Zicoflex 1. Nobody knows when
its birthday is
The question of today’s
Doodle – when is Google’s
birthday? – isn’t actually
answerable. The company
has six birthdays, at least,
and has just decided to start
celebrating it on 27
September. You can find a
full run down of how that
actually happened here
.
2. And it might even be
19 years old
One of its potential birthdays
was in 1995, meaning that it
wouldn’t even be 18 at all.
First pictures of
Google's new offices
in King’s Cross
3. There’s a T-Rex on
the Google Campus, and
it has a slightly
terrifying message
But Google is already feeling
death breathing down its
neck – or is worried that it
might. The company’s campus
has a huge model of a T-Rex
skeleton, which is meant to
remind employees not to let
the company go extinct.
4. And there’s a T-Rex
game hiding in Google
Chrome as well
The T-Rexes don’t end
there. When Chrome doesn’t
have an internet connection,
it will show a warning about
not being able to connect,
alongside a picture of a little
dinosaur
.
And if you press the space
bar when that’s showing, it
will start a game where you
run along as the dinosaur,
jumping over any obstacles
by pressing the space bar
again. The game will last
forever, because all of the
obstacles are generated by
the code.
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The one big thing
wrong with the
Google birthday
doodle
5. Which is just one of
the huge number of
Easter Eggs hiding in
Google products
Most of those can be found
in search
. And they tend to be fairly
obvious, once yo know what
they are – searching
“askew” sends the results
all crooked, for instance. You
can find a full list of them
here
.
6. Google wasn’t very
happy with becoming a
generic word for
searching
The company worried that
the word – as in the phrase,
“just Google it” – would
undermine all of the work it
had done to make its brand
recognizable.
7. Google buys more
other companies than
you can imagine
Some estimates put Google’s
buying habits at more than
one company per week. Most
of them are small – but some
of them can be huge.
Many of the products simply
get folded into others. But
others, like Android, continue
to exist on their own within
Google’s fold – and, in that
case, go on to be one of its
most recognised products.
It very rarely sells them on
again, though.
8. Google’s “I’m Feeling
Lucky” button costs tens
of millions of dollars per
year
This button might seem like
just a bit of fun, and that’s
mostly what it is. But it’s
expensive fun, for Google.
By just taking the user
straight through to the first
result, Google also skips
past all the advertising that
it would usually show to
people when they get up to
the results page. That means
that it misses out on the
advertising revenue, too.
But the company has been
gradually getting around
this, with a set of features
that mean you probably
wouldn’t even notice it.
Google Instant means that so
long as you have it turned
on and your connection is
fast enough, for instance,
you’ll start seeing results as
soon as you start typing.
And Google is able to collect
enough information about
you as you browse around
the internet that it can be
fairly sure you’ll come into
contact with one of its ads,
even if not immediately.
9. The first ever Google
storage was made of
Lego
Nowadays, Google is one of
the world’s biggest data
storage companies – filling
warehouse upon warehouse
with servers to store
people’s work, photos,
emails and everything else.
But at its very beginning,
when it was known just as
Backrub, its first storage
was just a load of hard
drives housed in a container
built of Lego.
10. Google gives very
generous payouts to the
husbands and wives of
people who die while
working for them
They’ll receive 50 per cent
of their salary for the next
decade. And their children
receive a payout until
they’re grown up, too.
11. One Google search
uses more computing
power than it took to
send the Apollo 11
astronauts to the moon
Searching Google is easy and
takes just miliseconds. But
the computing and
networking power required
to look through almost all of
the known internet is huge –
far more huge than the
relatively minor amount of
code and computing that it
took to put humans on the
moon.
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Best Google's Doodles
12. Google once went
down for five minutes,
and took 40 per cent of
web traffic with it
On 19 August, 2013, Google
stopped working for five
minutes. And it took much of
the internet with it.
While other companies have
looked to challenge Google’s
dominance in search, it still
represents a huge part of
the web.
Nowadays, such an outage
would be unlikely to cause
such a problem – other
sites, mostly Facebook, have
challenged Google’s
dominance as the central
linking place of the world. But
Google still accounts for a
huge part of everything
anyone finds or looks at on
the internet.
13. Google hires goats
Google’s headquarters are
big, and lots of it is green.
So much of it is grass that it
would need a lot of
lawnmowers – but Google
has a novel way around that.
Instead of gas-powered
machines, Google hires a
load of goats to clear the
fields around its campus.
They visit for about a week
at a time, and about 200 of
them come to much up the
Google grass.
The goats don’t guzzle gas,
pollute the air or make as
much noise. And they have
the advantage of being “a
lot cuter to watch than law
mowers”, Google’s
employees have noted.
14. And there are lots
of dogs at Google too
Google’s office is very dog
friendly. It says that letting
people bring in their pups
makes employees a lot
happier.
Cats aren’t as encouraged –
simply because they tend to
be upset by the dogs.
They’re not banned.
15. Indeed, one dog –
the first ever – has the
title of Top Dog
Yoshka is the only dog to be
credited in Google’s official
history – from when he
joined alongside owner (and
senior vice president of
operations) Urs Hölzle early
on in the company’s life in
1999. Yoshka even wrote a
blog post on Google’s site,
presumably dictating it –
noting that there were now
many other dogs, some much
smaller than himself, but that
all of them were welcome.
16. Google’s logo wasn’t
in the middle until 2001
The simplicity of the Google
homepage belies the fact that
it is one of the most viewed
things in the history of the
world. So even the tiniest
changes are significant –
and some very not tiny
changes were made in the
site’s early development.
For instance, in the first few
years the site was around,
its logo was aligned slightly
to the left. That came to an
end in 2001, when Google
finally moved it into the
middle.
17. And it’s been
making tiny little
changes ever since
The company has been
making the smallest
adjustments to its logo ever
since. Those have included,
for instance, a minor change
to the layout of the letters in
its name. But they've also
included big changes to how
the words are written,
including a new font
.
But all of those are noticed
and often marked in
discussion about the
company.
18. And those changes
include its entire name
Perhaps the biggest change
in recent years was to
entirely alter the name of
Google – and change it to
Alphabet.
The alteration – which didn’t
turn out to be as big or
significant as it first seemed
– essentially meant that the
company called Google just
ate up the search, internet
and information bits of the
business. All of the other bits
that had traditionally also
been called Google moved
under the ownership of
Alphabet – which also owned
Google, the newly created
search company.
Since then, most of the
things that happen that
people hear about continue
to come out of Google. And
often when they come from
another company – like X,
which makes its self-driving
cars – everyone just calls it
Google anyway.