March 29, 2007

13 Amazing Google Facts You DONT Know

I am a huge Google geek, so these Google facts were like soft porn to me.

google image

1. Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.

2. Google’s Home Page Has 63 Validation Errors. Don’t believe me?: Check Google Validation

3. The Google search engine receives about a billion search requests per day.

4. The infamous “I’m feeling lucky” button is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.

5. Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied “We are waiting for the rest of it”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.

6. The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’.

7. Google has the largest network of translators in the world.

8. Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.

9. Google consists of over 450,000 servers, racked up in clusters located in data centers around the world.

10. Google started in January, 1996 as a research project at Stanford University, by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively.

11. Google is a mathematical term 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasne.

12. Number of languages in which you can have the Google home page set up, including Urdu, Latin and Klingon: 88

13. Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handheld devices.

Credit: Andy

15 comments for this post.

  1. Comment from Paul Logasa Bogen II on March 29th, 2007 :

    #8 is incorrect my old officemate who was interviewed by Google was told 10%.

    #12 implies that Urdu is a made up or dead language like Klingon and Latin respectively, despite it being spoken by 160 million people, making it more common than German or Japanese.

  2. Comment from David on March 30th, 2007 :

    Hey Dean!

    nice post. Great reading for a Friday afternoon. Right, I need to locate your doesn’t suck button for a new site ;)

    David
    http://www.MobileMarketingWatch.com

  3. Comment from heffy on April 1st, 2007 :

    in #11 Google should be spelled Googol.

  4. Comment from Jay Adair on April 2nd, 2007 :

    I just like the opening image, well done! No, in all seriousness, this is a good list. The mind boggles at what sort of process is required to catalogue the web the way they do.

  5. Comment from Matt Keegan on April 17th, 2007 :

    I can’t imagine the “Googol” spelling having the same traction as Google does today. Good thing an editor spelled the name correctly or we’d be googolling the internet. Golly!

    Matt
    http://www.thearticlewriter.com/blog

  6. Comment from strawberry blueberry raspberry on April 19th, 2007 :

    google: “barney google”

    “A cigar smoking little guy with big eyes, Barney Google was a hugely popular cartoon character created by Billy DeBeck, the original Google who came along in 1919…”

  7. Comment from Dez on May 1st, 2007 :

    Super Post!
    Great for novice internet users like me!
    Many Thanxs

  8. Comment from Martin on May 1st, 2007 :

    Wow! What a great pair of Tips! LOL
    Im amazed at the areas that are uncovered!

  9. Comment from صور on May 6th, 2007 :

    amazing facts

  10. Comment from Gabrielle on May 19th, 2007 :

    First, great post! I always wondered about the spelling of Google - why it wasn’t just spelled as it should be.
    Second - great picture! Sure got my attention :)

  11. Comment from richard on September 30th, 2007 :

    your a bad nerd!

  12. Comment from mira xxx on October 17th, 2007 :

    Wow! What a great pair of Tips! LOL
    Im amazed at the areas that are uncovered!

    :-D

  13. Comment from Projektowanie Domow on October 24th, 2007 :

    Great for novice internet users like me!

  14. Comment from jose on October 26th, 2007 :

    she is fine

  15. Comment from bub on November 3rd, 2008 :

    Google started in January, 1996 as a research project at Stanford University, by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively.

    1996 is my birth year!!!

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