Can you remember about 2 decades ago when search engines were just getting started? It was an amazing technology to look forward to, but not many of us would have expected the rapid developments in this field that have occurred. Or the tremendous domination in this technology by Google. There are tons of surprising Google facts you need to know.
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You are what you settle for.
Janis Joplin
Likewise, Google tackles so many different things all at once that at times it’s hard to keep track or even fully comprehend it.
A very interesting company to say the least. So we decided to do some research homework and see what kinds of different things we could learn about Google.
We’ve plucked out our favorite facts from that research to bring you this selection of surprising tidbits.
Related: Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking
In this article, we will put forth many amazing facts about Google that surprised and interested us, and that will probably surprise many of you.
See how many of these facts you did not know.
Let’s get started.
Company background
Google was founded in 1997 by two Stanford University Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin whose initial company mission statement was:
“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”
They seem to have made a good dent in achieving this goal since they started the company, don’t you think?
Images
For example, when the Google Street View product first debuted, it featured 5 U.S. cities shot with 5-megapixel cameras. Now, Street View has images from every continent and uses 75-megapixel cameras.
Over six billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube — that’s almost an hour for every person on Earth.
Where does all that content come from? Users upload 300 hours of video to YouTube *every minute.*
Google facts … search
In 1998, the year Google launched, users were making about 500,000 searches per day. Now, there are more than 2 million Google searches per second.
For example, Google’s search index is more than 100 million gigabytes in size. It would take 100,000 one-terabyte personal drives to contain the same amount of data.
Google uses approximately 20 petabytes of user-generated data every day. (Petabytes are estimated at 10 to the 15th power. So 1 petabyte is approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.)
It uses massive amounts of computation to index the Web, process search results, serve up ads, and more.
Google takes over 200 factors into account before delivering you the best results for any query in a fraction of a second.
A technology leader in many areas.
Technology
Technology is enhancing us as human beings and the integrating of artificial intelligence is slowly being weaved and embedded into our activities and habits almost without us noticing.
This reliance that is permeating our day to day existence even extends to a reported 60% plus of all buying decisions now starting with a Google search as we start our research online rather than walk the shop aisles and asking sales attendants questions.
It’s been barely 13 years since conception but the search company whose slogan is “Don’t be evil” (reputed to have been coined by the Google engineer Paul Buchheit in 2006 ) has now struck out into other technology areas beyond their core search business such as:
The successful Android mobile operating system is reporting 400,000 activations per day (April 2011).
More than 1 billion Android phones shipped last year. That means Google’s operating system now has an astounding 81% market share.
Consider an example of Internet Privacy
Running a business today almost certainly means having a digital presence, and being connected to the Internet. While the benefits of this transformation are many, the security issues are still a daily challenge, with many solutions in the marketplace to address them.
Now internet service providers can sell the browsing habits of their customers to advertisers. The move, which critics charge will fundamentally undermine consumer privacy in the US.
Yes, internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are free to track all your browsing behavior and sell it to advertisers without consent.
ISPs have access to literally all of your browsing behavior – they act as a gateway for all of your web visits, clicks, searches, app downloads, and video streams.
This represents a huge treasure trove of personal data, including health concerns, shopping habits, and porn preferences. ISPs want to use this data to deliver personalized advertising.
Google facts … big investments
When Google wants something, it’s not afraid to drop some cold, hard cash to get it. It has made more than 170 acquisitions over the years. The top ten most expensive alone totaled $24.5 billion
There is Google Energy that is developing and investing in renewable energy projects such as wind farms in North Dakota
Then Google Driverless Car that uses Google Street View with artificial intelligence technology
Google takes on moonshots — projects that could change the world for millions of people.
However, it also takes on important projects that matter only to a small number of people: In 2012, Google introduced the Cherokee language in Gmail.
Interesting facts
It’s fun to talk about all of Google’s moonshot projects like self-driving cars and “smart” contact lenses, but that’s not where the money is.
In 2014, about 89% of Google’s $66 billion in revenue came from advertising.
Google also has the ability to track and analyze a person’s online behavior and inform advertisers what sites a browser has visited, what ads have been clicked on, and what search terms have been used.
People rely on Google’s services so heavily that when they all went down for 5 minutes in 2013, global internet traffic dropped by 40%.
Facebook users spend the most minutes on the Internet with over 250 billion minutes in May 2011. Microsoft and Google came in second and third with 204 billion and 200 billion minutes, respectively.
Fellow graduate student Sean Anderson suggested Google creators Page and Brin name their site “googolplex.”
Page suggested they shorten it to “googol,” which refers to the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Anderson mistyped “googol” as “google,” which was an available name.
The name reflects Google’s mission to organize the massive amounts of information on the Web.
Stanford, which holds the patent to the PageRank algorithm Larry Page created, received 1.8 million shares of Google stock in exchange for long-term rights to the patent.
Stanford’s profit was $336 million, most likely the most money any university has ever received from a single invention.
There are Google bikes parked throughout the Googleplex that employees can hop on and ride from building to building. None of them is locked; employees simply take them when they need them.
Additionally, a doctor regularly visits the Google campus so Googlers don’t have to leave the office for a checkup. Google is also known for its “20% time,” the one day a week that employees can take simply to work on something that interests them
Google has extraordinary on-campus daycare centers for employees’ children, which are based on a philosophy called Reggio Emilia, a self-directed learning program.
However, in 2008, the company realized it was subsidizing each child to the price tag of $37,000 a year. As a comparison, to get a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford it costs $34,000 a year.
Google facts … surprising things
This awesome company has become an integral part of our lives and the word has even become a verb as we are often heard to say let’s “Google” that.
I have even heard the web giant referred to in hushed tones during heated discussions and when a controversial fact or figure is being debated across a dinner table or at the local bar as to whether it is true or false and a person will pull out their iPhone and say “let’s check Lord Google”.
Reluctant to leave school to devote time to their new search engine, Page and Brin attempted to sell google.com for $1 million to AltaVista.
Fortunately for them, Alta Vista passed . . . as did Yahoo!, Excite, and other search engines.
Google believes that its employees should not have to go more than 150 feet for food. Therefore, it has food stations placed everywhere within the 150 feet for the employees.
So Google has a real job profile named “Chief Cultural Officer” who is responsible for retaining Google’s cultures like no hierarchy, happy employees, and a flat organization.
Google provides its employees with comprehensive health coverage that also covers their families’ health care requirements. Google understands the importance of family and does everything to make sure they are taken care of.
If you are looking for additional resources in creativity and innovation, one of my favorite experts is Gregg Fraley. You’ll find lots of good stories and examples to learn from in his blog.
The bottom line
Google tackles so many different things all at once that at times it’s hard to keep track or even fully comprehend it. And for every amazing fact, we know, but there are probably at least 10 more that are not known to the public.
If we really want to keep up, we would have to rewrite this article at least every several years, wouldn’t we?
