Interesting Facts about Google

Google is a noun, a verb, and the single largest repository of information in the history of mankind. They not only provide Internet search and advertising services, but also use their beyond significant information resources to store things like every book ever printed, medical records, climate statistics and a whole lot more.

They are more than the gentle giant of Silicon Valley, they are a behemoth in terms of the vast amount of resources they produce and consume. Their motto "Don't be evil" is encouraging, and they do a lot of good work for our world.

Many would argue that the vastness of Google's fotprint is both really scary and really necessary if humankind is to benefit from technology in the modern world. Here are a few facts about our big friend that you may find interesting.

• Google's baby name was 'BackRub,' a reference to checking backlinks to rank sites for search results.
• Google's prototype was tested on an array of 10 4GB hard drives in a cabinet made of cheap Lego knockoffs.
• Google has well over 1 million servers, most of which run software that Google has developed
• internally.
• Google servers constitute close to 2% of the servers in the world.
• Google's first cash investor wrote a check for $100,000, which could not be cashed for the first few days because Brin and Page had yet to file articles of incorporation.
• The name Google comes from "googol" a math term for 10 to the hundredth power. (1 googol = 1.0 × 10 to the 100th power or 10,000,000,000,000,000 000,000,000,000 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000)
• Google's campus, the Googleplex is named after the math term for 10 to the power of googol.
• The verb use of google became official when the Oxford Dictionary published it in 2006.
• Google's motto "Don't be evil" is seen as a dig on Microsoft.
• Google has absorbed or aquired 60 companies since 2001. Deja was the first aquisition. It provided a Usenet infrastructure that manifests itself now as Google Groups. Google paid $3.1 billion to buy DoubleClick in order to expand its Internet advertising marketshare. In 2006 when Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion it caught the attention of large media conglomerates and their legal departments.
• Google has over 10,000 employees all over the world. Some are former neurosurgeons, rocket scientists and even a former professional boxer.
• Googlers are encouraged to spend 20% of their time on projects they take a personal interest in. This 'time off' has resulted in innovations like Gmail Google News and AdSense. Executives at Google claim that half of their new products originate from the 20% program.
• Googlers get two free healthy and delicious meals per day, which costs the company over $70 million per year.
• The lawns at the Googleplex for the most part are not mowed. They are grazed on by rented goats, that also have the responsibility to clear brush to keep the fire hazard under control.
• Google leadership includes a Chief Culture Officer to keep the creative culture at Google alive and kicking.
• Google News sends over a billion clicks per month to news sites.
• Google owns close to 600 domain names, which is less than one would expect given their overwhelming Internet footprint. These include the obvious ones like google.net and not so obvious ones such as MarioLovesPasta.com and TheSecretofBurritos.com.
• Google has a company chef that used to cook for George Clinton of Parliment Funkadelic fame as well as the Grateful Dead.
• In college, Larry Page was on the winning team in a solar car competition.
• Among Larry Page's investments is Tesla Motors, an innovative company that produces high-end electric sports cars.
• Google has a subsidiary that gives venture capital to tech companies. This company, Google Ventures expects to invest $100 million by 2nd quarter 2010.
• Both of Google's founders are the sons of college professors. Each is worth an estimated $12 billion.
• Google PageRank™ is not named after web pages, but one of the founders - Larry Page. Pagerank™ is determined by the page's usefulness as calculated by Google's algorithims.
• Google's language support includes Klingon, Swedish Chef and 35 other non-english languages.
• The 'I'm feeling lucky' option, which autmoatically sends you to the first result of the search query costs Google over $100 million per year in lost ad revenue.
• Google is a big supporter of Open Source technology and introduced the first widely-used Open Source operating system for smart phones - Android.
• Google.org, the charity arm of Google was formed in 2004 and has over $1 billion in its coffers. Their primary focus is global health and the environment. One big project they have worked on is the engineering of a plug-in hybrid car that can exceed 100 mpg. Google.org also uses its mindblowing computational ability to track things like flu trends on a global level, deforestation, home energy useage and many other important trends and issues on its own and through collaberative projects.
• A typical Google search takes about 1 kilojule of energy. The solar panels on the Googleplex roof provide enough free electricity to power over 1,000 average homes.
• The data center in Dalles, OR uses roughly the same amount of electrical power as the city of Tacoma, WA.
• Bing, Microsoft's answer to Google search has 1/7th of the market share that Google has. Google currently has over 65% of the search market.
• Every April Fool's day Google has a little fun with visitors. Google TiSP (short for Toilet Internet Service Provider) was a fictitious free broadband service supposedly released by Google.