Google is celebrating its 20th birthday on September 4 and it is fascinating to know that a 20-year-old (or should we say ‘youngster’) has answers to almost all the questions in the world. From its foundation in a Menlo Park garage in 1998, to the gigantic headquarters in Mountain View, Google has evolved a lot through its 2 decade-long existence. Once just a search engine, the $852 billion company is now a leader in digital advertising, software, as well as hardware. On Google's 20th anniversary, here are some interesting and fun facts to get you better aquainted with the company that touches millions of human lives every day. Happy Birthday Google!
(From L to R) Google CEO, Sundar Pichai; Union IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad;
Telecom Secretary, Aruna Sundararajan and Google's India VP, Rajan Anandan.
2 The founders wanted to name their site “Googol” which is the name of the number consisting of a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The term was picked to signify that the search engine will give users an infinite amount of information on the web. But a misspelling resulted in Google and it stuck. Today, Google processes over 3.5 billion Search queries each day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.
Source: Google blog
7 A supporter of an environment-friendly approach, by 2011 Google had already invested $850 million in clean energy, including $168 million in a solar power plant in Mojave Desert in California and $100 million in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm in Oregon.
9 Google acquired more than one company a week on average in 2010 and 2011. Since 2015, Google and fellow companies come under an umbrella company called Alphabet, which has 80,000 employees.
Source: Visual Capitalist