first operations of Google was started in this
garage

4. Google (aka Googol) is a mathematical term which

means “1 followed by hundred Zeros”. The term
‘Googol’ was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of
American mathematician Edward Kasne.
5. Google receives daily search requests from all over
the world, including Antarctica.
4. Google’s Homepage has 42 validation errors.
Check Google Validation
5. Google’s homepage can be accessed in 88
languages including Urdu and Latin.
6. Every day the Google servers receives about a
billion search requests . 20 to 25% of Google queries
have never been searched before.
7. The main reason why the Google homepage is so
simple is because the founders didn’t knew HTML.
The submit button was included much later and hitting
the return key was the only way to get the search
results.
8. The “I am feeling lucky” button is almost never
used by the end user. However it was found that
removing the button would reduce the Google
experience.
9. In the early days of testing Google employees
noted people just sitting and looking at the screen.
After a minute the tester asked “What are you waiting
for ?”. To this the users replied “We are waiting for the
page to load”.
To solve this issue the copyright message was added
which acted as an end of the page marker.
10. Google has the largest network of translators in
the world.
11. All Google employees are encouraged to use 20%
of their time working in their own projects. Google
news and Orkut are two big examples that grew from
this working model.
12. Google consists of over 450,000 servers, racked
up in clusters located in data centers around the
world.
13. Google started in January, 1996 as a research
project at Stanford University, by Ph.D. candidates
Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years
old and 23 years old respectively.The original google
project was named backrub.
14. When Google started it indexed 25,000 web
pages. Today Google indexes billions of web pages
and each time it grows by 10-25%.
15. According to Google “As the web grows search
becomes more and more important”. It acts like a
library , the bigger the library the more important is
the index.
16. The pagerank algorithm uses more than 200
attributes to determine the rank of a given webpage.
17. Google has the largest corporate solar panel
installation in the US.
18. The biggest break in search came when Google
introduced their improved spell checker seen as “Did
you mean ? ”.This feature doubled their traffic and
soon the developers discovered that the ideal
placement was at the bottom of the search results.
19. Every now and then Google makes small changes
and test them with a given set of users. The users
aren’t told of this. They are presented with a new
interface and the testers observe how the users react
to it.
20. Google believe in 20 % – 5% philosophy.
According to this, if at least 20% of the users use a
feature then it will be included. To make it to the
advanced search preferences, at least 5 % of the
users need to use a particular feature.
21. In the results found in user testing and design,
Google testers found that only a small number of
people are typical of the larger user base.
Hence,Google labs was born and it monitors how
people use each and every service.
22. Gmail – Free email from Google was used
internally for nearly 2 years by Google employees
before it was launched for public use. The engineers
discovered that there are typically 6 types of email
users and Gmail was made to satisfy the needs of
them.
23. Google’s index of web pages is the largest in the
world, comprising of 8 billion web pages. Google
searches this immense collection of web pages often
in less than half a second.
24. They listen to feedback actively. Emailing
Google isn’t emailing a black hole.
25. Google’s first April fool prank went live on April
1st,2000 and was coined “MentalPlex” – Google’s
ability to read your mind.

Some thought the announcement of Gmail in 2004

around April Fool’s Day was a joke. (Thanks Mani
Karthik)
26. Google Groups comprises of more than 845
million Usenet messages, which is the world’s largest
collection of messages or the equivalent of more than
a terabyte of human conversation.
27.In a 2006 report of the world’s richest people,
Forbes reported that Sergey Brin was #26 with a net
worth of $12.9 billion, and Larry Page was #27 with a
net worth of $12.8 billion
28. There isn’t any restriction for proper dress code in
the Google office. This may include pajamas and
even super hero costumes.
29. Tom Vendetta is the youngest google
employee ever hired. He was hired by Google when
he was 15 years old. Vendetta used to fool his friends
by sending fake press releases and news. Vendetta
was employed to know the know-how of the teen and
to implement them in Gmail security flaws.
30. The first employee that google hired is Craig
Silverstein.

31.The first human being named after Google

is Oliver google kai. He was born on September 12th
2005 and his parents named him because they
wanted Oliver to have as many friends as google has.
10 Things that drive Google Philosophy
According to Larry page “The perfect search engine,”
would understand exactly what you mean and give
back exactly what you want. Mentioned below are
the top principles that guide Google’s action :
1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
3. Fast is better than slow.
4. Democracy on the web works.
5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an
answer.
6. You can make money without doing evil.
7. There’s always more information out there.
8. The need for information crosses all borders.
9. You can be serious without a suit.
10. Great just isn’t good enough.