THE BEST STRATEGIST: facts of google

So how did it all start at our beloved Google ?

The glorious history of Google

starts with two students Larry Page 23 and Sergey Brin 24, who were pursuing their Ph.D. at Stanford University, when they got the idea to create a new search engine. Supposedly, Larry Page and Sergey Brin did not like each other initially. They thought they have nothing in common, but with time they learned life lessons together, they went on to become best friends for life. This was perhaps a rather strange way of starting a venture as big as Google.

The biggest irony of Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s life is:

that there original goal for these two enthusiastic PH.D. Students was to to sell their Google search idea for $1 million to whoever was willing to purchase it. However,luckily for them (and us?), nobody turned up ...

Did you know that Google was originally named Googol?

The name failed when Larry Page and Sergey Brin received their first $100,000 paycheck in the name of Google Inc. and they had to run and create a bank account for the name, so that they could cash it. Therefore, the naming ceremony was nothing but an accident.
Google started its hiring process by recruiting Craig Silverstein
as their first employee, without their current sophisticated HR team. Craig was Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s fellow student at Stanford. (Craig was third employee of Google. He has now resigned from Google and has joined Khan Academy, an online learning site offering collaborative videos and projects.)
The famous www.google.com of today was once
google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu, when it was in the testing phase and was working under the website of Stanford university.
In the year 1997, Yahoo rejected an offer to buy Google for
$1 million and now the company is worth $20 billion, whereas Google has grown up to $200 Billion. This is perhaps one of the most interesting financial losses of the IT industry. (see: google current share price)
By December 1998, Google was named
the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites, as shown by PC Magazine.
In the February of 1999, the Google Company
moved out of its garage office to its first mountain-view office, with just eight employees. This number is incomparable to the current staff size of Google.
Lego Computers: It is hard to believe that
there was a time when the founders of Google were short on funds and used economic ways to save money. The very first Google’s storage rack that stored ten 40 GB hard disks was made up of Lego. Can you believe that the most royal company of the modern times had such a humble start? More info
Why is Google is sometimes nicknamed the “Mountain View Chocolate Factory”. Thats not because its gives its employees lot of chocolates (although it does) it is used as a comparison of Google to Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory - because of a similarity in the cultures of Wonka’s factory and the Googleplex who both employ slightly strange eccentric but dedicated “engineers”.
It is a very commonly misunderstood fact that Google’s
search engine technology of Page Rank was based on its ranking concept, when actually it was named so after the name of its inventor as well as one of the founders- Larry Page.
The most intriguing part of the Page Rank method is
that it works by assigning ranks to the pages based on the valid back links to a website. That is why initially it was named Backrub by its inventors.
Google is an international company, with
its homepage available in 88 different languages, making it a company that respects and understands international requirements.
Google is a company that works 24x7, with
offices and employees around the world. The employees keep testing Google’s new algorithms on a small set of users. These changes are notannounced and when applied, the behavior of the users is noted and based on that, the changes are applied on the whole of the system.
Google has the world’s largest network of
translators. Google employs the largest number of people who help transcend the world’s boundaries. You can translate from 345 source language to 345 target languages from this network.
Google is a company of experts who
take very calculated risks. Did you know that Google has a 20% and a 5% rule, which say that at least 20% of the users need to use a feature before it is included on any page and at least 5% of the users need to use a particular search preference, before it is included in the feature “Advanced Settings”.
Before creating Gmail, Google has carried out
in depth research on email users practices and mental models based on Googlers, and created the gmail provider to fit all these 'personas', with up to6 different types of models. This is how gmail became a worldwide used email, that fits the needs of every single user and makes them all feel welcome.
Google processes around 20 petabytes 10¹⁵ or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of information

daily, which is an unbelievable number to put your mind around. The number suggests that approximately almost every person using the Internet uses Google at least once.
It is estimated that Google consists of
around 900,000 servers, which are located in various data centers around the world. These servers are placed in high security modern buildings (data centers) to ensure data safety.
Gmail is now the official world’s largest email provider (June 2012)

Google Mail's speciality is that a) less spam b) your account's storage space increases over time, so you may never need to delete emails to save space c) quick to load d) amazing search d) powerful filtering.
According to Google, one third of all
search queries are first time queries, which means it is the first time a string of words have been used together, ever. Therefore, Google is creating a different kind of a language of its own, named “Keywords”.

