20 Facts About Google That Will Fry Your Circuits

Some of these are very surprising

Google is the multi-billion dollar company that has changed our lives. It’s the world’s most popular search engine and it has affected the way we learn and communicate with each other. From dinosaur statues and missing pythons to goats mowing the lawn, what’s really going on down at Google HQ? Join us as we take a look at 20 facts about Google that will fry your circuits.

Fun and interesting facts about Google

20. 16% of the search terms Google receives every day have never been entered.

19. At Google Headquarters in California there is a giant T-Rex statue named Stan in the courtyard. Founders bought the dinosaur to remind employees to never let Google go extinct.

18. One of the reasons Google’s homepage is so minimalist is because the founders didn’t know HTML and just wanted a quick interface.

17. Adding the ‘Did you mean…’ feature instantly doubled Google’s traffic.

16. In 1999 the founders of Google tried to sell their budding search engine to Excite for a mere $1 million US. Excite turned them down.

15. In June 2006 The Oxford English dictionary added the word ‘Google’ as a verb.

14. Google is well-known for their April fool’s day jokes. On April 1st, 2007 when an email began circulating their New York office that a python had escaped and was hiding somewhere in the building, employees barely took notice. However, it soon became apparent that this was indeed no joke; a pet snake belonging to one of Google’s employees had slipped out of its cage and was on the loose in the offices. A whole day passed before the python was eventually found snug behind a cabinet and no harm was done, save for a few soiled pantaloons.

13. On average, Google has been acquiring more than one company per week since 2010.

12. Employee perks include: free food and snacks, fully equipped gym with lap pools, subsidised massages, free haircuts, ping pong, billiards, foosball, video games, laundry facilities and dry cleaning, onsite medical staff, travel insurance on personal vacations, free legal advice, and finally you’re allowed to bring pets to work.

11. Google was originally called ‘Backrub’. Hmmmm doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

10. If an employee of Google dies, their surviving spouse or partner will receive 50% of their salary every single year for the next decade. In addition their children will receive $1000 per month until they reach the age of 19 or 23 if they’re a full-time student.

9. Google hired a camel named Raffia to document Abu Dhabi’s Liwa Oasis for Street View.

8. In 2014 Google posted earnings of over 60 billion dollars US. They earn 20 billion just from advertising, which is more than the prime time revenues of CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox combined!

7. When Google launched in 1998, they were receiving around 500,000 searches per day. Now they process 40,000 searches per second, 3.5 billion per day and 1.2 trillion per year.

6. Since Google Street view launched in 2007, they have photographed more than 7.2 million miles of road. That’s the equivalent to driving roughly 289 times around earth’s equator.

5. Every time you search for something on Google the query has to travel on average 1500 miles to a data centre and back to retrieve the answer for you. Keep that in mind next time you think your net is running slow.

4. A single Google query uses 1000 computers in 0.2 seconds to retrieve an answer.

3. Google’s first ever server rack was built from Lego.

2. The provocative green dress worn by Jennifer Lopez for the 2000 Grammy Awards prompted the creation of Google Images when so many people were searching for pictures of the famous outfit.

1. Google headquarters rents goats to mow their lawns. Google you ole goat mower, you!

Well there’s certainly some surprising facts about Google in this list. Which fact did you find most interesting? Tell us on Facebook and Twitter.