Google empire? You better believe it! In 1996 two PhD students at Stanford, Larry Page and Sergei Brin began a research project. The search engines back in the 90s ranked pages according to how many times the keywords appeared on the page. But Larry and Sergei theorized a better system. Their new system ranked pages according to the importance of pages that linked back to the original site. Two years later they incorporated and started their business adventure in a friend’s garage. Since then, Google has grown into the world’s most powerful search engine. It has even entered the English language as a verb (to google something). Its rapid expansion has led to a series of acquisitions that have grown the original vision of the company to something much wider. Today, Alphabet Inc, (its new parent company) is involved with creating self-driving cars, health care, and even space travel. It has been rated one of the most innovative companies in the world and is constantly the envy of engineers everywhere (just ask your smart friends where they wish they could work). So, whether you are a techie, or you have trouble turning on your computer, these are 25 crazy insights into the world of 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: pixabay16% of daily searches on Google are completely new. As in Google has never seen them before.
Source: google.com, Image: wikipediaMicrosoft has actually created rewards programs (financially oriented) in order to convince people to use Bing instead of Google.
Source: reddit, Image: wikipediaThe "I'm Feeling Lucky" button costs Google about $110 million annually because it bypasses all their ads.
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipediaEvery minute, there are 2 million searches performed on Google.
Source: nytimes, Image: pixabaySince Gmail launched on 1 April 2004, a lot of people just thought it was an April Fool's Day prank.
Source: washingtonpostGoogle'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: wikipediaGoogle is developing a computer that can program itself (Neural Turing Machine).
Source: telegraph.co.ukFrom 2010 to 2014, Fortune Magazine named Google the best company to work for in the US.
Source: nytimes, Image: pixabayGoogle was actually named by accident. Larry and Sergei misspelled "googol", which is a number followed by 100 zeroes.
Source: bbcGoogle favors dogs over cats. Even in their code of conduct it says that they are a "dog company".
Source: abc.xyz, Image: torange.usUse 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: wikipediaGoogle owns the domain googlesucks.com (to prevent other people from owning it!).
Source: domaintools.comGoogle Maps calculates traffic by computing how fast androids are moving on the road.
Source: ncta.com, Image: wikipediaIn 2013, Google funded a company that is researching ways to circumvent death (Calico).
Source: wikipediaIn 2014, nearly 90% of Google's income came from advertising.
Source: investor.google.com, Image: pixabaySteve Jobs once called Google to tell them that their "O" had the wrong color yellow gradient.
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipediaIn 2010, Nicaragua accidentally invaded Costa Rica because of a mistake in Google Maps.
Source: wired.comSusan Wojcicki, the woman who rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergei Brin, became the CEO of Youtube
Source: wikipedia, Image: wikipediaIn the US, Google searches for "why is my poop green" peak around 5am
Source: nytimes.com, Image: wikipediaGoogle was originally called BackRub
Source: redditGoogle 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: pixabayGoogle used a camel to create Street View of the desert
Source: cnn, Image: wikipediaGoogle's first ever tweet was "I'm Feeling Lucky" in binary
Source: mashable.com, Image: pixabay
