Technology

Little Known Facts about Google

Google was nicknamed BackRub

Like most booming internet companies, Google had an interesting upbringing, which was marked by a lowly beginning. It started out as a purely scientific research project by two young Ph.D. students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. According to an official documentation, Brin and Page argued on every single subject they discussed. These incessant arguments, however, may have been what actually spurred the duo to reconsider web-searching and create a novel strategy for websites ranking based on backlinks, and not determined by how many times a certain search term is shown on a given site, as was the norm.

Due to the unique approach, Page and Brin planned to name the new search engine, BackRub. Fortunately, in 1998, Brin and Page decided to drop the sexually suggestive name, and came up with a now famous global brand ‘Google’, a word originating from a typical misspelling of googol, a word which refers to 10100.

Google scans our e-mails

Nothing in this life is perfect – or without even the slightest controversy – and with Google, it isn’t an exception. Google scans our Gmail e-mails through a process known as content extraction. All outgoing and incoming e-mails are scanned for certain keywords which will allow more accurate advertising. The technique has brewed quite a hail of controversy.

Google Street is also accused as a breach of personal privacy. The service offers high-resolution street-view images from around the globe and has, on many occasions, caught poor individuals committing questionable acts. Similarly, Google Earth has continuously come under fire from a few governments about the security risks it poses.

Google spends $70 million annually on employee meals

Seventy million dollars each year – that works out to about $7,300 per employee. While the actual details vary depending on your location, employees at Google’s California HQ, aptly entitled as the Googleplex, may get two free meals each day from eleven different gourmet cafeterias. As if that weren’t enough, the office has a few snack bars that are cram full of healthy and tasty morsels to munch on.

But, what if their cars are in a bit of a rut? Easy; Google offers on-site oil changes and car washes. The list of perks for working with Google is never-ending, making it obvious why it’s considered the best place to work, offering: on-the-spot massage therapists, full athletic facilities, haircuts, language classes, day cares, drop-off dry cleaning, and a clinic just to name a few.

Google loses more than $100 million each year through I’m Feeling Lucky

There is not much to see when you open Google’s main search page, and maybe simplicity is one of the factors to Google’s success. When using Google, you are given a couple of options: a normal Search or a supposedly handy “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. By clicking the former, you’re given that typical list of search results; but if you click the latter, however, you’re automatically redirected to the #1 web site on a specific search result, bypassing Google’s search engines results page.

Other than the fun factor, the driving idea behind this feature is to give the users instant access to the actual information they are looking for, and hopefully save them time that would usually be spent perusing endless pages of search results. Sounds handy and harmless enough, right? Not really. Because it bypasses all text advertising and it is believed that Google loses more than $100 million each year in advertising-generated revenues.

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7 Comments

  • Reply
    Davor Gasparevic
    February 14, 2010 at 23:25

    Well, I knew about the second, I mean I suspected, because those ads on the side of the mail text are always highly targeted.

    BTW funny and interesting info about the I’m feeling lucky button. I used it only once in my life, and I didn’t like it because I often rather choose 2nd 3rd even fifth result when searching for things.

    And yes, they probably lose money because of that button. But I guess that so few people use it regularly that it’s insignificant to them. I always use the normal search and click the whatever result I want.

    Lol BackRub, sounds more like some suspicious ghetto massage saloon center than the world’s leading search engine.

    • Reply
      Zak
      February 26, 2016 at 17:57

      Hi Davor,

      The feeling lucky button made my day one time. Accidentally I found something very interesting!

  • Reply
    Donna Piyak
    February 15, 2010 at 06:24

    Amazing,maybe Google will start giving employees free back rubs with meals. Great blog sir.

  • Reply
    Sadie Nooman
    March 8, 2010 at 01:11

    Could you please translate your blog into German since I’m not so comfortable reading it in English? I’m getting tired of using Google Translate all the time, there is a cool WordPress plugin called like global translator which will translate all your pages by default- that would make reading posts on your sweet blog even more comfortable. Cheers dude, Sadie Nooman!

    • Reply
      Zak
      February 26, 2016 at 17:58

      Hi Sadie,

      Translation plugins don’t give the exact meaning, I’m testing a new one and you’ll find the german version soon.

      Thank you for commenting and say hello to all my German friends!

  • Reply
    Jessica
    March 9, 2010 at 11:49

    You made some good points there. I did a search on the topic and found most people will agree with your blog.

  • Reply
    Miriam
    March 17, 2010 at 12:09

    Excellent Article!

    If I could write like this I would be well chuffed 😉

    The more I read articles of such quality as this (which is rare), the more I think there might be a future for the Web. Keep it up, as it were.

  • Leave a Reply to Zak