15 hidden Facts to know about Google on its 15th Birthday

15 hidden Facts to know about Google on its 15th Birthday

The date 4th September 1998 is significant in the IT world as today’s giant and mighty search engine – Google originated on this particular day. The duo Ph.D students Larry Page and Sergey Brin hailing from Stanford University incorporated a modest beginning calling it Google. The initial days of the company was witnessed in the garage area in Menlo Park, California of Susan Wojcicki. But if you look around the present day Google, you will find more than 70 different lavish offices based around 40 different important destinations of the world. Having based in Mountain View, California with its HQ known as Googolplex, the company has grown all leaps and bounds. As search machine – Google completes 15 years; it would be interesting to explore some incredible 15 facts, which remained hidden.

  1. 1.     The miscellany

The main page of Google appeared very much sparse since both Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn’t knew HTML. Earlier you were simply restricted to search by simply hitting the return key as there was no submit button there. Google embarked as the only company having one explicit objective to reduce the surfing web time over its website. Now, you have more than 450,000 people who watch videos over YouTube videos in just one month.

  1. 2.     Google Data

The search index of Google is more than 100 million GB in terms of size. It will take more than 100,000 one-terabyte personal drives in order to store such huge amount of data.

  1. 3.     Reading CAPTCHA

In order to teach the computer machines to read the text, Google employs the idea of reCAPTCHA. With more than 200,000 millions of Captchas are being read and solved every passing day, which makes the computer learn the art of identifying a number of scanned words from various books even if it finds them in wrapped format.

  1. 4.     The Founders wealth

The founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) of the company own only 16% of the company stake, which renders a combined net worth of around 46 billion dollars. So, you can guess the founding partners are already billionaires now. But don’t worry; you have more than thousand employees of Google turning millionaires when Google went public in the year 2004.

  1. 5.     Google’s Slogan

From the day one, Google has one mission statement- to organize the information of this world and make it accessible and beneficial all across the globe, while its official slogan happens to be – Don’t be evil.

  1. 6.     Google also makes money from its competitors and rivals as well 

Interestingly, a majority of the rival companies like Mozilla make money due to Google. Hence as per reports, it pays 300 million a year in order to remain the default search engine over the web browser Firefox of Mozilla. Similarly, Apple also pays a tangible amount of money for using Google Maps and for placing ads. Others include Microsoft and Yahoo also does the same for using their services.

  1. 7.     Gmail

This email service was introduced by Google on 16th December 2005 and today, you can find it available in more than 50 different languages. It has therefore become one of the popular email services, which are being used by around 500 million people all across the globe. The official figure however, revealed in June 2012 was around 425 million active users worldwide.

  1. 8.     “I’m feeling lucky”

The first official tweet from Google was found in the words- “I’m feeling lucky” that was embarked in binary format. The button -“I’m Feeling Lucky”, is found to bypass the results web page in order to take the users directly over the first result of search. As per reports, the estimated cost for this comes to around 100 million dollars that fall under the lost ad revenue every year.

  1. 9.     The Green data centers

If you peep inside the Council Bluffs, over the Lowa data center you would notice an area of 115,000 square feet. Here you get to see more than 9 such type of data centers, which are being owned by Google. Here the web services including Google Search, Gmail, Google+, and its cloud services are being managed along with other stuff as well. The Georgia Data Center requires gallons of water for the evaporative cooling systems on a daily basis, however, Google is now seen considering some greener ways including the recycling the water.

  1. 10.  More than thousands of employees turned millionaires

As said above, more than thousand employees of the company have turned millionaires when the company embarked with its IPO in 2004. One such employee was Bonnie Brown, who was seen working for around 450 dollar a week way back in the year 1999.

  1. 11.  The first in-house chef of Google

Charlie Ayers is considered the first ever in-house full time chef of the company, who was appointed way back in November 1999 when Google has just 40 employees. However, when he left in the year 2006, the company had a couple of chefs, with each one of them catering a team of around 150 employees by serving around 4000 daily dinners and lunches in 10 different cafeteria based in Google’s headquarters.

  1. 12.  The founders wanted to sell the company for one million but were offered 750,000 dollars

Yes, one of the interesting fact is that the company founders were planning to sell Google and hence were seen approaching George Bell (CEO Excite group). However, Bell rejected the offer of one million and was seen offering only 750,000. Later in June 1999, Google raised funds from big venture capitalist companies like Sequoia Capital and the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers of around 25 million dollars to make the company stable in the market.

  1. 13.  The Google Acquisitions

As per reports, on an average Google has been acquiring one company on an average every week since the year 2010. In the year 2010, Google Energy was seen making its debut investment in the project of renewable energy with the group called NextEra Energy Resources. The very same year it also witnessed Google buying a Norway based company called Global IP Solutions, which dealt in teleconferencing and several other services.  The other important acquisitions include mobile ad network AdMob, Motorola Mobility, Quick office and of course Android.

  1. 14.  Google Doodle

The debut Google Doodle was seen when its logo was seen getting modified over the homepage of its website, which was basically a celebration Burning Man festival of the year 1998. However, in the year 2012, company was seen embarking with its first ever interactive kind of Google Doodle, which was meant to celebrate the 30th anniversary Pac-Man (of the arcade game) in alliance with a company called Namco. People coming to search over Google were seen playing a lot and soon this game went viral, which made the search engine to keep it permanently over its site. The very same year also noticed the company unleashing its debut animated Google Doodle on the eve or John Lennon’s 70th birthday carrying a small clip of his song called ‘Imagine’.  Similarly, the other another Doodle was seen embarking earlier with a song clip of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ on the eve of 65th birthday of Freddie Mercury’s in September 2011.

  1. 15.  The Noogler and Xoogler

Google has its own way of calling it employees. As per the insiders, the company call its new employee as Noogler, while terms its ex workers as Xoogler.

Wrapping up

And finally, the journey of 15 years has made Google a giant in search business along with countless other ventures related to IT and other relevant fields. The company that started in a garage area in Menlo Park, California is reported to make around 50 billion dollars last year, which is one of the biggest feats the company has achieved. Every passing day the company seems to be growing and evolving.

Related Images:

Gmail Google Data Google Doodle




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