Are you aware of Google’s impressive empire? It sounds incredible, right? It all started in 1996 when two Stanford PhD students, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, launched a research project. Back then, search engines ranked pages based on the frequency of keywords appearing on the page. However, Larry and Sergei had a vision for a more efficient system. Their novel method rated pages according to the importance of pages that linked back to the original site. By 1998, they formally established their venture, beginning operations in a friend’s garage. Google has since evolved into the world’s dominant search engine and has even become a verb in the English language— to Google. Its swift growth led to numerous acquisitions, broadening the company’s initial vision. Currently, its parent company, Alphabet Inc, has diversified into autonomous vehicles, healthcare, and even space exploration. It’s consistently ranked amongst the most innovative companies globally, making it a dream employer for engineers (don’t hesitate to ask your intelligent friends where they’d love to work). So, regardless of whether you’re a tech-enthusiast or someone who struggles to operate a computer, here are 25 fascinating facts about the Google empire!
Featured Image: Carlos Luna via Flickr
When a Google employee dies, their spouse can receive half pay for up to 10 years and their kids receive $1000 per month until they turn 19.
Source: businessinsider.com, Image: pixabay 16% of daily searches on Google are completely new. As in Google has never seen them before.
Source: google.com, Image: wikipedia Microsoft has actually created rewards programs (financially oriented) in order to convince people to use Bing instead of Google.
Source: reddit, Image: wikipedia The "I'm Feeling Lucky" button costs Google about $110 million annually because it bypasses all their ads.
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia Every minute, there are 2 million searches performed on Google.
Source: nytimes, Image: pixabay Since Gmail launched on 1 April 2004, a lot of people just thought it was an April Fool's Day prank.
Source: washingtonpost Google's first computer storage was actually made out of LEGO because they needed more space for their hard drives than was available at the time.
Source: reddit, Image: wikipedia Google is developing a computer that can program itself (Neural Turing Machine).
Source: telegraph.co.uk From 2010 to 2014, Fortune Magazine named Google the best company to work for in the US.
Source: nytimes, Image: pixabay Google was actually named by accident. Larry and Sergei misspelled "googol", which is a number followed by 100 zeroes.
Source: bbc Google favors dogs over cats. Even in their code of conduct it says that they are a "dog company".
Source: abc.xyz, Image: torange.us Use Google in a way you’ve probably never used it before with these 25 Awesome Google Tricks and Easter Eggs.
Since 2010, every month Google has acquired an average of 2 new companies a month.
Source: wikipedia Google owns the domain googlesucks.com (to prevent other people from owning it!).
Source: domaintools.com Google Maps calculates traffic by computing how fast androids are moving on the road.
Source: ncta.com, Image: wikipedia In 2013, Google funded a company that is researching ways to circumvent death (Calico).
Source: wikipedia In 2014, nearly 90% of Google's income came from advertising.
Source: investor.google.com, Image: pixabay Steve Jobs once called Google to tell them that their "O" had the wrong color yellow gradient.
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia In 2010, Nicaragua accidentally invaded Costa Rica because of a mistake in Google Maps.
Source: wired.com Susan Wojcicki, the woman who rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergei Brin, became the CEO of Youtube
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipedia In the US, Google searches for "why is my poop green" peak around 5am
Source: nytimes.com, Image: wikipedia Google was originally called BackRub
Source: reddit Google claims that GPAs and test scores are useless. There are teams in the company where up to 15% of the employees never went to college
Source: nytimes.com, Google wants to scan every single book in the world by 2020. That would be an estimated 130 million volumes.
Source: pcworld.com, Image: pixabay Google used a camel to create Street View of the desert
Source: cnn, Image: wikipedia Google's first ever tweet was "I'm Feeling Lucky" in binary
Source: mashable.com, Image: pixabay 
