Interesting Facts about Google

Google has evolved from being just a search engine to being a pillar of the internet. With its products like YouTube, Android, Gmail, Google Maps among others, Google is firmly integrated into our daily lives. Below is a list of interesting facts about the tech giant which will definitely amaze you.

Interesting Google Facts List

• Google’s headquarters is called Googleplex, which is a combination of Google + Complex.
• The Google Street View has more than 28 million miles of photographed roads till now.
• Google has averaged a new company acquisition each week since 2010.
• Over 1 billion search requests every day are handled by Google. This is done by using more than 1 million computers.
• Google pays Mozilla millions of dollars a year so that Google acts as default search engine of the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
• Many Google employees became instant millionaires when Google went public in 2014.
• Alphabet Inc. is Google’s parent company.
• By searching ‘atari breakout’ in Google Images, you can play the game. Try it now.
• Google has a pet T-rex, named Stan, which lives at their California headquarters. Founders bought it to remind the employees to not let Google go extinct.
• It is estimated that Google processes around 20 petabytes or 20,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information daily.
• On August 16, 2013, Google went down for 5 minutes and in that time, the global Internet traffic dropped by 40%.
• The first Google Doodle was about the Burning Man festival attended by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998.
• Google has the world’s largest network of translators, enabling users to translate 345 different languages into each other.
• The “I’m feeling lucky” button remains one of the least popular Google features. However, in trials, it was found that removing it made the users uncomfortable.
• Until March 2001, the Google homepage was aligned towards the right side of the page instead of centre.
• Because Gmail was launched on 1st April 2004, many people thought it was an April Fools’ Day prank.
• In 1999, the chew candy called “Swedish Fish” became the first company snack to be ordered into the Google office.
• Google’s first computer storage used a Lego case so that the storage capacity could be increased easily.
• Google Maps calculates traffic by tracking how fast Android devices are moving on the road.
• Google bought YouTube in the year 2006 for 1.65 billion dollars.
• A person working in Google is called as a ‘Googler’.
• Google uses reCAPTCHA to teach computers how to read the text. With 200,000 million CAPTCHAs solved each day, Google’s computers learn how to identify words scanned from books even if they’re warped.
• Google takes more 200 factors into account to deliver the best results for any search query in a fraction of a second.
• Google’s first tweet ever was “I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010.” which when translated from binary code means “I’m feeling lucky”.
• The name “Google” was an accident. A spelling mistake made the founders choose ‘Google’ instead of  ‘Goggle‘.
• In 2013, Google got most search requests for Nelson Mandela, Paul Walker, iPhone 5, Cory Monteith, Harlem Shake, Boston Marathon, Royal Baby, Samsung Galaxy S, PlayStation 4 and North Korea.
• Google rents 200 goats to help cut down weeds and bushes at Google HQ.
• Google Maps’ Street View includes 360-degree views of the Mount Everest base camp.

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