Fun facts about Google you didn’t know!
The famous search engine has been ruling the tech world since its launch in 1997. The multi-billion dollar company is one of the biggest brands worth more than $400 billion. Even at its enormous scale, Google continues to grow at a fast pace. Whether it is business or number of employees, Google has a massive scale and when companies grow to such size there are a lot of interesting stories to know about them. So here are some fun facts about Google, get ready to be surprised!
#1 “I’m feeling lucky”
The brand is such an integral part of our daily life that its name has transformed into a verb. When there is something you cannot find, the first thing that comes to mind is to Google it.
But did you know that the very first tweet done by Google was ‘I’m feeling lucky’ in the binary code. Since then, the company has amassed around 22.9 million followers and if you are a tech geek then do follow the company on Twitter!
#2 Googlers love gBikes!
Google came out with commuter bikes in 2007 on their campus and then they launched the funny colorful “clown bikes.” The current ride for Googlers is the “gBike,” which is without any lock. Any employee in the company can ride these bikes within the campus and simply leave the bike wherever they want to.
#3 The original name wasn’t Google
Believe it or not but the company’s original name wasn’t original Google. It was christened as Backrub. The founders came up with the name on the basis of the system finding and ranking pages as per the backlinks. We are thankful that they changed the name otherwise we all must be Backrubbing information on the internet instead of Googling it.
#4 Foo.Bar
It is a known fact that getting placed in Google is not an easy task and one of the important recruitment procedures that Goggle conducts is via Foo.Bar. The company uses the tool to know about what the candidate searches online and then recruits him/her. Specific searches relating to coding and software development prompt Google to ask the user if they are “up for a challenge”. The system is triggered when a user enters certain search terms relating to coding languages like Python and Java.
The search results page displayed a message “You’re speaking our language. Up for a challenge?” to which the user can accept by clicking “I want to play” or decline. If the user declines the request the message isn’t shown again. However, foo.bar is just a beginning and is followed by Google’s traditional recruitment process.
#5 The homepage!
The main reason for Google’s popularity around the world is its homepage. Google’s home page was the first home page that had absolutely no content as it just offered its core offering – Search with great simplicity and elegance. The minimalistic and very functional page makes the search very easy. The homepage is available in 80 different languages making it more user-friendly.
#6 Free-wifi for everyone
The company decided to promote itself in a unique way in 2006. Google came up with the idea to give free wifi access to the entire town of Mountain View where its main headquarters is present. With this people came across the web and the search engine and it started getting used highly.
#7 Misspelled name
When the company was searching for a better name they decided to go with Google which was misspelled term for the mathematical term “googol”. Some say that the company’s investors made the mistake and wrote on the check whereas some say that a fellow student was looking for a name and misspelled googol. Googol is the term for a number equivalent to ten raised to the power of a hundred (10100).
#8 “number”= English
When you have to pronounce huge digits like “4356789456789”, it might become difficult for some so Google came up with”=English”. Users just have to type the number in the search bar followed by =English and Google will help you pronounce it.
#9 PageRank
Google uses PageRank to access all the websites. It is named after the co-founder of Google- Larry Page. The relevant web pages appear in a search result as per their pagerank. The real working of PageRank is not known to outsiders yet but the ranking of the websites is done on basis of the SEO which is highly considered by Google.
#10 How Sergey Brin and Larry Page first met.
Both the co-founders met by luck. Page was 22 and Brin was 21. At that time Page had recently earned a computer engineering degree and was thinking to apply to Stanford University for his Ph.D. Brin, who was already a student there, helped Page to get to know the campus. The acquaintance turned into friendship and eventually a business partnership.
We hope you enjoyed reading these fun facts about Google. If you know os some more interesting facts then do let us know in the comments, we’ll be happy to include them in this article.
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