Google is celebrating its search engine’s 19th birthday today, with a special birthday doodle committed to itself.
Before you enjoy the celebration of Google’s birthday by clicking on the Doodle which appears on the Google’s homepage, here are nine things you might not know about Google.
The US multinational technology company was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were studying at Stanford University.
1. Building bricks of success
In the beginning, Google’s storage facility was a load of hard drives in a container made of LEGO.
But don’t panic, your precious files and pictures are saved on something much less basic today.
2. Baaaa-king mad
Google’s grounds have a lot of lands – and company bosses keep it maintained by hiring goats. Around 200 goats visit for a week at a time, to guzzle up the Google grass. There are a lot of dogs too – with employees being encouraged to bring their own pets because their pooches are thought to make people happier.
3. Traffic jam
Back in 2013, Google crashed for five minutes – and took 40 percent of web traffic with it. Nowadays, Facebook challenges Google’s power, by driving a lot of traffic through social media. So any future crashes would be much less drastic.
4. The surprising cost of I’m Feeling Lucky
This handy little button costs Google tens of millions of dollars every year – because it bypasses all the adverts which would normally show up on the results page. They’re slowly getting around it. Have you noticed that suggestions pop up even as you start typing your first word?
5. There’s a T-Rex on the Google Campus
And it has a scary message for the company’s many employees. The dinosaur skeleton is there to remind workers that even the most powerful things can go extinct, and not let it happen to Google.
6. They don’t want you to ‘just Google it’
Bosses didn’t like their company’s name becoming a verb. The phrase ‘just Google it’ worried those high up in the company, who thought it could undermine all their hard work to establish a brand.
7. Quest to dominate
Experts reckon Google buy more than one company every week. Most of them are tiny and get folded into the already established branches of Google’s business. But others, like Android, are much bigger – and continue to stand on their own within Google’s enormous empire.
8. They really value their employees
Google make sure they look after the families of those who die while still working for them.
Husbands and wives get 50 percent of their dead partner’s salary for a whole decade. While their kids receive money until they become adults, too.
9. To infinity and beyond
One Google search uses more coding and computing power than it took to send the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon. And is significantly quicker than the rockets.
