Unknown facts about Google
English: Google Logo officially released on May 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
> The "letters from the founders" of Google says that "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one".And till now it's living up to that.
> Back in 1998, Google sported a Yahoo-style exclamation mark.
> The real reason for the simplicity is that the founders (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) had very little knowledge of HTML language. In fact there used to be no 'Goolge Search' button and user required to hit return key to start the search.Even the Google's logo had a little bias to the left-hand side and was not exactly centered until March,2001.But the simplicity of Google's homepage has made it more popular than its competitors like MSN,Yahoo! and AltaVista. That's why the founders still prefer to keep homepage simple and insist that words on it do not exceed 28 words. Even though it is estimated that an ad on its homepage would cost around 10 million dollars , the page is not for sale.
> In 1998 (before even starting the firm) the founders received $100,000 dollars from Sun Microsystems co-founder.In 1999 the founders,so as not to disturb their studies, decided to sell Google to a slew of companies (Alta Vista,Yahoo,Excite) for just $1 million.But all of them rejected the offer.Now while some of those companies cease to exist,Yahoo's worth is just $20 billion, whereas Google has grown up to $200 billion.This should be one of the stupidest business decisions by Yahoo.
> Gmail was used internally for nearly 2 years prior to launch to the public.
> Google brought android only to make sure that mobiles search using Google while market experts believed that Google was planning to enter the mobile industry with its own handsets.But finally their 'prophecy' turned true when Google released its own Nexus series handsets in 2010.
> Merriam-Webster and Oxford English Dictionary adding "google" as a verb to their lexicons in 2006. But Google was not pleased with the development because it feared that google would "slip from trademarked status into common usage." Seven years later we can find people saying 'just google it'.
> Google is sometimes nicknamed the “Mountain View Chocolate Factory” not because it gives its employees lot of chocolates but because of similarity in the cultures of Google and Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (they both employ strange eccentric but dedicated engineers).
> Google pays Mozilla Millions of dollars a year.Not because it stole any software from Mozilla! but because Google and Mozilla see themselves as partners in development of opensource.In return Firefox browser makes Google the default search provider.
> If a Google employee dies, their spouse gets half the pay for 10 years.
> There is a cognitive bias called Google effect where a person tends to forget information that can be easily found using a search engine.
> Some core Google services went down recently for 5 mins, causing worldwide internet traffic to drop off by a pretty huge 40 per cent.
> The infamous “I feel lucky” is nearly never used by users. However, constant user surveys have proved that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it to be there as a comfort button.
> Google advocates bringing dogs to work and there is even a “company dog” called Yoshka. But Google discourages bringing cats to work quoting that "We like cats, but we're a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our offices would be fairly stressed out."
> Google offices do not have a dress code. A Googler can wear anything to the office. even body-paint !
> Google has the largest network of translators (people) who help melt the world’s boundaries. One can translate from 345 source language to 345 target languages from this network.
> If you go to www.google.co.in/settings/ads you can see all the categories that Google have predicted you based on your search history and browsing behaviors.It even predicts your gender,interests,age based on your search history
> Search for the following Google Products that are little known but can be very useful and interesting:
#Google think insights
#Google public data explorer
#Get your business online
#Google fonts
#Google sky
*> Interesting searches in Google:
#If you search 'who is the cutest' using Google's 'I'm feeling lucky' it says 'you are'
#By searching 'Atari break out' in Google one can play its abridged version in Google using search results.
#If you type 'do a barrel roll' in Google the whole page will spin.
#If a Google employee dies , their spouse gets half the pay for 10 years.
#Search 'askew' in Google the page will tilt slightly clockwise.
#Type in Google 'zerg rush', Google will eat the search page.
#If one asks for directions from the shire to Mordar in Google maps,you are offered the warning: "Use caution-One does not simply walk into Mordar." the famous line spoken by Boromir in 'The Lord of the Rings'.
#Google processes around 20 petabytes or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information (data) daily.