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- 15 things you didn't know about Google
Whether you realize it or not, you are using Google. Even if you forgo a search engine, an odd decision to say the least, you're bound to use Google Maps, YouTube, or iPhone's main competitor Android. (They each have over 1 billion users.) Is your web browser Chrome? maybe. After all, it is the most popular web browser, accounting for almost 42% of all desktop web traffic. Still, we bet you didn't know these 15 facts. When you're done, review the 15 Things You Didn't Know About Facebook. 1 Read more In a new warning, the FBI says never use free charging stations for phones As of October 2015, Google is no longer Google. Instead, the company is now Alphabet, a larger conglomerate with many companies under its umbrella, the largest being Google. Apparently, according to Alphabet's cover letter, the decision was made to give more autonomy to "companies that are far removed from our core internet products" like self-driving cars and glucose-sensing contact lenses, etc. But really, we bet it's a decision based on complicated financial reasoning. On the subject of Google's self-driving cars, we wondered if they were as ready to hit the road as those who mastered our safe and efficient driving skills. 2 Read MoreThe 6 Worst Things to Buy at Sam's Club Every April Fool's Day, Google pulls a few pranks like the teacher George Clooney. In this year's prank, Google Maps turned into a Ms. Pac-Man game and "launched" Google Wind, a tongue-in-cheek reimagining of a Dutch windmill, key to avoiding cloudy and rainy days. His first prank dates back to the year 2000, however, and in our opinion, it's his best prank yet. Google implores users to stare at a mesmerizing red and blue spiral while mentally concentrating on a search term before clicking on the spiral. Then head over to the April Fools results page. It's called MentalPlex and it's amazing. 3 Read more: If you shop at Walmart, prepare to see more in stores across the country Legend has it that Google offers something called "20% time," urging employees to spend 20% of their work time on projects they direct and design themselves. One of these elements is something you probably use every day: Gmail. At the time, the idea of 1 GB of email storage, 500 times the capacity offered by the main service, Hotmail, was outrageous. But Googler Paul Buchheit uses his "20% time" to solve this problem. Gmail currently offers 15 GB of base space per user. "20% of the time" is certainly great leadership advice, but for everyone else, be sure to review exactly what every new leader needs to know. 4 Read more 150 ways to really get to know someone through "this or that" questions Stanford students Sergey Brin and Larry Page created the search engine in 1996 as a graduate project. When he first incarnated, the name was "Backrub". (For those who aren't at all convinced, here's an archived link.) A year later, the co-founders decided to change the name to something that more accurately reflected the nearly limitless potential of web searches, rather than, you know, foreplay. 5 Read more Find Amazon's biggest daily deals with a super easy trick Googol is a mathematical term for a number followed by 100 zeros. By the way, we are a few years away from Google's coffers reflecting its name. If you want your coffers to look similar, consider picking one or two of these 20 Most Profitable Side Hustles. 6 Read more about This Popular Chain Is Closing Stores This Week See Merriam-Webster; it's a real input. Legend has it that the original text was "to obtain information about someone or something on the World Wide Web." But the company objected, claiming that colloquial use of "Google" as a verb would dilute the brand if people used the term to describe searches across different search engines—for example, Yahoo's official entry now begins with "Use from the Google search engine...". 7 Read more: If you live here, beware of this common plant that causes chemical burns The obsession with details in dictionary entries is in keeping with Google's critical eye on how they are described. On television, producers need explicit permission to use Google. Obviously, this is difficult to achieve. In You're The Worst, the company is called Zoiddle. In Arrested Development, the characters frequently tell each other to "do a search for 'something'", and one of the characters even drives a "something" car: it's clearly a Google car, but the logo is blurred. If you're someone who cares about being seen online, here's how to choose the perfect LinkedIn profile photo. 8 Read more: If you shop at Macy's, be prepared for this big change Google, on the other hand, teamed up with 20th Century Fox to produce The Interns, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson's 2013 comedy about two middle-aged salesmen who compete with child prodigies for an internship at the tech giant. Naturally, The Internship paints Google as one of the best places to work on the planet. (Fun fact: CEO Sergey Brin has a cameo in the movie.) As with Wilson and Vaughn's characters, switching careers is one of 40 Ways to Make the Most of Your 40s. 9 Read More7 4th of July Deals That Aren't Actually Deals Perhaps to prove The Internship's point, that Google is indeed the best place to work in the world, the company offers free food to all of its employees. It's not just a sloppy canteen. No, it is estimated that there are up to 30 separate food outlets on the Googleplex campus, each serving fresh farm-to-table food, serving everything from vegetarian to hearty meat. (The company has flatly refused to provide exact numbers.) Check out this report from Serious Eats to get a real idea of how delicious the food looks. If you find yourself in the Googleplex, see if you can't find the 6 Miracle Foods Doctors Swear By.Search, driverless cars and... goats in corporate gardens?
