On Tuesday, September 4th, Google turned 20 years old, marking one of the longest and most influential running times for a technological company in history.
Specialising in internet products and services, Google now boasts numerous solutions, aside from being the number one search engine of choice – including Gmail (now Gsuite), browsing software, advertising solutions and even hardware such as Chrome cast devices and Google home personal virtual assistants.
This is far removed from it’s humble beginnings in 1998, when a year after the domain was registered, it was launched and brought to market by by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. This followed an important name change, with Google having previously been christened with the slightly odd name – ‘Backrub’.
Ten things you didn’t know about Google:
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As part of their green initiative, Google regularly rents goats to mow the lawns of their mountain view HQ
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Larry and Sergey’s private planes have runways in NASA, where no other planes are allowed to land.
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The first Google computer storage was built with Legos.
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Google employees in the US get death benefits which guarantee that the surviving spouse will receive 50% of their salary every year for the next decade.
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No part of a Google office is allowed to be more than 150 feet away from some kind of food.
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Google helps pronounce massive numbers if you type ‘=english’ after searching for a number.
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There’s a rotated version of Google known as ‘Google Mirror’, which shows everything in a mirrored avatar.
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Google wanted to sell itself to online company Excite in 1999 for $1 million, but the Excite CEO rejected the offer – Google is now worth more than 300 billion.
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”Google” was added as a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary in June 2006.
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Google’s first tweet was in binary format which means “i’m feeling lucky”.
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