Did you know that Google’s first

playable doodle was launched on Pac Man’s 30th birthday in May 2010?

The PAC MAN doodle was launched with

250 levels to complete and it went on to become so popular with the gaming enthusiasts, that it got a permanent place in Google.

20. Did you know that you can make phone calls with Gmail?

It is a very interesting and probably unknown fact that in the US, one can make calls to any phone, directly from their Gmail account. This is really a great feature because calls within US and Canada are free.

21. In the April of 2011, on the occasion of Charlie Chaplin’s 122nd birthday

Google released its first live-action doodle, for the Charlie Chaplin fans out there.

22. Google TV brings to you all the goodness of

Google, straight to your TV set. One can now check emails, watch YouTube videos and use various Google apps from their television. Did you know you can do this all using a remote control or even better, you can control it through a phone!

23. There is a huge list of Google products that have been discontinued.

This list is as big as the current ‘in use’ products list. Most of the products in this list got discontinued because either they were not widely used, replaced by or merged with other products. Examples include: Google health; Google checkout; Google wave; Google codesearch; Google Reader; Google Apps standard edition (free).

24.Android, the most famous

technical word used these days, is actually an operating system based in Linux. Android phones are phones that use this ultra modern operating systems. The late Steve Jobs said he wanted to “go thermonuclear war” against Google, when it launched its Android operating system for “grand theft”.

25.Google is planning to build three new data centers in Asia

which will cost them around $200 million and will start functioning soon. This helps with Geolocation of your Google Account (moving your google accounts to the nearest point of presence.

26.Google has designed driverless cars

based around a modified Toyota Prius. Google lobbied the Nevada state to pass laws to allow driverless vehicles so Google were granted a licence to test their cars in Nevada.

27.

Google stores the IP addresses used

to search with the search query data and date, time and many more such technicalities. There is a saying about Google that goes like “Google knows more about you than your mother.” It helps in protecting your account so that if some other IP address is traced on your account, it immediately tells you that account is opened at another location and protects it from being hacked.

Google uses OTP security token system to

secure its internal mailing system. Google takes extra care to make sure that its internal mailing system is not hackable and all its top-secret data remains within the complex. OTP is a small pen drive like instrument which has a button on it. Once pressed, it displays a 6 digit number which acts as a password of email. This password can be used only once. To login again, button has to be pressed again.

Many people wonder why the Google homepage is

so sparse, when the actual technology is so advanced. The reason being that when Google was started its founders did not know enough HTML to design a fancy page, and they just wanted to create a quick interface they could use without any instruction.

Over the years, the founders still prefer

Over the years, the founders still prefer and insist to keep the home page simple and they insist that the words on the home page do not exceed 28 words.

The constant user surveys have proved that

the “I am feeling Lucky” button is seldom used by its users, but still the users prefer to have it on the page.

Google’s traffic doubled when

the “did you mean,“option was introduced. This feature was achieved through the introduction of advanced spell checkers and helped users find suggestions to their search requirements.

Google homepage was initially launched with a

Beta label, which was removed on 21st September 1999, and that was when Google became the father of the search engine technology.

Google Now makes intuitive use of the data it collects about its users

If a user uses Google Calendar, Google can use their schedule, through Google Now, to remind them of upcoming appointments and even travel directions and traffic information just before you need to leave for the meeting. The videos users watch on YouTube and the books they read on Google books can provide suggestions to search results for other items the user would be interested in.

In 2013 Google gets the most search requests for

Nelson Mandel, Paul Walker, iPhone 5, Cory Monteith, Harlem Shak, Boston Marathon, Royal Baby, Samsung Galaxy S, PlayStation 4, North Korea. The list is similar to Google's top searches from 2012, which included Whitney Houston, Gangnam Style, iPad, Olympics. Its not a surprise under generic searches its things like Facebook, Amazon and pornography that are searched for.

Many of Google’s products spend a long time in
Beta phase. Google encourages its employees to spend at least 20% of their time developing an independent idea. Some of them are so interesting that Google takes them up officially resulting in so many beta products.
The word Google is now a
formal English word, and was included in the Oxford English Dictionary in 2006. Now, you can listen to more and more people saying “google it" used as a synonym for general web searching

.