google is not really google
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google likes to play pranks
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Gmail is a bit of a surprise
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Google was originally called "Backrub"
current namesake is proper nerd
"To Google" is the official English verb
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Google is strict with appearances on TV shows
But Google collaborates in internships
google loves food
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Google replaces lawnmowers with goats
Read moreThe 20 Best Holiday Gifts at Any Price in 2019 at Best Buy
oh really. When the Googleplex garden needs to be mowed, Google will bring in 200 goats from a company called California Grazing. Goats will chew on the grass for about a week; it's an emissions-free way to keep your lawn clean and organized. Yes, like all other Google employees, temporary or not, the goats get free food: grass.
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The "I'm going to get lucky" button no longer works
Read more Starting January 31, USPS will get rid of it forever
In the past, Google has offered an "I'm getting lucky" button to improve searches. If a user searches for something, they can click the button and automatically go to the first result on the search page. This function no longer works. This allegedly caused the company to lose over $100 million in ad revenue per year, so they removed it by integrating an autocomplete search bar. However, you can still see the "I feel lucky" button on the Google home page. If you're still feeling lucky, yes, that way, be sure to go over the sex positions he needs you to try tonight.
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Gogle.com re-links with Google
Read moreThis popular retail chain will close all of its stores on September 30
Google is smart enough to snatch domain names around Google.com. If you go to google.com or gooogle.com, you will be redirected to Google.com. Goggle.com, on the other hand, does not. In technical terms, this is what they call a "phisher," or a website that makes money simply by sucking traffic from users' misspellings. In a 2011 Bloomberg Businessweek report, trolls cost the top 250 top-performing websites more than $285 million a year. Frankly, we could think of at least 20 more honest ways to make money.
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Google executive once stationed at NASA
Read more: These channels that you will lose in April if you have DirecTV
How is your driveway? As recently as 2007, Brin and Page parked their shared plane, a custom-built Boeing 767-200—yes, like an airplane—on the nearby runway of the NASA Ames Research Center. Men reportedly spend $1.3 million a year for the privilege. As compensation, NASA also has to keep equipment on board for scientific analysis.
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Yahoo offers $3 billion for Google
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Read MoreThe 7 Best Celebrity Homes You Can Buy Today
In 2002, Yahoo CEO Terry Semel offered Google $3 billion to buy the company. Google turned down the offer, refusing to accept less than $5 billion. How times have changed. Google's current market capitalization is $650 billion. Yahoo's market capitalization is $48 billion. To boost your own net worth in the future, here are investment moves you can take now.
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This is the only site that created one of these
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Read more 30 lies you should stop telling yourself every January
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believe us try it
Read More: Walmart Just Pulled These Controversial Products From Its Listings
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FAQs
What you don't know about Google? ›
Google Was Inspired by the Number Googol
While Google sounds like an accidentally catchy name, it is actually a play on the mathematical term googol, which is the number one followed by 100 zeros.
- Mr Hands. A former Boeing engineer, Kenneth Pinyan went by the nickname Mr Hands and he recorded himself repeatedly having sex with a horse. ...
- Tub Girl. ...
- Lemon Party. ...
- Two Girls, One Cup. ...
- Eel Girl. ...
- Goatse. ...
- Mouth Larva. ...
- Four Girls Finger Painting.
Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Who made you Google? ›Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by computer scientists Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University in California.
What answer does Google not know? ›Google has no answer for questions about effort, worth, desire, character. We have these answers inside of us. School is a place for asking and answering these types of questions.
What are 5 facts about Google? ›- Sergey Brin and Larry (Lawrence) Page met by chance. ...
- Google was originally named BackRub. ...
- Google is a play on the word "googol." ...
- Google's first doodle was a Burning Man stick figure. ...
- Google's first office was a rented garage.
When SafeSearch is on: While SafeSearch isn't 100% accurate, it helps filter out explicit content in Google search results for all your queries across images, videos, and websites. When SafeSearch is off: We provide the most relevant results for your search which may include explicit content when you search for it.
Can my Google searches be used against me? ›Your search history can also establish you had a motive, committed an internet-related offense or sex crime (child pornography), or had knowledge of how or the intent to commit a crime (i.e. you looked up local meth dealers near me in Google).
Does Google need to know my age? ›If you're not old enough to manage your own account, you can have a parent use their Google Account to set up supervision so you can continue using your account. You have 14 days after you entered your birthdate to enable supervision before your account will be disabled.
