If you ask Alexa “When is Google’s birthday?” The answer will be a prompt “September 7”. Also known as Google Commemoration Day, how do we celebrate the special day? Go google a bunch of stuff! It’s as simple as that. LoL! Just kidding!
You could acknowledge how Google has helped you in the past and how it continues to do so. Go spam Twitter and Instagram about how Google helped you through your assignments, your research, your emails, your documents and so on.
As big as the company is today – when we say big we mean a trillion dollars and more in net worth – Google does root back to humble beginnings. Here’s the story of how it all started.
Good old days
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin began work on their search engine back in 1996, it wasn’t originally called Google, it was called Backrub. Such a peculiar name, don’t you think? But here’s a fun fact, the search engine was called BackRub because it needed backlinks to determine how important a site was.
They eventually changed their name to Google, which was derived from the word “googol,” which is the number 1 with 100 zeros after it. The idea behind it was to illustrate how Google has access to endless information. Page and Brin registered the domain name on September 15, 1997.
Did you know Google opened shop in a room attached to a garage in Menlo Park, California, on September 7 in 1998. That’s the day that came to be known as Google Commemoration Day. That year, Google was in Beta mode and generating around 10,000 search queries each day.
Page and Brin even came up with an algorithm they called PageRank. This algorithm was supposed to analyze relationships between websites and determine the relevance of each website. The relevance was based on the number of links each website had to other sites.
Google’s big break
In the year 2000, Google was the largest search engine in the world. The company has had continued improvements and growth in staff and services since. On August 19, 2004, the initial public offering (IPO) of Google took place.
And 2006 was the year in which the word “google” was added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, with the definition: “to obtain information on the Internet.”
Reality check today
Over time Google grew from being the biggest search engine tool to much more. More being, services like Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Gmail, Photos, Calendar, Drive, Hangouts and Google Maps. Google went on to develop its own Android mobile operating system, Google Chrome and Chrome OS. They even created hardware like Nexus, the Google Home smart speaker who we call “Alexa” and the Google Pixel smartphone.
They also bought YouTube. There is more that Google has accomplished and more that they have to offer and as we celebrate them today, here are some fun facts about Google that you probably didn’t know!
Largest index of websites in the world
Google has an index with over 3 billion websites. If this index was to be printed, you’d get a 130-miles high stack of paper. Do you know what that means? Google can search through all these websites in less than a second. That is why SEO is important for your audience to find your website.
The global shutdown
Back in 2013, on August 16, Google had a 5-minute shutdown, in that time the global Internet usage decreased by 40%. That shows how important Google is today in case you’re looking for any website.
The missed opportunity
Google wanted to sell its search engine system to Yahoo for $2 million in 1997. But Yahoo didn’t accept this offer. A few years later, Yahoo came back wanting to buy Google for $3 billion, but this time Google didn’t accept the offer. And today Google has the highest net worth that is way over its competitors.
Many firsts
Google first tweeted “I’m feeling lucky” in binary code. Pretty fancy huh! Today, Google has 23 million and over followers on Twitter. As of September 2021, Google Translate supports 109 languages with over 100 billion words translated daily.
How to celebrate the day?
Celebrate by “googling” for fun things on the Google search engine. Use other Google services or products. Discover some hidden features of Google you didn’t know about earlier. Look through the repository of old Google Doodles or visit Googleplex.