The first Google Doodle was a

vacation announcement. It was a stick man standing in the company logo and was an announcement that the founders were going to attend burning man in the year 1998. What started as a fun indulgence went on to become a creative obsession.

Google is based

in Mountain View, near San Francisco.

Google’s unofficial slogan says

"Don't be evil". Google tries hard to contribute to the good causes, be it humanitarian or environmental.

Susan Wojcicki, one of the Vice Presidents of the company, has

been named the “most important Googler you have never heard about”. It is a rare tag but a well deserved one.

Susan Wojcicki was on the

16th position of the Forbes magazine’s list of “World’s 100 most powerful women” in the year 2011.

All the letters in the

word Google have been copyrighted by Google.

620 million users

visit www.google.com daily. Does that number stand for half the world’s population? Maybe not, but it definitely stands for almost all the people who use the Internet.

Up to 97% of

Google’s revenue comes from advertisements.

In 2011, Google had more than

31,000 employees (25,000 full time, 6000, engineers, 9,000 research ). Google has more than 2000 Indians employees as well.

Eric Schmidt was the only

candidate (among the candidates being interviewed) who had been to the Burning Man, which got him an instant brownie point and he was hired as the chairman in the year 2001.

Google estimates that an ad on its homepage would cost around

$10 million, but the page is still not for sale. The founders of the company want to keep the page as it started years ago.

The Google homepage can also be viewed in the language of

Klingon (from Star Trek), in case the aliens attack the world and need Google to navigate through the situation. The Google make the Klingon homepage available at https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-klingon

Google estimates that the "I'm feeling lucky!" button has cost

approximately $100 million dollars in lost ad revenue, but Google still keeps the button because the users like it.

Google first tweeted

the binary form of ‘I am feeling lucky’ on Thursday, 26 February 2009.
“I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010″
If you convert all the 1′s and 0′s in a byte into ascii characters, the message is:I’m F E E L I N G L U C K Y.

The private planes of Sergey Brin and Larry page land on

the strips of NASA HQ, where no other planes can land. Talk about royalty - Googlers are having the best of it.

Google written backwards is elgooG, btu did you know you could

search backwards too at http://elgoog.im

During the Egypt crisis in the year 2011-2012, Google

worked with Twitter to provide people without an Internet connection to send Tweets by dialing a phone number and leaving a message. This voicemail was automatically translated into messages on Twitter.

Google Earth reached

1-billion downloads in 2011.

In the November of 2011, Google broadcasted the

Haj Pilgrimage Live on YouTube for the very first time (first time for HAJ as well as YouTube)

Google is a voracious buyer of

other technology companies. It now owns many companies now and some of the famous names are Picassa, Keyhole Inc., Android, Youtube and Motorola Mobility.

Google’s toughest competitors are

Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Mozilla. There are many more names to the list but these names can safely be attributed as the toughest competitors.

YouTube makes money through

advertisements that are placed near the videos. It works like Google itself. It further earns money through sponsored competition on the website. Google paid $1.65 Billion to purchase Youtube on October 9, 2006, even though they had an in house product called Google Video.

Did you know that Google pays Mozilla Millions of dollars a year?

A heavy sum? Why? Google and Mozilla see themselves as partners, not competitors, to make the web better so Google's contribution provides nearly all of Mozilla's revenue. As part of the deal Mozilla makes Google the default search provider in its Firefox web browser and some speculate the partnership also protects Google from antitrust comaplaints.

There are some people who believe

if you cannot find something on Google then it does not exist.

In April 2004, Google announced

In April 2004, Google announced to open a research facility on the moon, called Googlunaplex.

The official cook of Google is

Charlie Ayers, who worked previously for Grateful Dead. He was appointed by a team of 40 employee judges, through a cook off. He makes sure that the hard working intellectuals at Google offices are well fed at all times with excellent food.

Google’s headquarters are known as

the Googleplex. Googleplex combines the words Google andcomplex. It's also a play on the world googolplex which is a huge number ( A googol is 10¹⁰⁰ a googolplex is 10 to the power of googol!)

In the Google office, Googlers can

skateboard their way to the cafeteria, (computer controlled) toilets or in fact anywhere they want to go. For Googlers, destination is more important than the mode of transport.