What is older than Google? ›But Google is not the first internet search engine. There had already been AltaVista, Yahoo!, and others when it was created, but Google stands out with its better search quality and sample ad-free homepage. In 1998, the company surpassed its competition, AltaVista, created three years earlier.
Why is Google called Google? ›
They ultimately raised about $1 million from investors, family, and friends and set up shop in Menlo Park, California, under the name Google, which was derived from a misspelling of Page's original planned name, googol (a mathematical term for the number one followed by 100 zeroes).
What came before Google? ›We Used Yahoo, Lycos, or AltaVista for Search
Before Google became synonymous with looking things up on the Internet, Yahoo, which first indexed the web, was the number two most popular site online.
Agencies Google was called BackRub back in 1996; the name Brad's Drink lasted for 5 years before it was replaced with Pepsi-Cola.
What Google knows of you? ›Once you're logged into any Google service, you can check your location history status by: Clicking on the App button in the top-right corner. Then, click Account > Manage your data & privacy > Location History.
Is Google going to stop answering questions? ›The fun is over— Google has announced that it will stop answering silly questions via a new update to its algorithm and AI strategy earlier this month. The move aims to improve the quality of its answers and the accuracy of its information and will be done mainly through improving “featured snippets.”
Does Google know what we talk about? ›Google knows who you talk to, and what you talk about. It also knows who you've been with, and when. Based on your search queries, Google knows the food, books, movies, videos, and stores that you like or dislike. Your search queries tell a story about what you are thinking about, including your future plans.
What are 10 things Google believes? ›- Focus on the user and all else will follow.
- It's best to do one thing really, really well.
- Fast is better than slow.
- Democracy on the web works.
- You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
- You can make money without doing evil.
Google was started by two college students called Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They wanted to create a website which would rank pages based on how many other pages linked back to them - a bit like a web. 3. The word Google comes from the term 'googol', which is the number one followed by a hundred zeroes.
What interesting things can I Google? ›- Tilting. Google off angle. ...
- Star Wars text. The Google crawl. ...
- Blinking. Blinks blink across search for blink. ...
- Google like it's 1998. What Google looked like when it first launched. ...
- Zerg rush! Old-style Google naughts rushing. ...
- Breakout. ...
- Conway's Game of Life. ...
- Super Mario Bros.
Using a search engine to search for illegal internet activity is a crime, and police can use your search behavior, search history, and social network to establish intent or conspiracy to commit a worse offense like possession of child pornography or even murder.
Is someone watching your Google searches? ›
Yes. Internet providers can see everything you do on the internet. The only way to defend against this is by encrypting your data. Solutions like VPNs, HTTPS proxies, and the Tor browser can help you protect your data.
What is Google not allowed to show? ›We don't accept content that is illegal or depicts illegal activity. This includes: Images or any other content that infringes on anyone else's legal rights, including copyright.
Is deleting search history a crime? ›But deleting digital data—including clearing browser history—can result in federal felony obstruction of justice charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1519, the federal anti-shredding statute, which carries a 20-year maximum penalty.
What happens if you accidentally go to an illegal website? ›It is unlikely you will be arrested for coming across an illegal website by accident. However, if it was not truly an accident, you continued to intentionally browse the site, or you have large amounts of data from the website on your computer or device, you may face arrest and criminal charges.
Is an IP address enough to convict? ›Remember that an IP address alone is not sufficient evidence of a crime. An attorney or law enforcement agent may try to get you to admit guilt by saying they have evidence that your IP address proves your guilt. While this is simply not true, your lack of knowledge can be used against you.
Who is most searched woman? ›Nupur Sharma. Nupur Sharma was the most searched person in India this year. The former Bharatiya Janta Party spokesperson found herself in a major controversy after she made a remark about Prophet Muhammad on national television during a debate on a news channel.
Who is the most searched person on Google? ›- 1) Johnny Depp. ...
- 2) Will Smith. ...
- 3) Amber Heard. ...
- 4) Vladimir Putin. ...
- 5) Chris Rock. ...
- 6) Novak Djokovic. ...
- 7) Anna Sorokin (Delvey) ...
- 8) Andrew Tate.
Hollywood superstar Johnny Depp takes the top position in the list of top 10 most Googled people as 2023 begins.
What's God's real name? ›Jehovah (/dʒɪˈhoʊvə/) is a Latinization of the Hebrew יְהֹוָה Yəhōwā, one vocalization of the Tetragrammaton יהוה (YHWH), the proper name of the God of Israel in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
What is Jesus real name? ›Jesus' name in Hebrew was “Yeshua” which translates to English as Joshua.
