Just how massive is Google, anyway?

Here are some interesting facts about google you may not know.

First of the math stuff, a googol is a 1 followed by 100 zeros (to put it in perspective, the amount of electrons in the entire universe is estimated to be a 1 followed by 79 zeros, yeh take that electrons!).

And now for the fun stuff. The main reason why Google's homepage is so bare is because the founders didn't know HTML and they wanted a quick interface.

For large versions of massive google image try this google by the numbers link or this google by the numbers link.

Back in the day you actually had to hit the return/enter key to execute a search, not like now where there's all these fancy buttons (okay nowadays you have one, maybe two buttons depending how the roll out of google instant search goes, but it's still interesting that they didn't have one to begin with!).

A huge leap in search came when Google introduced a superior spell checker, or as we know it today the "Did you mean" feature (I have been known to abuse this as my own personal spell checker). This was placed just underneath search results as Google found that to be the most effective placement.

The first person named after "Google" was a Lebanese boy who's full name is Oliver Google Kai. Oliver's father, Walid Elias Kai, is a vertical search marketing consultant.











While the "I'm feeling lucky" button is almost never used, research showed that removing it made users uneasy. Users want the "I'm feeling lucky" button.

Google has one of the largest network of translators in the world!

The name Google was an accident! This was actually a spelling mistake by the original founders who were attempting to spell Googol.

Gmail was internal only for almost 2 years (not cool Google, not cool). In that time Google discovered that there were 6 types of email users and Gmail is designer around each of those users.


If that's not enough Google knowledge to satisfy your needs checkout this post with even more google facts and figures.