Google was founded on September 4, 1998, and for most of that time Google.com has been
the most trafficked website in the world.
Although it has faced stiff competition from Facebook in recent years, it still remains
the #1 most visited website.
The amount of searches Google processes every day is mind boggling.
In 2012 people made a total of 1,873,910,000,000 google searches.
That's an average of 5,134,000,000 searches per day or 59,421 searches per second.
Yet Google manages to return every single one of these search results in about 300 milliseconds.
But the infrastructure required to support all this is enormous, and unfathomably expensive.
Google are highly secretive about the number and locations of their data centres.
But it is estimated they have over 2 million servers worldwide.
And Google spends over $4 billion on new data centres and servers every year.
It's easy to think that not much happens when you type something into Google, but just two
google searches produce the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle.
But Google isn't just a search engine.
Google provides over 100 products and services including Google Mail, Drive, Plus, Translate,
Maps, Play, Analytics, Blogger and many, many more.
Oh and don't forget YouTube, which Google bought for a measly $1.65 billion in 2006.
Commonly searched terms are cached.
This means Google doesn't have to recalculate the results every time it is searched and
the cached search results can be served up almost instantaneously to the user.
However, every day 15% of searches made have never before been typed into the search engine.
That's 500 million searches every day that Google has never seen before, and it has always
been that way for the 15 years the company has existed.
Surprisingly the percentage of brand new searches made on Google has never really dropped.
Brand new searches like this take up a lot more processing power and take considerably
longer to render the results, because everything has to be calculated from scratch.
So to combat this, Google recently added a new product to its search, called Knowledge
Graph.
Knowledge Graph is a vast database which holds copious amounts of data on a wide range of
entities, such as topics, people and events, the system also observes the connections between
them, similar to the human brain.
This allows Google to present you with answers instead of just a list of links.
You can see this in action, by asking Google questions such as "What is the speed of light?".
But if Google is so advanced, why is the homepage so basic?
The main reason it's so bare is because the Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin,
didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface.
In fact for a long time there was no submit button and the only way to kick start your
google search was by pressing the return key.
Due to the sparseness of the homepage in early user tests they noticed people were just sitting
around looking at the screen.
After minutes of nothingness, the tester asked "What's up?".
To which they replied "We are waiting for the rest of it".
To solve this problem, the Google Copyright message was added to act as a crude end of
page marker.
But how did the name Google come about?
Well the name was actually an accident.
The founders were going for the name Googol, which is a one followed by one hundred zeros.
However they misspelt it as Google.
The I'm feeling lucky button, which takes users straight to the first search result
is nearly never used.
However in trials, they found removing it somehow reduces the Google experience.
It is estimated to cost Google around $100 million in lost advertising revenue every
year.
One of Google's most successful features was the "Did you mean..." spelling corrector.
When implemented this instantly doubled their traffic.
Google has the largest network or translators in the world.
Google is constantly developing new features, but before they can be released to the entire
Google user base, Google tests them on a small percentage and closely monitors the results.
At least 20% of people have to use a feature or it will be scrapped.
Unlike many large corporations, emailing Google isn't fruitless.
Google actively listens to feedback.
Speaking of email, Gmail was used internally for 2 years before it's launch to the public.
Until recently all Google employees were encouraged to spend 20% of their time at work, working
on their own projects.
This innovative management technique gave rise to some of Google's biggest projects,
including AdSense, Gmail, Google Transit, Google News and Google Talk.
Some core Google services recently went down for 5 minutes causing worldwide internet traffic
to drop off by an enormous 40 per cent.
New Google employees are called "Noogles", they are initiated by having to wear a propeller
beanie cap on their first Friday.
Google loves food, the first chef that Google employed earned $26 million from his stock
options.
Google's headquarters, aptly named The Googleplex has 18 cafeterias on campus, with diverse
menus.
What's more, all Google employees are provided with free, restaurant quality breakfast, lunch
and dinner, including drinks.
But working at Google comes with an array of free benefits, including on-site gyms and
daycare as well as a complementary concierge service to assist with everyday tasks.
The Googleplex is also fitted out with laundry rooms, two swimming pools and multiple sand
volleyball courts.
As well as some bizarre installations like a gigantic T-Rex skeleton, a scale replica
of SpaceShipOne, enormous Android-themed models, pink flamingos, a large LEGO man, Google-coloured
phone boxes and adult sized ball pits.
Google employees can give their co-workers massage credits for a job well done on a project.
These credits can be redeemed for a free one hour massage on campus.
Every friday employees can unwind and socialise with free beer and wine.
Google employees receive incredible death benefits.
If a Googler passes away, their surviving spouse continues to get half of their salary
for the next 10 years as well as $1,000 a month for each of the Googler's children.
And finally, Google's first ever Tweet in February 2009 looked like this:
"I'm 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101
01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010."
Which, when translated from binary code reads "I'm feeling lucky".