Google has a personal

T-rex dinosaur, called Stan, which lives in their California headquarters. The skeleton is original and is an asset of Google Inc.

The London office has traditional

old London telephone boxes and a zen like chillout pad.

Google offices do not have

a dress code. A Googler can wear anything to the office. evenbodypaint...

Google showers its employees with

unique perks. There was a time when they provided a subsidy of $5000 for purchasing a hybrid car in order to inspire their employees to use cleaner and greener technologies.

Google provides a complete

Gourmet meal, 3 times a day, to its employees. Some people claim the food is better than a 5 star restaurant (but having eaten there we don't but its not bad..).

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.

Google has a real job profile named

“Chief Cultural Officer” who is responsible to retain Google’s cultures like no hierarchy, happy employees, and a flat organization.

The Googlers at the California office do not like lawn mowers and prefer

goats to come and clean their lawns. They really love the cute quotient of this live lawn mower.

A Google employee is named a

“Googler” and a new employee is given the name of “Noogler”.

Google is a dog friendly company that

allows its employees to bring their well-behaved canines to office with them.

Google loves the environment so it formed

Google Green that is dedicated towards developing renewable energy supplies.

Google encourages its engineers to spend

20% of their time on ideas of their own. Google has many products that came out of this 20% idea.

Googlers can ride company provided

bicycles around the Googleplex. Google makes sure its employees do not have to walk through their huge campuses, and that they use greener technologies.

Why is Google is sometimes nicknamed the “Mountain View Chocolate Factory”.

That's not because its gives its employees lot of chocolates (although it does). It is used as a comparison of Google to Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, because of a similarity in the cultures of Wonka’s factory and the Googleplex who both employ slightly strange eccentric but dedicated “engineers”.

Google provides on-site

physicians and nurses, who make sure the employees do not have to leave the campus for medical checkups. Google believes that happy and healthy employees are the best employees.

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.

Google employees and their families are covered by

travel insurance, even on their personal vacations. Hence, no matter where you go, if you are a Googler, you are insured.

Google employees get special perks and breaks when

they are expecting a baby or getting married. Google India for example it offers a baby bonding benefit of around $250 to young mothers soon after the child is delivered, quite unusual in a country like India.

Google employees get special perks and breaks when

Google offers

$6,000 for when an employee provides a successful referral. It’s a win-win situation.

On 2007’s April fool’s day, the employees of the Google New York office actually lost

and found a real snake in the middle of a prank. Celebrating April fool’s day at Google is a tradition. Google is known to play practical pranks that have left people around the world spellbound on many occasions.

Google provides free of cost

legal advice to its employees in the US. Therefore, the employees do not have to worry about the legal costs. In addition, Googlers can get group advice and common legal services at a very generous group discounts.

To get employed at Google you first have

a conversation with a recruiter, then a phone interview and finally an onsite interview at one of Google offices. This is done once a job seeker puts his or her resume on Google job portal https://www.google.com/about/jobs/ - but it is not easy to get a job at Google. Google generally has the best and most highly qualified graduates available.

Google used Steegle.com founder, Stephen Hind, to

present a webinar on how to use Google Sites broadcast from the Google UK Headquarters

Google does not provide direct support for its free products and instead runs

the Google Top Contributor programme, a collection of volunteers who provide the most active and knowledgeable answers you'll find in Google’s Help Forums. Here at Steegle.com we employ and gather contributions from Google Top Contributors for the content of the site.

Google provides certification programmes for

its partners and individuals to show their expertise in Google products. Here at Steegle.com we have achieved Google Apps Authorised Reseller staus and we employ various experts including Google Apps Certified Deployment and Sales spdcialists, Google Apps Certified Administrators and we're working towards other Google certifications too.

Good at searching on Google? Learn more at

http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/ This site offers basic and advanced self-paced courses in how to get the best out of Google Search.

Google like charitable work so made

Google.org to develop technologies to help address global challenges and supports innovative partners through grants, investments and in-kind resources.

The best way to ranked number 1 on a Google Search is to

bribe several Google employees, but since Google has so many check and balances in their search technology not even this would work. The real way to get ranked well is to have unique, original content that other sites want to link to - simples!

Thursday, 24 July 2014

facts of google