What is God's oldest name? ›
In Christianity, the Old Testament reveals YHWH ( יהוה; often vocalized with vowels as "Yahweh" or "Jehovah") as the personal name of God.
Does Google know my name? ›Does Google store any sensitive or personal information? In addition to the list above, Google knows personal information like your name, gender, and birthday, because you've handed over all these personal details to Google as Personal Info in your Google account.
Why is Google saying my birthday is wrong? ›Your account may be disabled if you provided a date of birth that does not meet the minimum age requirements to own a Google Account. If you incorrectly entered your date of birth and your account has been disabled, learn how to re-enable your Google Account.
Should I put my real birthday on Gmail? ›When you sign up for a Google Account, you may be asked to add your birthday. Knowing your birthday helps us use age-appropriate settings for your account. For example, minors may see a warning when we think they've found a site they may not want to see.
What is Netflix older than? ›1) Netflix is actually older than Google — it was founded in 1997 while Google was founded in 1998. No wonder Netflix is often used as a verb ('Let's Netflix something'). 2) Movie and TV shows ratings vary by region.
Why Yahoo failed to beat Google? ›1. A missed opportunity with Google and search – In 2002, Yahoo had the chance to buy Google for $1 billion, but executives dragged their feet; by the time they decided to pursue the offer, Google's price had soared to $3 billion.
What am I older than 1980? ›Baby Boomers (circa 1946 to 1964) Generation X (circa 1965 to 1980) Millennial Generation (circa 1981 to 1996) Gen Z (post-Millennial) (circa 1997 to 2012)
What is the most ask question on Google? ›A googol is 10 to the 100th power, which is 1 followed by 100 zeros.
Which search engine shut down? ›The ad-free private search engine co-founded by former Google employees has announced it is shutting down. The ad-free private search engine Neeva is shutting down after being unable to acquire more users, according to a statement by co-founders Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan on May 20.
What's the oldest search engine? ›
Back in 1992, Martijn Koster, a software developer at Nexor, built some software to manage and index the emerging Web. His work, called Aliweb, is acknowledged as the world's first search engine.
What is the oldest search engine still active? ›Archie is considered the first and, therefore, the oldest search engine on the Internet, created in 1990 at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. It was designed to search for files stored on anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) servers and index them, making it easier for users to find the information they needed.
What was Google's original logo? ›Google actually had two "first" logos. In 1996, the logo featured an image of a hand and the company's original name, BackRub, in red font. After rebranding to Google, the company launched a simpler logo in 1998 that said "Google!" in multicolor.
What did Google rename itself? ›The market now knows Google's parent company as Alphabet. But many people aren't aware of how the corporation ushered in this change. Keep reading to find out the reasons why the company's management decided to make the switch from Google to Alphabet.
Who owns Google now? ›- Focus on the user and all else will follow.
- It's best to do one thing really, really well.
- Fast is better than slow.
- Democracy on the web works.
- You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
- You can make money without doing evil.
They wanted to create a website which would rank pages based on how many other pages linked back to them - a bit like a web. 3. The word Google comes from the term 'googol', which is the number one followed by a hundred zeroes. The creators chose it to reflect the huge amount of data they were searching through.
Can everyone see what I Google? ›Yes, they can.
The people who can access this information could be your boss or family member if they control the network. It is best to use security tools: VPNs, HTTPS proxies, and the Tor browser to keep your searches private from them.
Basically, our brain is learning to disregard information found online, and this connection becomes stronger every time we experience it. So the more we use Google, the less likely we are to retain what we see. Our brains use information stored in the long-term memory to facilitate critical thinking.
What things can I ask Google? ›- Get to know your Assistant: Do you dream? What's your favorite color?
- Games: Let's play a game. Give me a trivia question.
- Entertainment: Tell me a joke. Tell me something interesting.
- Animal facts: Tell me about giraffes. What's the animal of the day?
What are three fun facts? ›
- It is impossible for most people to lick their own elbow. ...
- A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.
- A shrimp's heart is in its head.
- It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.
Conversation. Fun fact: 15% of all Google searches have never been searched before.
Can police see your search history? ›Do the police monitor Google searches? While police do not actively monitor Google searches, they are able to obtain a warrant for your search history if they have probable cause to do so.
Can someone see what I search on my phone? ›Regardless of whether you use an iPhone or an Android smartphone, it is possible for someone to install spyware onto your phone that secretly tracks and reports on your activity. It's even possible for someone to monitor your cell phone's activity without ever even touching it.
Can a hacker see my search history? ›Intercepting/Monitoring your Online Traffic
Hackers and other prying eyes can also see your browsing history and additional information if you connect to the internet via insecure public Wi-Fi.