If you’re a regular on this blog, then you know about my huge lovefest with Google. Well, the good folks at bargainfox were nice enough to share these 55 interesting facts about Google.. Check out the complete infographic below by Bargain Fox.
Google is the leading global search engine. However, besides this basic information, there are loads of least known facts about this huge company. Below is a list of facts that you probably didn’t know about Google.
Google origin
The name Google is derived from a game called googol meaning the number represented by numeral one and then followed by some 100 zeros. The concept was developed by two gentlemen Larry and Sergey in their mission to organize unlimited amount of information on the web. These two gentlemen went ahead to register Google.com on September 15, 1997.
After this, Google’s first office was located in a donated garage on Santa Margarita Avenue, Menlo Park California. The garage was given out by the current YouTube CEO, Susan Wojcicki.
Since then a lot of transformation has happened in this gigantic company. This includes formulation of seven different Google logos before coming up with the current one.
Searches
Ever since Google’s launch in August 1998, Google’s daily searches have heightened from about 10000 to more than 3.5 billion today, watch itreal time . According to analytics, the search engine serves more than 200 million people on a daily basis. During a search, Google takes into consideration over 200 factors in a matter of seconds before delivering any search results.
According to a 2015 research, when compared to Bing, Yahoo, Ask Network and AOL, Google had approximately 64% shares of desktop searches by the U.S.
The most surprising fact about Google search is the most expensive keyword which is ‘best mesothelioma lawyers’ A single click of this keyword costs $194.40.
Shares
Are you an enthusiastic shares investor? Then get reading this. On August 19, 2004, Google offered a total of 19,605,052 shares to the public at $85 per share. 12 years later, on March 11th, 2016, Google announced an exceptional growth of its where a single share was valued at $726.82, and this was a representation of an 855% growth.
Surprisingly, anyone who invested in the Google shares in the year 2004 had benefited by a significant margin. For instance, a person who spent $10,200 back then had accumulated a total of $176,160 as of March 2016.
Popularity
Alphabet Inc is the umbrella company of Google. On February 2, 2016, it was announced that the company had overtaken the renowned Apple to become the most valued public company. This was as a result of Alphabet’s high profile market capitalization.
Although Google Inc is the largest branch of Alphabet in the basis of internet related businesses, it houses other companies such as Google Capital, X, Calico, GV, Google Fiber, Jigsaw, Nest Labs, Sidewalk Labs and Verily.
Taxing and Revenue
In 2015, Google spent 15% of its revenue on R$D while Apple spent only 3.5%. In numeral form, Google spent $12.28 while Apple spent only $8.1 billion. Other giant companies like Qualcomm spent 22%, and Facebook spent 21%.
Between 2007 and 2009, there was a cut off in Google cut taxes by $3.1 billion. It came about after Google moved most of its foreign profits to Bermuda through Ireland and The Netherlands. This brought significant growth to the High-Tech Enterprise. Moreover between the period of 2005 and 2015, Google’s advertising revenue has grown 11 times; From $6.07 billion to $67.39 billion.
Google other interests
Google advocates for renewable energy where it funds $2.5 billion which is directed towards solar projects and clean energy.
Analytics also state that compared to other data centers, Google uses 50% lesser energy.
Furthermore, of all the electronics and related equipment that leaves data centers, Google recycles all of them.
Areas of operation
There is restricted access to Google’s service in 7 regions. That is China, Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. 25 countries out of 100 areas it operates from are also partially blocked from accessing Google.
Google Site Dominance
According to analytic insights by Alexa, 21 out of the 100 top websites in the U.S are owned by Google. Again, Google owns 160 Domain names in every country where it operates.
Gmail
Gmail comes in the second place as the biggest email client market share. This is after Apple iPhone that has 33%. By 2015, Gmail had a total of 900 million users, 75% of whom used the platform on mobile platform.
An interesting fact is that the Gmail logo was designed the night before the launch of the site.
YouTube
YouTube is one of Google’s most expensive site that it bought in 2006. It was acquired for $1.65 billion. A year after the purchase, YouTube consumed too much bandwidth; precisely, the overall internet usage for the year 2000.
History was made in 2009 when President Barack Obama and the Pope launched their own YouTube channels.
Google play store
Since its inception in 2009, available Apps had grown more than 112 times by November 2015, translating to 1.8 million Apps from 16000 when it started.
Google Chrome
As of June 2015, Google Chrome was the most preferred browser compared to Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer.
Android
A 2015 survey revealed that 40% of professional developers prefer Android as their target platform. This is after an increase of Android users from 538 million to one billion in the period between 2014 and 2015.
Languages and Grammar
Did you know the Google site is available in 90 different languages? Check out to see if your favorite language is available.
Unfortunately, Google does not apply any grammatical rules. It is possible to find grammatically wrong statement during a search like ‘She have come’.
Google Mapping
As a result of export restrictions by the US government, Google Earth has been blocked in Sudan and Syria since 2007.
Company Acquisition
Google has managed to acquire a total of 189 companies in 19 countries in the US, Europe, and Asia. Of these companies, three stand out as the most expensive. Motorola Mobility at $12.5 billion, Nest Labs at $3.2 billion and DoubleClick at $3.1 billion. Orkut, a social networking site that Google had earlier bought, was closed in 2014.
Googleplex
Googleplex is the global headquarters of Google. It is located in Mountain View, CA. The building stands on seven acres of land and the office space take up 3.5 million square feet.
Google and Employment
According to 2015 Fortune analytics, Google is the best workplace. This could explain why the gigantic company receives close to 2.5 million resumes every year.
As time progresses, Google is in demand of more employees, and that is another reason millions of resumes are sent that direction. For instance, Google employees have significantly increased from 16805 in 2007 to 61814 in 2015.
Some of the Google employees include financial directors, lawyers, researchers among others. Surprisingly 70% of Google’s employees are male while 30% are female. Out of these women, only 22% occupy leadership positions.
Best Google Jobs
The top five Google jobs that are much coveted because of their lucrative salaries include:
- Finance director – $339000
- Engineering director – $272370
- Marketing director – $268936
- Business operations principal – $252423
- Group product manager -$243 299
- Google Employee Benefits
Google employees enjoy the best benefits any company can offer. This includes bringing along their dogs at the work place. Some other benefits include;
- massage credits
- new parents break
- fitness classes and gym
- extended leave of up to 3 months unpaid
- travel insurance
- emergency assistance
There you have it; Interesting facts about Google that you never knew. Are you interested to see more of these facts?