Meet Google from the other side

Everyone recognizes the company Google and a lot has been written about it. But there are some unknown to the general public, details and facts that deserve your attention.

Google

In the long journey of the Google company and until it became the world's No. 1 website, many amazing events happened.

Some trivial, some historical. Check out ten weird and wonderful facts related to Google that you definitely didn't know.

Google's original name was BackRub
google backrub

BackRub (Back Rub = back rub) is the name a massage technique!! When founding the company, Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) were looking for a catchy name.

And since BackRub was the name of their research project when they were students at Stanford University in 1996, they decided to name their new company BackRub. The likely reason was that early versions of their search engine analyzed a website's backlinks to determine its importance, so the name was fitting.

But it didn't last long. A year later, they dropped the BackRub domain and registered Google. And why Google?

Google got its name from the number Googol
Google

The name "Google" actually came from a graduate student at Stanford, Sean Anderson. During Google's first year of operation, the founders were looking for a better name than BackRub. Anderson suggested the word “googolplex”. Page countered with the smaller "googol".

The Googol is the digit 1 followed by 100 zeros, while the googolplex it is 10 raised to the googol power.

When Anderson checked online to see if this domain was free, he mistakenly searched for “google.com” instead of the correct “googol.com”. Page liked this name even better and registered it in their name on September 15, 1997.

Global internet usage dropped by 40% when Google went down for 5 minutes
google

Google doesn't go down often, but as it turns out, when it does, the whole world stops. Shortly before midnight on August 16, 2013, a blackout occurred that affected all Google services, including Search, Gmail, and .

During those few minutes, internet traffic worldwide dropped by 40%, according to web analytics company GoSquared. This just goes to show how dependent we are on Google and its services.

Google in 1997 offered to sell itself to Yahoo
Google

Back in 1997, when Google was still a little-known company, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin offered to sell it to Yahoo for $1 million. But the offer was rejected.

By 2002, Google had become more successful, so Yahoo offered $3 billion to buy it. Google in turn rejected the offer and asked for $5 billion, which Yahoo rejected. Google in 2022 was estimated at 2 trillion dollars.

One of the biggest blunders in deal history, right? Maybe not, because one of the reasons Google became such a huge success is the team behind it. If Yahoo had bought it, Google might be what it is today.

Stanford University holds the patent for Google's original search algorithm
Stanford University

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin filed a patent for their algorithm (the PageRank) while attending Stanford University. This algorithm helps determine the importance of a web page and is only one part of how Google ranks its search engine results.

Interestingly, this patent has been assigned to Stanford University and Google has received permission from Stanford University to use it.

Accordingly, the university received in return for the concessions 1,8 million Google shares for the use of the patent. He sold these shares in 2005 for US$336 million.

Jennifer Lopez's famous green dress led to the creation of Google Images
jennifer lopez green dress google

Almost everyone remembers the iconic green Versace dress worn by Jennifer Lopez ( Lopez) at the Grammy Awards in 2000. However, most people don't know that this green dress led to the creation of Google Images.

This dress was the most popular Google search at the time. However, most people were looking for an image of this dress and not just a text result. The team behind Google created Google Image Search as an answer to this problem.

The former executive chairman of Google, , described the origins of Google Image Search in his essay The Tinkerer's Apprentice: “At the time, it was the most popular search query we'd ever seen. But we had no surefire way to give users exactly what they were looking for. That's why Image Search was born.”

15% of Google searches are new terms
Google

With trillions of searches performed every year, most people would think people are searching for the same thing over and over again.

However, you might be surprised to learn that 15% of searches made on Google every day are really new and unique.

Google acquired YouTube in a fast food joint
denny fast food google youtube

According to the words of the co-founder of YouTube, Mr. Steven Chen (Steven Chen), the acquisition agreement of YouTube to Google took place inside a fast food restaurant of s Denny's while eating mozzarella sticks.

Chen explained that they chose to negotiate the YouTube acquisition in a place neither of them used to visit. Detail: the deal was closed and Chen ordered mozzarella sticks.

The word "Google" has been officially recognized as a verb in 2006
dictionary book glass

Don't be offended if the new generation mentions the verb "google". At least they have something right.

Since Google was founded in 1997, its dominance over the internet has soared to the point where it has become an essential tool in our daily lives.

As a testament to Google's dominance of the world wide web, the word "google" was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary in June 2006 and the American Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in July 2006.

"Googling" for Britons and Americans is now something of a key term for searching for information on the internet.

The first Google Doodle was an absentee note
burning man google google

Special events, holidays and important events are often marked with a Google Doodle. The first Google Doodle, however, had a very different purpose.

It featured the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada, USA and was intended to inform users that co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin would be absent from the festival in case something went wrong at Google headquarters!.

It seems that the idea caught on as 4.000 Google Doodles honoring special events and notable people have since been published, and Google now has a team of dedicated Doodlers who create these doodles.

It should be noted that they have also referred to national events in Greece (October 28, etc.) but also to important people (Papanikolou, etc.).

Google has come a long way since it started as a research project by two PhD students at Stanford University.

The internet search giant's dominance shows no signs of slowing down, and we're sure the company will continue to innovate with its products and deliver stories that will surprise and delight us.

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Written by Dimitris

Dimitris hates on Mondays .....

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