Name “Google” is a mistake! Here are 10 amazing Google facts!

There was a time when it was difficult to find answers to our questions. Also, the only source of information was newspapers and radio. But then, on 4th September 1998, Google was launched and now it’s totally different! Almost any information is just one click away! Nowadays, if we don’t know something, the first thing that comes to our mind is “Google it!”. We don’t even use the word search, just Google!

But what do we know about the company which made a huge impact in our life except for the owner, CEO and few things about headquarter? So, here are some amazing Google facts.

Fact 1

Ever since the launch in 1998 Google is well known for its special logo designs or as they’re officially called doodles. The very first doodle looks like this.

It was created because the two founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were going to attend the festival. So, they wanted to inform their users that they would not be available for the weekend. Since then, over 1,700 doodles have been created and used on Google’s home page. The official logo of google has had a few minor changes. Also, at one point it had an exclamation mark at the end similar to the Yahoo logo! (3rd Logo).

Fact 2

Even though Google is arguably the most important Internet service in the world, the home page which is using the html5 markup language contains 23 errors in the code. If you are not sure what does this means, don’t worry! The errors won’t cost you any trouble. However, it could and definitely should be fixed.

Fact 3

Google was originally meant to be called “BackRub” because of how the system handles search results and, at one time it was suggested to call it the “what box”. Later it was changed to “Googol”, which is the mathematical term for the number one followed by a hundred zeroes(10^100). However, because of a misspelling, Googol became Google and the two creators decided to use that instead.

Fact 4

In 2009, one of the programmers at Google accidentally blocked every website in Google’s index. Thus, practically he had put a halt to the whole internet for almost an hour. The problem occurred when the programmer entered a forward slash(/) in Google’s registry of blocked websites. And as you probably know, pretty much every website address on the internet contains a forward slash. So, that mistake of one single character blocked out the whole internet for a while!

Fact 5

“Don’t be evil” is the unofficial corporate motto for Google. Google employee, Paul Buhay, also the creator of Gmail suggested a slogan at a gathering in early 2000. Later, he explained that the slogan was sort of a jab towards other companies and competitors at the time that they felt were kind of exploiting their users to some extent. Nevertheless, the model isn’t used officially in any way. So, you will not see a tagline under the homepage logo anytime soon.

Fact 6

Google has a lot of weird language options. For starters, it is available in Klingon as well as leet speaks pig Latin as a pirate and as a shelter Swedish chef from the Muppets. You can also make the Google Translate service a beatbox. Yeah! you read that right! Here’s how. Go to Google Translator and set the translator to translate from German. Insert text as shown in the below image, in the Translate box. Click the speaker symbol to listen and be amazed!

Fact 7

The recent Google’s home page is so bear. It is due to the fact that the founders did not know the HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact, for a very long time, Google did not even have a submit button and the only way you could search was by hitting the enter key.

Fact 8

Google has quite a lot of hidden features. Here are some examples. Try searching for “askew” in Google. You will notice that the whole page will tilt slightly to the right. When searching for an answer to life the, universe and everything, Google will bring up the calculator and display the number 42. It is a reference to the book and movie, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy”. By entering “once in a blue moon” into the search bar, you get the “1.16699016 × 10^-8 hertz” equation as a result. If you search for “anagram”, Google suggests the phrase “nag a ram” which is not a real word, but indeed is an anagram for the word anagram. If you hover over the infamous “I’m feeling lucky” button it changes to say something else such as “I’m feeling wonderful”

Fact 9

Ever felt like you do not really know what to exactly search for to find what you want. Well, fear not fellow Internet dweller, Google has tons of special features called operators to help you restrict your search to find exactly what you want. Here are some examples. If you want to search for something on a particular site, you can write, “site:” and then the desired site in question like this. Want to search for a particular phrase and not each individual word then use quotation marks around it. If I want to search for a house but I don’t want the result from the TV show house, I can use a hyphen along with the word TV. This will exclude all results which have the word TV in them. If you only want results within a specific time frame, you can enter two years with two periods in between. Read our article – “Advanced Google search! How to Google like a pro?” to find out many other operators and other searching tricks to get exactly what you want.

Fact 10

Depending on what Google services you are using, Google might know a whole lot about you. If you use Chrome, they know every website you have ever visited. And every time you search for something on Google, not only do they know what you search for, but they also know what you do on those websites which feature ads by Google. Have an Android phone? They may know your location i.e where you are at all times! They may have all of your sent and received emails, your appointments, and even your last known location. Also, they may know what you’re watching and whom you’re calling. They may even have your photos which includes face recognition technology that can automatically identify you and your friends in new photos. You might say, Google knows more than your mother about you!

I hope you enjoyed reading these amazing google facts and also knew something new today. If so, please share it with your friends and family. It’ll help your friends and family to increase knowledge base and also, your one share will help me to grow more!

Also, take a look on this fantastic article containing amazing Google doodles and games! – Google Tricks-Fun with Google Doodles, games & more!